Shame and A Dangerous Method Interview

http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s3317352.htm

Margaret and David talk to Michael Fassbender about the movies A DANGEROUS METHOD, and SHAME for which he won Best Actor. Margaret also speaks to director Steve McQueen.

Shame and A Dangerous Method Interview

DAVID: Actor Michael Fassbender has had a lot of success recently with films like Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS and Steve McQueen's first feature HUNGER. In Venice, he was sensational in two films in competition: David Cronenberg's A DANGEROUS METHOD, in which he plays Carl Jung opposite Viggo Mortensen's Sigmund Freud and Keira Knightley as one of their patients.
Further comments

A DANGEROUS METHOD INTERVIEW

DAVID: So what was it about this script and this character, Carl Jung, that interested you?

MICHAEL FASSBENDER: Well, first of all it was the fact that it was the fact that it was David Cronenberg and the opportunity to work with him, and then the idea that it would be a challenge for me to play somebody like Jung. You know, I hadn't played a character like that yet. There was a lot of material to sort of dive into. The fact that it was a very sort of dialogue-intense piece and dialogue heavy and a very sort of intellectually sort of driven piece, so I thought that could be a challenge for me, seeing as I'm not that smart. So they were the main things.

But I've got to say it was like, you know, obviously when I read Christopher Hampton's script, I was like, wow, this is a different type of script, you know. Nowadays a lot of the scripts are very formulaic, you know, and you can sort of tell by page 10 what the journey's going to be, what character is going to do what and there's a lot of sort of familiar things that always seem to flash up. This was a really fresh, original challenging piece.

DAVID CRONENBERG: It was really wonderful to be able to delve into the intimacy between Freud and Jung. It was incredibly modern. These two men, Freud was about 50 and Jung was 29 when they first met, and the fact that they were both, you know, men in psychiatry and in psychological medicine, they were incredibly intimate and open with each other about their sexuality, about all kinds of aspects of their childhood and so on. It was pretty revealing, very raw and, yet, beautifully expressed. I mean both Freud and Jung wrote the most beautiful German and, I mean, enthusiasts of German literature say this is some of the most beautiful sort of non-fiction writing in German literature. So to finally, in a way, because of research - being forced to delve into it, that was a really fascinating revelation to me.

SHAME

DAVID: And the second film in which Fassbender appears here in Venice is Steve McQueen's second feature, SHAME, in which Fassbender plays a New Yorker obsessed with sex.


SHAME INTERVIEW

MARGARET: It's not a dialogue dense film.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER: No.

MARGARET: And your character isn't dialogue dense either.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER: No.

MARGARET: I mean, how much of a challenge is that for you as a performer to get through the anguish of this man?

MICHAEL FASSBENDER: It's easier. I've got less lines to learn, which is a - it takes me ages. You know, it's - you know, I enjoy it because of course, you know, when you're doing those silent scenes, I am - I have an internal dialogue going on. You know, I am saying things, just my lips aren't moving and that's, for me, how I would sort of go about conveying, you know, an inner life or whatever, you know, is going on inside this character. I enjoy it. I also enjoy sort of, you know, taking on the physicality and expressing a sort of state of mind through physicality, as opposed to, you know, a paragraph. It can be more effective.

MARGARET: Why SHAME? Why the term?

STEVE MCQUEEN: Well, the word kept on cropping up with this infection of sex addiction, as such. This word kept on coming up. It was almost like they would sort of go out and do what they had to do. They would sexually - prostitutes and internet porn or whatever it is and after they had done what they did, there was this felling of absolute shame at what they did. But rectify that they would do it again. So this is where this wonderful, wonderful - it was just for me wonderful in the way it was just repelling - it was this repeating thing. You know this ongoing sort of cycle, in a way.