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director's chair David Cronenberg — A Dangerous Method H By IAIN BLAIR The director says this will be his last movie shot on film. OLLYWOOD — Since his first, aptly- titled 1975 feature Shivers, writer- director David Cronenberg has pro- duced a uniquely-personal body of work, including The Fly, Dead Ringers, Scanners, Crash, A History of Violence and Naked Lunch. Explor- ing areas where few other directors venture, Cronenberg has examined, with a clinician's eye, themes of biological horror, physical deformity, emotional terror and sexual unease. Now the Canadian director has once again turned his attention to the two latter areas with his new film, A Dangerous Method. With his usual surgical precision, Cronen- berg gets fully under the skin of two titans of the subconscious — Freud (played by Viggo Mortensen) and Jung (Michael Fass- bender) — and one disturbed patient (Kiera Knightley) — in his examination of the com- plicated real-life triangle. Adapted by Oscar- winner Christopher Hampton (Atonement) from his own play, the film is a visual and intellectual treat. Here, in an exclusive Post interview, Cronenberg talks about making the film, his love of post, and why he's such a big fan of digital and will be happy to see the demise of film. POST: What sort of film did you set out to make with A Dangerous Method? DAVID CRONENBERG: "That's interest- ing since I don't have any idea when I start. I have the script, and here you have the histori- cal characters, but I never visually have a film in my head so I can run that alongside what we shoot to see how close I came. Christo- pher and I came to it very neutrally. We didn't have an agenda, or try to elevate Freud at Jung's expense or vice-versa. scenes on a stage at MMC Studios in Cologne. Then we also shot on location in Vienna, and the outside of Freud's house. It all helped with getting the tone of the era, the beautiful clothes that were so controlled and restric- tive, with their high collars and multiple layers. All that gradually insinuates itself into prepro- duction and your visual approach and lighting ideas, and informs the whole film." POST: Talk about the look of the film, and about working with director of photography Peter Suschitzky for over 20 years. So this time we did it all over the Internet. We'd send over the digital files, he'd download and then start cutting, and it worked out very well. He stayed in Toronto and cut on an Avid. But we do have a shorthand, and my direc- tor's cut took just a week — because I'm shooting more simply these days, so I give him less footage to work with, but also, we under- stand each other and he knows immediately why I've done this shot instead of that one, or that angle instead of another. So we don't need to talk about it a lot. David Cronenberg (on set) with actor Viggo Mortensen: "I've done a lot of DIs, and I love digital. I can't wait to get rid of film to be honest." It was more, The film was cut by the director's long- time collaborator, Ronald Sanders, on an Avid system. 'resurrect them and bring them back to life,' as closely as art will allow and given that we're squeezing nine years into 90 minutes. "We did a lot of research and we had a lot of documentation — their letters and diaries — and we just let them speak for themselves. And as it was such an intriguing era, just prior to World War 1, with the invention of psycho- analysis, we felt it would speak for itself." POST: Talk about all the locations — Vienna, Cologne and so on. They must have been crucial? CRONENBERG: "Yes, we went to Jung's Burgholzli clinic, and I got very excited about that feel for nature. It was very advanced for its time, and then we shot most of the interior 12 Post • February 2012 CRONENBERG: "The look all comes from the weather and time of year, which gives it a certain light. Then you decide — were the rooms lit by gas or electric light? Then it's, how does that light react with the clothes — Kira's in particular. Once again, I rarely start a film with visual look in mind. I let the movie express itself, and as we find the locations and costumes and cast, and start building sets, it gradually emerges. Peter's a profoundly cultured man, very well- read, and this was heaven for him. He belongs in this era." POST: Your editor was Ronald Sanders, who's cut 15 films for you. Tell us about the edit- ing process. Was he on set? CRONENBERG: "No, and after working together for 35 years this was the first time he wasn't with me on location. Even when we did Eastern Promises in London, he was there. www.postmagazine.com "I don't ever look at the movie while I'm shooting. I do look at dailies, although to be frank, I've almost stopped that too, as you're watching the monitor. In the old days, the footage you got wasn't what you saw on the monitors, but today it's so closely calibrated you can actually judge lighting from the moni- tor — even when you're shooting film, not digital, and we shot this on film. So on the set I feel I've already looked at the rushes while we're shooting, and I don't look back unless I feel there's a problem or we need to adjust something or need missing coverage. "If Ron thinks there's a problem, he lets me know, but it's very rare. I like to be surprised by the movie and forget what I shot. I learned the value of that a long time ago, on my first film. I was editing every night and I completely lost perspective. I knew things were wrong but not how to fix them. Then I realized I