Viggo Mortensen on the humorous, yet very formal Freud in A Dangerous Method
Viggo Mortensen: I play Sigmund Freud, starting at age 50. It's a period of his life, in terms of the images we have of him, that people are not that familiar with.
He looks quite serious, you know. But what you realize when reading about him. What contemporaries said about him. And even reading his letters, the letters he exchanged with Jung. Is that there is a very dry humor to him, you know. Sort of, a lot of times a deadpan humor, which has been really fun to play.
Freud was very conscious of public perception. Of himself. Of the science. And he wanted to keep things tidy. You know, he's a very formal, tidy person in some sense. Old-fashioned really. And Jung represents something new, more youthful. There's a different kind of energy. Even in reading their letters and the way that Freud wrote, he kept on dressing in the same way, for many... for decades. Really a 19th century way of dressing. And his German, he wrote in an... The way the German was written in the 18th and 19th century. He never really changed it. There's a formality to his writing. And to his presentation of himself. But in conversation, he's witty. And he's personable. And he's rather easy going. But there's always a high standard.
While Jung is differential, he's his own man. And I think Freud likes this for many reasons. New blood, new ideas, someone to talk to, to talk with on an equal level. To learn from.
You see the basis of their quick and easy early friendship. But you also see the basis of what later is their discord.
Certainly Sabina, Keira's character, in a way she brings them closer together. But at the same time she breaks up the relationship a bit. Not directly herself. But the affect of her relationship to Jung in particular.
