FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
Director: Elisabeth Márton. Written by: Elisabeth Márton, Signe Mahler, Yolande Knobel, based on the original script by Kristina Hjerten von Gedda. Director of Photography: Robert Nordstrom & Sergej Jurisdizki. Edited by: Yolande Knobel. Music by: Vladimir Dikanski. Released by: Facets Multi-Media. Language: English & German with English subtitles. Country of Origin: Sweden. 90 min. Not Rated. With: Eva Osterberg, Lasse Almeback, Mercedez Csampai.
The opening scene reveals the stark silhouette of a woman scribbling behind a
desk. "I, too, was a human being," she recites softly, revealing her wishes
to be cremated and her ashes spread upon the earth. My Name was Sabina
Spielrein is filmmaker Elisabeth Márton’s revealing biographical
documentary on this much forgotten but influential Russian psychoanalyst,
whose correspondences with Carl Jung (Lasse
Almeback) and Sigmund Freud changed the history of psychoanalysis when
discovered in 1977.
Voice-overs narrating the letters dominate much of the film, as Spielrein (Eva Osterberg), Jung
and Freud form a strange triangular relationship. Jung’s initial diagnosis of
Spielrein - with whom he soon falls in love - is submitted to Freud, who finds
her case of hysteria particularly intriguing. Over black-and-white photographs of
the psychoanalyst, Freud’s stern voice-overs vehemently opposes the impending relationship
between Spielrein and
Jung, and subsequent letters between Freud and Spielrein point to a possible
infatuation that Freud himself might have felt for the young Jewish woman.
But the precise depth of Jung and Spielrein’s relationship is difficult to
fathom, especially because Almeback’s performance is highly rigid and austere
- likely as Jung was himself. It is Osterberg’s fervor and passion for her
doctor that stirs the relationship, though the whole of her performance is
somewhat hard to swallow; her transition from a hysterical woman to an
accomplished psychoanalyst is rather abrupt, and the film somehow reveals
Spielrein’s recovery to be instantaneous, her hysteria cured the moment she
falls in love Jung.
Still, Márton’s film is a revelation; she brings to life the long
forgotten memory of a generally unacknowledged female intellectual;
Spielrein’s work was incorporated into much of Freud’s writing and is
speculated to have been "stolen" by Jung. Though the soap-operatic
relationship between the three psychoanalysts is highly intriguing, it is the
memory of Spielrein’s incredible evolution from patient to genius that steals
the limelight. Parisa Vaziri
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