Iolanthe's Quotable Viggo
7 February 2015 09:33:25Sky Greats are advertising Eastern Promises and A History of Violence back-to-back as a Cronenberg/Mortensen February treat in the UK. So is this a Quotable about those two great collaborative efforts? Er... no. It's about A Dangerous Method. Maybe it wasn't such a spectacular success, but Viggo's performance astonished critics. I mean, Tom Stall, Nikolai and.... Freud? Who would ever have thought it? It also gives me the chance to put one of my most favourite ever quotes back into context. That credit-card busting on-screen maganetism? Yup – it was Freud.
Viggo Mortensen is the champ. Hands down. Of all the "say what?" performances some of us first heard about at last fall's Toronto International Film Festival — and which characterized 2011 as a hugely surprising year for film — none of them surprised me more than Mortensen playing Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method."
Jeff Simon
Buffalo News
26 January 2012
This is Mortensen's third straight collaboration with Cronenberg following "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises," and the ease and rhythm from working together so often pay off in the effortless grace of Mortensen's portrayal. It is some of his finest film work ever.
Clint O'Connor
The Plain Dealer
25 January 2012
Almost serenading the audience with his Austrian accent, Mortensen is instantly Sigmund Freud without a shadow of a doubt.
Brad Brevet
Rope of Silicon
10 September 2011
...there is no denying that A Dangerous Method doesn't come alive until we get our asses some Viggo. Christoph Waltz was originally set to play Freud, but was forced to drop out. At which time Cronenberg turned to his current muse. I'm sure Waltz would've done some stellar things with the character, but hot damn, Viggo sizzles as Freud.... This is a Viggo you don't think of when you think of Viggo
Joshua Miller
Chud.com
21 October 2011
It was a stroke of inspiration to cast the virile, hyper-secure Mortensen as the godfather of neurosis. Puffing on a cigar, he makes Freud a charismatic control freak, a man all too eager to engage in dream analysis yet too much of a self-designed authority figure to put his own dreams up for dissection.
Owen Gleiberman
Enertainment Weekly
10 September 2011
It's possible that in lusting after Mortensen all these years, we've taken his talent for granted. Of course, we really didn't know how talented he was until he started working with Cronenberg. This is the best thing Mortensen's ever done. His slow, paunchy, hairy Freud has a cavalier authority and a capacity for drollery. He's also seductively wise in a way that makes both Fassbender and Knightley, as very good as they are, also seem uncharacteristically callow. I don't know where Mortensen found this physical and psychological heaviness, this expressive inexpressiveness, but now isn't the time to start a diet.
Wesley Morris
Boston Globe
23 December 2011
Mr. Mortensen again reveals his amazing skills of self-transformation...
Roderick Conway Morris
New York Times
6 September 2011
It is also marvelous to see Freud, that embattled colossus, restored to his human dimensions by Mr. Mortensen. His sly performance is so convincingly full of humor, warmth and vanity that it renders moot just about every other posthumous representation of the patriarch of psychoanalysis.
A.O.Scott
New York Times
22 November 2011
Even in a period film like this one — a picture that runs the heavy risk of being ponderous and stiff — he can slip himself into the scenery with a "Don't mind me, here in my Sigmund Freud getup" naturalness….
Stephanie Zacharek
Movieline
2 September 2011
I was so taken with Mortensen's constantly alert and cunning eyes. He was always thinking, sometimes on a current that flows in opposite direction of his dialogue. It is a very effective performance, and Mortensen, one of the best actors working today, has shown us something new in his repertoire. It bodes well for his life as a middle-aged actor.
By Sheila OMalley
Capital New York
6 October 2011
Mortensen's buttoned-down and highly verbal Freud is something to behold — and also to listen to. The actor has been the quiet man of volcanic physical intensity in two previous Cronenberg films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Here his tongue is more lethal than his fists, as when he tears into Jung for practising "second-rate mysticism and self-aggrandizing shamanism."
Peter Howell
Toronto Star
12 January 2012
Freud, played by the perpetual shape-shifter Viggo Mortensen, slinks around like a silent old Zen master.
by Matthew D'Abate
Your Beautiful New York
14 December 2011
Mortensen, in very much a supporting role, thrives superbly for his third Cronenberg running, summoning a peppery gravitas, and an eye-narrowing fearfulness, as the father of psychiatry might well, about patricidal impulses from his younger colleague.
Tim Robey
The Telegraph
9 February 2012
...the ever-flawless Viggo Mortensen.
Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
San Francisco Bay Guardian
26 September 2011
Viggo Mortensen has so much on-screen magnetism, he'll probably destroy the credit cards of anyone sitting in the first 10 rows.
Wallace Bain
Santa Cruz Sentinel
25 January 2012
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