An interview with David Cronenberg

That’s not him, obvi­ously. That’s Keira Knightley, in A Dangerous Method, Cronenberg’s new film, and below the fold are Michael Fassbender and Viggo Mortensen as Jung and Freud.

The inter­view, which I’ve edited from the tran­script more min­im­ally than I might have under oth­er cir­cum­stances, was meant to appear in the dis­con­tin­ued Nomad edi­tion, Wide Screen. Its loss is your gain! My review of A Dangerous Method for MSN Movies is here. Some pri­or thoughts on the film based on my New York Film Festival look at it are here. The inter­view fol­lows. I have deleted our greet­ing pleasantries.

     KENNY: I saw the film a couple of times, and I saw your press con­fer­ence with Michael Fassbender at Lincoln Center.  And you said dur­ing the press con­fer­ence that when you’re mak­ing a film that you nev­er or rarely if at all think about stuff you’ve done before, themes rel­at­ive to things you’ve done before, but some­times that’s the crit­ic’s job to do that.  And I was think­ing rel­at­ive to a few things that this film reminded me—there’s a scene in the film where Keira’s char­ac­ter is receiv­ing the treat­ment and she’s break­ing down a bit with Michael’s Jung and she talks about how she’s vile and she needs to be put away and nev­er allowed to be let out.  And that and a few oth­er things reminded me, many things that the film’s theme is par­tially about, the threat of a woman’s sexu­al­ity.  And it reminded me a little bit of Rabid.  And because her pres­ence in is so dis­rupt­ive, in a way, to the world of Jung and Freud and I was won­der­ing if I might be on to some­thing and if you’d elab­or­ate on it, if so.

     CRONENBERG:  Sure.  Well, once again, I mean quite apart from Rabid or any con­nec­tions it had, it was abso­lutely of the essence of psy­cho­ana­lys­is.  How sexu­al­ity in gen­er­al is dis­rupt­ive.  And cer­tainly one of Freud’s revolu­tions was to give full acknow­ledge­ment to a woman’s sexu­al­ity.  Freud has been cri­ti­cized by fem­in­ists at some points for his pat­ri­arch­al ele­ments and so on.  But in fact, it can­’t be denied that he was one of the first—especially in that era, where women were revered as god­desses but were there­fore not sup­posed to have sexu­al­ity or intellect—one of the first to give full voice to both women’s intel­lect and sexu­al­ity.  And that’s one of the reas­ons why Freud was con­sidered sub­vers­ive and dis­rupt­ive and dan­ger­ous.  It was not just because of sex but also because of female sex.  There’s no ques­tion about it.  And here was—you have in that scene that you’re talk­ing about—and that’s a real quote from Sabina.  That’s accur­ate report­ing, she did say those things in her diary.  She…the whole idea that a woman should sud­denly be asked for the first time to talk about these things, that was the talk­ing cure.  It sounds innoc­u­ous to say it’s the talk­ing cure, but nobody wanted to hear what these crazy people had to say, until Freud said, no, no, you should listen to the crazy people because they are telling you what’s going on.  They’re telling you how to heal them, telling you what’s wrong with them.  And of course in Sabina’s case, for a young woman to be talk­ing about being sexu­ally aroused by her father­’s beat­ings was com­pletely unac­cept­able and com­pletely, you know, just intol­er­able.  And sud­denly for the first time she has a man who she does­n’t know giv­ing her per­mis­sion to talk about those things.  And with the con­com­it­ant sort of pain and try­ing to say the things and then try­ing not to say the things.  So yeah, I mean I think wheth­er it connects—the vari­ous things that are dis­rupt­ive forces, wheth­er it’s sexu­al­ity or oth­er things, sure, of course they’re of interest to—well, to me I think they’re of interest to any dram­at­ist really.  Sex and death.  I’m not the first.  I can­’t claim to be the first to deal with them. 

     KENNY: Well, that’s anoth­er inter­est­ing thing, because when we’re talking…well, there were three things, themes that I thought about.  Another being, this is also a film in a sense that’s about the cre­ation of the lan­guage that we use when we talk about what we talk about and when we talk about the themes of your films.

     CRONENBERG:  Well, it’s also…it’s really in a sense; and cer­tainly John Kerr in his book, A Most Dangerous Method, said it this way: that these three people, in a way, inven­ted the 20^th cen­tury.  They inven­ted mod­ern­ity.  Up until this point, talk­ing about those things, in that way, was unpre­ced­en­ted.  You would nev­er have men of the pro­fes­sion­al dig­nity and stature of Freud and Jung exchan­ging the let­ters that we have, that they did, talk­ing about bod­ily flu­ids and ori­fices, erot­ic dreams and stuff.  The stuff that people talk about all the time now, and you can see on any­body’s blog.  But it was unthink­able for people to talk about that stuff, espe­cially, as I say, pro­fes­sion­al people.  And then you had Sabina giv­ing voice to the woman’s ver­sion of that.  And she was abso­lutely their intel­lec­tu­al equal.  And they accep­ted her as that as well without con­des­cen­sion.  Really, all of that was quite extraordin­ary, and was quite new.

     KENNY: And one more thing that I think relates to some of your pri­or work is the theme that comes in a little later after the break between Freud and Jung, and it’s in the con­ver­sa­tion between–it’s most prom­in­ent in the con­ver­sa­tion between Freud and Sabina, and then of course in the title cards that tell you the fates of the respect­ive prot­ag­on­ists, is the theme of the Jew, and the Jew as oth­er, which is very close to some­thing you explored most expli­citly recently in the short film you made for Cannes, for the “Chacun son cinema” sec­tion in cel­eb­ra­tion of the 60^th anniversary of the fest­iv­al, a short called At The Suicide of The Last Jew In The World In The Last Cinema In The World.

     CRONENBERG:  That’s quite true.  It was abso­lutely also of the essence.  I mean Freud was acutely aware of the pos­i­tion of Jewishness and Jews in Austria; he could­n’t avoid it.  At the time Jews were accep­ted in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but they had lim­ited roles to play.  They were not allowed to be in the mil­it­ary, they were not allowed to be in gov­ern­ment.  And he was very aware that psy­cho­ana­lys­is could be dis­missed as Jewish mys­ti­cism, or some kind of Jewish charade or trick, or some­thing.  Which is why he was very straight­for­wardly des­per­ate to get Jung to be the lead­er of psy­cho­ana­lys­is in the future, because Jung was a good bour­geois Protestant Swiss German.  It would take the curse of Jewishness off the move­ment.  And that was abso­lutely one of the attrac­tions for Freud of Jung. 

     KENNY: Have you—in terms of this theme of Jew-as-other, being some­thing you’ve been explor­ing more recently; is there a story behind that, or is this some­thing that you may have been explor­ing in more impli­cit ways through­out your career, or–

     CRONENBERG:  No.  No.  I cer­tainly have friends who as they get older, sud­denly become Orthodox when they were not, pri­or to that, very inter­ested in being Jewish.  Is that what you’re talk­ing about?

      KENNY: No, I’m not ask­ing in terms of a reli­gious con­ver­sion, but just a sort of consciousness.

     CRONENBERG:  Oh, yes, yes.  No, no, I under­stand.  No.   I don’t feel that pro­cess in me that way.  It’s almost acci­dent­al really.  When they asked me to do this, the short for Cannes, and they said, “You can do any­thing you want”… that’s what came up on the com­puter.  And I had no idea why it should have par­tic­u­larly been at that moment, or not.  And on the oth­er hand, of course it took some years to get this movie [A Dangerous Method] made.  And as you know, it would be nice…people often think that a dir­ect­or can just pick and choose. At this moment in my career I think it would be nice to do this.  But really, it’s so…you have five or six things and one of them gets fin­anced and that’s the one you do.  So to me it’s almost hap­pen­stance, this sort of Jewish ele­ment in the Freud-Jung story, Sabina as well.  But when it’s there, I’m happy to embrace it because it’s cer­tainly a real thing in the life of any Jew, actu­ally.  And I cer­tainly relate to Freud’s ver­sion of Jewishness, because he was an athe­ist, and he was abso­lutely this sort of sec­u­lar, lib­er­al kind of Jew that a lot of people hate, includ­ing oth­er Jews.  So I cer­tainly relate to that.  So I had no prob­lem enjoy­ing com­ing to grips with it, let’s put it that way.  It was­n’t as though I was seek­ing it out, I sup­pose that’s what I could say.

     KENNY: Yes, some day when I write my Dictionary of Received Critical Ideas, the “dir­ect­ors can pick and choose” entry will be close to the “dir­ect­ors do one for the stu­dio and one for them­selves” entry.

     CRONENBERG:  Yes.  You’re right about all of that.

     KENNY: What about Jung’s flir­ta­tions with mys­ti­cism?  As someone who’s worked in the hor­ror genre but with a res­ol­ute res­ist­ance to ideas of the super­nat­ur­al, do you think Freud’s hos­til­ity or what we might per­ceive as hos­til­ity was in fact cor­rect?  And do you think Jung was–you don’t–there’s no very defin­it­ive state­ment in the film as to what it is that Jung is exper­i­en­cing as he describes it.  You sort of let it be.

     CRONENBERG:  Yes, I really felt–one of the things that attrac­ted me to [screen­writer] Christopher [Hampton]’s treat­ment was that it was agenda-free.  It was neut­ral.  He was­n’t try­ing to elev­ate Freud at Jung’s expense or vice versa.  And I like that.  Really it was a pro­ject of resur­rec­tion, as I’ve said; to bring them back to life, as neut­rally as pos­sible and then let them do what they did.  The implic­a­tions of what they said and what they did would be what they really were.  And I think we sort of–we did that.  Jung, though, we know, went exactly where Freud was afraid he would go, into Aryan mys­ti­cism, which made him a nice fit for the Nazis. At least at first. And cer­tainly Jung was quite an enthu­si­ast in terms of Hitler at the begin­ning.  And you can see why, because his whole sym­bol­ic thing, the thing called “Ahnenerbe” which meant the Aryan ances­tral inher­it­ance. The cor­res­pond­ing thing to that being that the Jews are root­less, the idea of the wan­der­ing Jew. So these ideas hold that although Aryans are less soph­ist­ic­ated, and don’t have that many thou­sands of years of soph­ist­ic­ated his­tory, they do have this rela­tion­ship with the soil, with blood and soil.

And Jung’s whole idea of the col­lect­ive uncon­scious is com­pletely a reli­gious, pla­ton­ic struc­ture.  It has no basis in psy­cho­logy, as far as I’m con­cerned.  I have a friend who says Jung would have been bet­ter off talk­ing about the “col­lect­ive con­scious.”  It would have made more sense.  But in any case, I think that Jung became what he first derided in his youth.  His fath­er was a pas­tor.  And he had six uncles who were also pas­tors.  And he derided his fath­er at first for his “weak­ness.”  But I think he even­tu­ally became that.  He wanted to become a reli­gious lead­er and lead his flock to spir­itu­al self-realization.  And that was exactly what Freud thought he would do.

     KENNY: It’s inter­est­ing too because those cul­tur­al cur­rents you dis­cussed, they’re all there in the film in a root form, of sorts, when you go into, of course, Wagner.

     CRONENBERG:  Yeah, well exactly.  There’s the sort of double irony really because Wagner…you know, it’s an inter­est­ing thing. At a cer­tain point, in one of Christopher’s early drafts of the script, he has Sabina ask Jung, “Do you like Wagner?” he had Jung say, “The music yes, the man no.”  And that’s a com­mon approach to Wagner, people who hate his anti-Semitism can­’t deny that he’s a won­der­ful artist.  And I asked Christopher, what his jus­ti­fic­a­tion was for that.  If he had a source for that, because everything I’d read about Jung sug­ges­ted that he would have no prob­lem admir­ing Wagner, even includ­ing his anti-Semitism.  And Christopher admit­ted that he just liked the sound of the response.  Well, that’s when he changed it.  And I have Jung say “the music and the man.”  And so there you have the irony.  That Wagner’s era was the era of the geni­us.  Genius was a pro­fes­sion in those days, and had been for a long time.  It was Goethe, then it was Wagner, it was Nietzsche.  You could aspire to be a geni­us.  And even for Jews, even though they knew that Wagner was anti-Semitic, they could­n’t help but sort of wor­ship him, espe­cially if one was a German-speaking per­son.  He was a tower­ing geni­us and you could­n’t res­ist that. 

     KENNY: Sure.  It’s fas­cin­at­ing and it must have been inter­est­ing for you, as a writer, to bounce stuff of someone as accom­plished and bril­liant as Christopher.

     CRONENBERG:  Oh yeah.  We had a lot of fun togeth­er.  And imme­di­ate mutu­al respect.  And Christopher’s got a very good sense of humor.  No ques­tion of being inflated by self-importance or any­thing like that.  And he’s also a dir­ect­or.  So he’s in on the oth­er side.  So we had a great col­lab­or­a­tion.  And primar­ily aside from little real­ity checks like that one I just described, it was mainly my help­ing to decide with him what we left in and what we left out.  Because I really like to have a nice tight script.  We cut about 14 pages out of his ori­gin­al script.  That’s really my one con­tri­bu­tion to his work.

     KENNY: I want to talk a little bit about the act­ors.  And their looks, I was fas­cin­ated by what you did with Knightley by everything in the film is so orderly, the cos­tumes, the groom­ing of Freud’s beard.  And she comes in and she’s like this white and sepia smudge in the middle of the frame.  And she stays that way, even as she gets bet­ter.  You visu­al­ize her dis­rupt­ive force in a very inter­est­ing way.

     CRONENBERG:  Yes.  Well, the style of the movie really comes from the era.  It was the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  There were 700 years, at peace for 40 years, they really felt that everything was just pro­gress­ing beau­ti­fully, every­body knew his place, everything was con­trolled.  And so I wanted to deliv­er the era without mak­ing a big deal out of it in the way that you have described.  And then here we have Sabina, who is the essence of the id, in a sense.  She is what Freud is talk­ing about.  And is exactly what made Freud’s meth­od be con­sidered to be dan­ger­ous, which is that she is a dis­rupt­ive, volat­ile force, very pas­sion­ate, very sexu­al, very con­nec­ted with her id, in Freudian terms.  And so she rep­res­ents that in the movie, definitely. 

     KENNY: It’s inter­est­ing; the oth­er affin­ity I found with Marilyn Chambers’ char­ac­ter in Rabid is her vul­ner­ab­il­ity.  She’s afraid of her power, afraid of what she can do with it.  And yet she has to go ahead. 

     CRONENBERG:  Yes.  Yes.  No, I think that’s abso­lutely true.  Compelled to be free, com­pelled to be what she is. 

     KENNY: Right, because “free­dom is free­dom,” as Vincent Cassel’s char­ac­ter says…

     CRONENBERG:  That’s exactly right.  Freedom is a scary thing.

     KENNY: Yeah.  In work­ing with Fassbender, he’s so ter­rif­ic and he’s been in so many won­der­ful things lately, was he someone you were par­tic­u­larly eager to work with?

     CRONENBERG:  Yeah. We knew he was a hot up and com­ing act­or.  Really I saw him in Hunger, I saw him in Fish Tank.  I saw him in Inglourious Basterds.  And in Inglourious Basterds, when we first see him, he’s got a sort of bristly mous­tache and is being a British officer.  I thought, that looked like my Jung actu­ally.  Really it was just those three movies; they demon­strated his range and I had no doubt that he could bring some­thing won­der­ful, that bear­ing and that pres­ence.  Of course Jung is only 29 when we meet him.  Once again, for both men, you’re sort of see­ing them at an era in their life that is not nor­mally depic­ted or thought of.  I was con­fid­ent that he would be ter­rif­ic.  And of course it was.

     KENNY: It’s just remark­able what he does.  And Viggo Mortensen kind of sub­sumes his nat­ur­al cha­risma in favor of an author­it­at­ive thing that he does beautifully.

     CRONENBERG:  Sure.  That was the excite­ment, too; was to do some­thing that is not obvi­ous. You don’t say Viggo Mortensen is obvi­ous cast­ing for Sigmund Freud.  But once again, it was a Freud who was described by Stefan Zweig in his book, World of Yesterday, as being mas­cu­line, hand­some, cha­ris­mat­ic, all those things. Freud at the prime of his life and under siege.  The assump­tion of author­ity was a defense.  He knows that he, and his group, are under assault by the med­ic­al pro­fes­sion by all kinds of things, by the anti-Semitism, and so on. And also the humor of Freud, which you really see in his writ­ing.  Which could be of course very cut­ting and used as a weapon.  It’s all there.  And so that was a joy, of present­ing a formerly un-presented Freud.