Viggo Mortensen, Michael Fassbender and Keira Knightley star in David Cronenberg's compelling look at the early days of psychoanalysis.

Director David Cronenberg is well-versed in making films that understand and reveal the darker impulses and inner lives of his characters, and has given us a peerless body of films concerned with matters of science and pseudo-science. Hardly surprising then that he should be drawn to direct this adaptation by writer Christopher Hampton of his own stage play, The Talking Cure, dealing with the beginnings of psychoanalysis. In the early 1900s, Carl Jung, an up-and-coming doctor at a Swiss clinic, decides to experiment on a young Russian patient, Sabina Spielrein, using Sigmund Freud's controversial new method. Spielrein arrives at the clinic a deeply disturbed woman, though clearly intelligent and herself interested in pursuing a career as an analyst. Jung's treatment of Spielrein, and the affair that this leads to, takes place alongside the development of his intense relationship with Freud, who sees Jung very much as his disciple and heir to the throne. As Jung wrestles with his own impulses and his growing desire to distance himself from Freud the father figure, a personal and ideological split seems inevitable. A Dangerous Method turns history into absorbing drama, and Jung, Freud and Spielrein are developed as fascinating, complex characters. The battle between order and desire, science and nature, rationalism and mysticism is compellingly drawn, and nowhere more so than in the masterful performances of Fassbender and Mortensen. [words: Sandra Hebron]

........................................................................................................................ COMPETITION: Win 1x Pair of tickets to attend BFI LFF: 'A Dangerous Method' at the Odeon West End at 20:00 on Monday, 24th October. To claim your tickets, send an email to Katie at katie@run-riot.com with the correct answer in the ‘subject’ box. The winner will be randomly selected.
Q: Of the following quotes, three are by Freud, and one by Jung. Which belongs to Jung?
A: .1) Anatomy is destiny .2) Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock .3) Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar .4) A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.