Viggo Mortensen to speak at 'A Dangerous Method'

An unprecedented fundraiser for the Panida Theater and KRFY Community Radio takes place on Friday, June 8, at 7:30 p.m. with local resident and film star Viggo Mortensen attending the screening of "A Dangerous Method" in which he stars as Sigmund Freud. Mortensen will introduce the film and also take questions from the audience immediately following the showing.

When Panida grants chairperson Phyllis Goodwin wrote Mortensen requesting his presence, both boards were thoroughly delighted to find out that he agreed to the proposed fundraiser. The Panida and KRFY are honored to be the recipients of this benefit.

The film, from the masterful filmmaking of David Cronenberg, is a look at how the intense relationship between Freud and Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) gave birth to psychoanalysis. Seduced by the challenge of an impossible case, the driven Dr. Jung takes the unbalanced yet beautiful Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) as his patient. Jung's weapon is the method of his master, the renowned Sigmund Freud. Both men fall under Sabina's spell.

The two busy themselves with the dynamics of competing mental health treatments at the dawn of psychoanalysis - a term so new, mentor Freud corrects his student Jung about its correct pronunciation. The cigar-stroking Freud has bold theories, all based on sex, but he's conservative as to how to apply them. Jung, an admirer and avid student of Freud's, seeks to put his mentor's radical ideas into practice at a Zurich clinic. He also wishes to expand upon them, by employing elements of the spiritual that Freud detests.

Jung gets his chance with the arrival of Spielrein, an agitated Russian woman who has to be physically restrained to prevent her from hurting herself and others. She equates physical pain with arousal, the result of childhood beatings. It is no exaggeration to say that Knightley throws herself into the role, to the point where it almost overwhelms the movie. She is shrewder and more seductive than she seems and proves capable of testing the strongest of minds. In Jung's case, she's serious temptation for a married man.

As Spielrein becomes less of a patient and more of an equal to Jung, her boldness and braininess becomes of interest to Freud, too, further fraying the bonds of friendship between the older and younger man.

Mortensen's buttoned-down and highly verbal Freud is something to behold - and also to listen to. The actor has been the quiet man of volcanic physical intensity in two previous Cronenberg films, "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises." Here his tongue is more lethal than his fists, as when he tears into Jung for practicing "second-rate mysticism and self-aggrandizing shamanism."

Freud is also a good deal funnier than history records, sometimes requiring no more than a rolled eye to get a laugh, as when he witnesses how Jung, more the bumpkin than he cares to admit, greedily piles food onto his plate as if it's his last meal.

Cronenberg has reached the stage of his career where he doesn't feel it necessary to pander to expectations. Instead he seeks to engage us, and he succeeds. He was nominated for the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for "A Dangerous Method."

Tickets to the benefit and R-rated film are $12 general admission, at Pedro's, Pack River Potions, Eichardt's Pub and at the box office on the evening of the showing, if any remain. The film runs one hour and 39 minutes. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.