There's no escaping it: 2011 is Michael Fassbender's year. Between X-Men: First Class, Jane Eyre, the upcoming Shame, and now A Dangerous Method, there is hardly any chance of your ending the year without having spent some time watching him on one silver screen or another. Not that there's anything wrong with this: rugged good looks aside, Fassbender is a stellar thespian—which is convenient, given his propensity for playing characters with some serious issues. His latest turn as Jung in the Cronenberg's aforementioned Method is no exception, as he acknowledged in this recent press conference.Morning.
Morning!
How are you doing?
Pretty good.
So how much did you know about Jung before filming the movie?
Not a great deal. When I started looking into it and researching it I realized just how much of his teachings, his philosophies and ideas are intrinsic in our vocabulary, just in sort of everyday use now—you know, the idea of extrovert-introvert personality types. That was quite cool, to sort of find that out. But other than that it was pretty basic, you know? So I had some work to do there, and then it’s a matter of digesting all the information and then kind of throwing it away again and going back to the script, ‘cause whatever else you sort of gather, um, you’ve got, you’ve got sort of, you know, 100-whatever pages to be told in that story. I realized there were various stages to his life, different Jungs at different points in his life, so the guy I was trying to portray was somebody who was young and still felt like he had a lot to prove in his profession, so I wanted to have an element of unsurety there and insecurity, if you like. He’s very much representing the time that he lives in: the stiff collars; everything is sort of controlled. He’s conforming to the social etiquette at the time, and you’re dealing with Europe in the early 1900s. They believed that they were like this hyper-civilization at that point. And then, of course, WWI was right around the corner and proved that theory totally wrong. So I looked at different stages of his life. The red books were interesting for me to take a look at, because that was the Jung that comes right after the movie: he has his breakdown, comes through that, and comes out with the red book. There’s also footage of him on Youtube. I could watch some interviews with him in his sixties or seventies, I’m not sure, but there was an old man that, again, seemed very self-assured and seemed very confident in his life’s work, and he was very charming. And also I got a sort of, I don’t know, a feeling of sensuality in him through his physicality. So—gathering all that information and then trying to find where it applies best in the story.
When Sabina comes to the hospital she is diagnosed with hysteria, and the diagnosis of hysteria—as well as its connection to female sexuality—is a pretty hot topic in movies right now. I was wondering how your research led you to view the topic.
Well, I know it has to do with the womb, isn’t it? It comes from the Latin, I can’t remember what the actual word is, but they actually used to take women’s wombs out because they believed it was sort of linked to this madness, if you like. What I think was pretty amazing with the Burgholzli [hospital] is that theirs was a forward way of thinking, and it was actually a good place to go to if at that point in history you were deemed to be insane or a little cuckoo. As we see with Sabina, what’s fascinating about that is she goes into the Burgholzli as a patient and she comes out as a doctor. And so these were very forward-thinking people for the time, especially to have the patience and to have the sort of interest in these various cases and also these different approaches, sort of allowing this idea of the talking cure, and I think that’s what really sort of binds Jung and Sabina together. He’s trying out this method of sort of dealing with hysteria through the talking cure, this new method, and he hasn’t tried it out yet; she’s suffering, and she gets cured by it, and he also gets a validation of his beliefs, so that forms a really strong relationship between them.
Do you believe in Jung’s theory that there is no real coincidence, only synchronicity?
I was talking about that last night, actually, with a friend. Yeah, kind of. I’m not sure. I don’t really know if I have any set beliefs in anything. I just sort of, I think I’m kind of open to anything. I don’t rule anything out. But it’s funny, sometimes you think that something greater is at play when you look at a series of events that lead you to get to here. But I don’t know. Why would I be sort of born, then, into relative comfort and wealth and then you see somebody who’s born in the Congo and gets his hands chopped off? I don’t know. Those questions remain unanswered for me. But I was just thinking about it yesterday.
What do you think Jung would have to say in terms of diagnosis, treatment, or commentary about your character Brandon in Shame?
Well, I think he’d probably tell him it’s all right. [LAUGHTER] You know, the first stage is, like, “It’s okay. Let’s just talk about it.” I think what’s interesting about these guys is that they were truly very fascinated in human behavior and why we behave in certain ways. I think that, again, there’s a social sort of form that we’re expected to sort of live under and we’re expected to behave a certain way with one another socially; but in actual reality and practice, what way do we really behave? It’s kind of crazy, being a human being and trying to all get along and hold the complications that we have within ourselves—the relationships we have with ourselves and then with others. I think Jung would probably tell him that everything’s going to be okay, as well as “Go see my friend Siggy Freud.” [LAUGHTER]
Both A Dangerous Method and Shame have the common thread of sexual dysfunction. What was it like to first play the character of a psychoanalyst and then that of somebody spiraling out of control?
I didn’t really relate the two together at all; it’s only in hindsight. First I did A Dangerous Method and then I did X-Men and then Shame, and I kind of work very intensely on the project when I’m running up to it and during it, and then I kind of flush it pretty quickly too, and I was jumping from one to the next so I had to get rid of them very quickly. So it’s only in hindsight that you see that. As for how was playing either of them, well, you have the information there with Jung, as we were discussing, so that your biography is taken care of, and in a lot of respects that can be easier: you have the information there, and the character is sort of available, whereas when you’re doing a fiction character—well, what I do, anyway, is I go away and write that biography out of the information given to me in the script. Logically, what would a child go through in order to create this sort of motivation? What did their parents do? Were they popular in school? Where they lonely, a sporter, academic? That sort of thing. And then, you know, I just spend a lot of time with the script, really, and that’s the sort of process that I take on for all work now, regardless of what it is, because just through rereading and rereading and rereading I’m spending a lot of time with the character and with all the other characters in the world. And so after a while it’s sort of like slipping into a new set of skin. With Shame as well, then, I had the opportunity to meet people who were suffering for the condition, and that was a huge insight. I’m very grateful for that, and for the honesty and bravery of these people to come forward like that, and especially for this one guy in particular—because the idea of the intimacy problems that Brandon has is that that’s basically the crux of his problem, and this guy that I met, that was exactly his problem as well. It made me get something tenable and made me understand the condition.
Intimacy on a psychological level, I think, is what led Sabina and Jung to cross over into physical intimacy, which today would be considered out of place—
I’m sure it’s still happening now. [LAUGHTER]
Well, I wanted to gain an insight into what you do when you’re creating characters who share intimate moments over the course of a film. You hear so often about relationships on film sets; can you shut that down?
Well, I suppose it’s the doctor-patient idea of transference, and it is that thing, I think, that special thing that doctors have. We all find doctors sexy; that’s why there are so many TV shows about doctors [LAUGHTER]—because they have the power to save lives, and there’s something, you know, very attractive about that. And so you have that relationship. Also, like you said, it’s a very intimate place, the idea of the patient and the doctor. They go into intimate places together, and that can bleed over for sure. I think that in terms of working on movie sets, I mean, it’s like the office affair, isn’t it, at the Christmas party; it’s just who you see. If you see somebody a lot and if they’re around you a lot, and if people work a lot of hours of their lives, then relationships just happen in the workplace, I guess. That’s where you’re spending a lot of your time. But I don’t think that’s necessarily really any different in acting or that world. What’s impressive and always sort of gets me is the way you come together on a film—how immediately it becomes a family, because it kind of has to. And then you sort of disband after three months, and you might never see the person again for three or four years, and then you’re working on another film and you’re like, “Hey, how’s it going, whatever!” But you have to get tied very quickly. In terms of relationships, though, I don’t know; what’s it like with you guys when you’re all traveling around together? Some stuff goes down among journalists, I’m sure. [LAUGHTER]
As an actor, do you consider yourself an armchair psychoanalyst? Is that part of your job?
I think so. You know, I think the similarities, again, are that interest in human behavior and just trying to understand personalities and where one character’s moral compass lies as opposed to another. And for sure, for me, my best reference for that would be myself. I sort of look at myself and try to be really honest and truthful in answering those questions, trying to find all those elements within myself, because essentially I think we’re all pretty much the same. So trying to identify and understand, as opposed to judge, is very important for me in approaching characters.
Was David Cronenberg someone you were looking to work with, and was working with him anything like you expected?
I was a fan of his for sure. I was very envious, I remember, when they were filming Eastern Promises. I live around Hackney, and when they were filming it I was like, “Oh, god, wouldn’t it be great to be on a David Cronenberg set?” So it was very exciting, the idea and the prospect of working with him. And, yes, it was different from what I expected, because you see his films and they can be quite violent, yes? They’re quite dark. And he’s the opposite: he’s a very sweet, loving energy, very generous and sort of humorous—we actually joked around a lot on set, which is sort of fun, I think, and can also lend to the piece. Especially when you’re dealing with something that’s very much set in a particular time, so therefore it’s a period piece. Again, we talked about the social etiquette of the time, the way people held themselves and sort of related to one another. It was different to today, but you don’t want to get bogged down in that so that it becomes more about the costumes than about anything else; you want to keep it accessible and fresh. So having that humor is a nice device for that because it keeps you nice and relaxed when going into scenes that can be sort of heavy and deep with heavy things and certainly dialogue-heavy. But he’s a joy. He’s really a very collaborative guy, and I’m so lucky that of the great directors I’ve had a chance to work with they do a lot of—they all have to be great manipulators, and they do their manipulation in the weeks leading up. So it’s like a dinner here, or when you’re trying on the costumes or picking the props there’s a bit of a nudge that they give you then, or they drop a phrase here or ask you certain questions at certain times. Then once we get on set there’s very little dialogue. We just sort of get on with it because all of that has been discussed previously.
A Dangerous Method is in theatres now.
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