Albert Nobbs and Dangerous Method (2 OK Films) - James King

2 OK Films

Albert Nobbs and Dangerous Method are alright.  I wouldn’t ask for my money back or anything because I love going to the movies (and this particular theatre has beer, so there you go).  But, I didn’t leave feeling like the movie itself was worth the price of a ticket and 90 to 180 minutes of my life.  Are OK movies by definition a failure (at least in terms of artistic quality or worth-seeingness (I don’t care about boxoffice))?  I think so.  Movies are magic, and you can’t have second-rate magic.  I’d rather see a magic trick go horribly wrong and be able to throw things at the stage rather than just sit there, amused enough not to leave.  On the other hand, it’s good to think positively and in that spirit here are some things to like about AN and DM.

Nobbs:  Glen Close as a man (kind of, more like Glen Close as a silent film actor made of wood) in a 19^th century Irish fable by George Moore adapted for the screen by John Banville!  A movie about a woman forced to become a man in an ultra-conservative society should have been great (it also has Brendan Gleason, so it really really should have been great); but it wasn’t.  To dwell on the positives, there is some great acting here; particularly by Janet McTeer playing another woman-in-hiding.  But where Nobbs is tortured, she is set free by her disquise and able to lead a fulfilling life.  Maybe the movie would have been better if Nobbs had been a supporting character to her much more interesting and uplifting story. 

Dangerous Method:  Vigo, Fassbender, Keira Knightley and the director who made the Fly.  So there are definitely some good moments.  To begin with, the subject matter is fascinating:  the birth of psychoanalysis.  The plot, as told in Jungian archetypes, involves Dr. Jung’s persona treating a Russian/Jewish hysteric.  She’s beautiful, brilliant, and interested in psychoanalysis and, once Jung’s Self travels away from Persona into Shadow, goes from patient to colleague to lover.  Winding around this story, like a dragon’s tail over a star, is the oedipal story of Jung’s fractured relationship with Dr. Freud.  Metaphorical patricide ensues, and the movie ends with a nice, tidy text-on-black-screen to tell us how it all turned out (shame they didn’t do it six-feet-under style instead with a speedily aging Jung driving his carriage away).