Possession

A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband (Sam Neill) for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.

This is a very absurd film. It starts off normal, making you think it is a drama or romance gone wrong. But even early on we get something telling us there is something off. Maybe a little David Lynch, maybe a little Franz Kafka. But something not quite right. And then it starts to build. There are moments that almost seem right out of Lovecraft.

This seems to be a horror film that needs to be seen, but may not be very well known in the mainstream. Based on how many people rated it on IMDb, it can't be extremely obscure, but still enough that it has to be overlooked. And it shouldn't be.

Famously violent, bloody and brutal, Possession is a member of that most hallowed hall of "Video Nasties" we know and love. Boasting scenes of some noteworthy infamy, Andrzej Zulawski's complex allegorical explanation of marital disintegration is known for its thematic obscurity.

In Cold War Berlin, Mark returns home from unclear duties to a marriage which is on its last legs. His wife Anna, suffering from increasingly inclement behaviour and mood swings brought about by their ailing relationship, is revealed to be having an affair, leading Mark to investigate. What he discovers is more bizarre even than his wife's drug loving German lover.

The one feeling which appears to be universal in conjunction with Possession is that of helpless confusion. As the credits roll, the only thing we can justifiably think is "What just happened?!" The film is utterly mad; unendingly so. From start to finish, I struggled not to miss a beat amidst the mire. Difficult to follow and impossible to understand at first, Zulawski's frustrating work leaves us scratching our heads for the entirety of its running time. Possession's gradual descent from a Kramer Vs. Kramer-esquire marital drama to a bloody and supernatural allegory is as surprising as it is bizarre and mental. Thereafter, we are treated to a visual feast of harrowing images and strangely violent outbursts. The increasingly insane plot is marred by overeager performances, though it is considerably attention grabbing. The film is not at all a bad one, providing a deeply interesting message (which may take time and thought to fully comprehend) albeit through a hazy, complicated and apparently nonsensical narrative. Additionally, Heinz Bennent's Heinrich is a wonderful and whimsical character, bringing an element of farcical comedy to the plot.

Managing to shock and surprise as well as stupefy, Possession is a film well versed in oddity. Exploring an interesting topic with a veiled depth, it gives us a message in an unconventional way which is quite brilliant in itself.

This film doesn't do anything in halves, it doesn't abide by the mock humility of an understated/minimalist film that says "I am important but I'm not gonna show it to you". I generally love overstated/baroque movies as much as I like overactors (Kinski, Bette Davies, Nic Cage) but Possession goes beyond Gothic, it flaunts itself in violent anarchy even when it knows it's not being important. It's a movie in a constant state of violent flux, a chaotic maelstrom of emotion threatening to rip apart at the seams by force of its own negativity, an excess of emotion and abundance of expression. I don't know what Zulawski is trying to say through the film about his own divorce from wife and country and political system, like Eraserhead it's something so personal that it pierces through bottoms of the soul to come out at the other end and speak for things that touch all of us.

Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani see their marriage come crashing down and the film is not merely the death and burial but the wake before and the mourning after. I don't like how Zulawski uses Isabelle Adjani to play different characters very calculated to be different sides of the same person, but then again I don't like movies that do that, it's like a very easy way to a quick symbolism (Ashes of Time, another film I saw recently, does that too). And I don't like who the monster turns out to be, for the same reason, and also because the monster, bloody and deformed, is a better parable of all the bile and hatred and oppressed furious anger felt the character who nurses it to life. The symbolism is too clear almost.

But the rest of the film you watch in stupefied silence. Possession is like a woman in the grip of hysterics running around an apartment tossing and breaking things and cutting herself up with a meat knife, arms flailing like an armature of a tentacled beast ready to tear itself out from a human body.

What Zulawski does here is perfectly illustrated in one scene: the couple have one of their terrible rows in the apartment, the woman storms out, music cue plays then stops, and we get the impression the scene has played out, we expect the cut. But then Zulawski has the camera track behind the man as he chases the woman down the stairs of their apartment and out in the street, pulling at each other and yelling in the middle of an empty intersection, then a truck carrying beatup cars comes rolling by, cars falling crashing down from it. Like the wail of a banshee, Possession is demented and frightful.

It's a movie that doesn't happen in the same place as other movies. Sometimes it gets hard for me for example to differentiate the look and feel of one noir from the other, one NYC crime flick from the other. Like Don't Look Now with its Venetian labyrinths, this has a sense of place and a malevolent presence in that place. It happens in that part of the city where other movies don't know how to go, the streets are different, the buildings and apartments look curiously different, and when an apartment catches on fire, there's a strange old woman down in the street corner yelling things about God ("giving the light clear, getting it back dirty") and cackling maniacally as though an end to the world is very close at hand.

Both Sam Neil and Isabelle Adjani give performances of a lifetime. Neil is going through the motions though, except for his 'going mad in a hotel room' scene in the beginning, his madness is external, pantomimed. Isabelle Adjani lives it though, feels and breathes it. She gives perhaps the most outstanding female performance I have ever seen. Her scene in the subway station, all spasmodic intensity and wordless cries, affected me physically like no other, at once monstrous and immensely sad.

This movie is a nervous breakdown and an agnostic lament against an absent indifferent God captured on celluloid. The tagline for the American release reads "She made a monster her secret lover", but this is not that type of film. This is like few films ever made, before or after, and is done with the ferocity of someone going mad in four walls, now perhaps clawing at the walls with blood and bile and staring at his designs as though there might be pattern and order there.

Possession(1981) shows the viewer a relationship deep in dementia and repressed emotions. Mark and Anna stay together until the Death do us part moment. The family of Anna and Mark is probably the most disfunctional family ever portrayed on scree. The marriage of Anna and Mark is unstable to the point of total meltdown. The marriage is driven by harsh love, secretcy, and oppressed feelings of desire.

Isabelle Adjani gives a fantastic performance in the duel role of Anna and Helen. Anna and Helen are the polar opposites in their manners and personalities. One thing they have in common is their current life is shrouded in mystery. Helen in my opinion is Mark's fantasy of Anna as someone who is normal and stable. I find it interesting that Anna & Helen never meet or are seen together during the entire length of Possession(1981).

The East Germany locations are part of what makes Possession(1981) a special piece of film. The marriage of Anna and Mark is symbolic of the wall that divided Germany for many years. In Possession(1981), East Germany is a Kafkaesque place of fear, oppression, paranoia, and repression. With the bright lit lighting and colors East Germany gains the appearence of something futuristic. Gives East Germany a cold and indifferent feeling that inhibits every resident.

1981 was a year which gave us two extrodanory performances from actresses Isabelle Adjani and Zoe Tamerlis. Both put forth an emotional complex and disturbing performance in Possession(1981) and Ms. 45(1981). These two features show women with seas of emotions trapped within them until their frightening descent into madness. Both films seem to have been influenced by Repulsion(1964). Ms. 45 and Possession were two of the most underrated films of 1981.

Possession(1981) is steeped in complex and confound religious symbolics. The landscape of the motion picture is a place that has lost touch with its own spiritualty. The film needs to be watched more than three times in order to get a close clear understanding of the symbolic meanings. The main characters in the film(except Heinrich) no longer have any faith in religion. The final scene seems to symbolize the apocalyptic end of the world that is an element of Christianity.

The best way to see or try to understand Possession(1981) is in its full 127 minute version. The 81 minute version is one of the worst editing jobs ever done to an import film for American release. For example the opening and closing scenes were totally botched in the film's American release in 1981. Thus the movie was misintrpeted by many film goers and critics. Thankfully, Possession has been restored on Video in its uncut form.

The cinematography is one of the key aspects in Possession(1981). It moves among the characters of the film with sinister steps. Bruno Nuytten uses some excellent techniques to describe to events of the film. The DP and Director work together to create an intense and terrific type of genre film making. The role of DP was Bruno Nuytten's early step towards becoming a film director.

Possession(1981) is a mixture of a few different genres in cinema. The genre that the film belongs to in large parts is the horror genre. Inspired story by both director, Andrzej Zulawski and writer, Frederic Tuten. There is a wonderful plot twist near the end that is one of Possession's best moments. Its the kind of film I would expect from someone like David Cronenberg.

For her brave and courageous performance in Possession(1981), Isabelle Adjani won a Best Actress award at Cannes. She has been playing brave and difficult roles since The Story of Adele H(1975). She would play a similar character like this in One Deadly Summer(1986). Possession(1981) is a personal favorite of Dario Argento. Done by Andrzej Zulawski because of his frustrations to see an earlier film in Poland by him censored by that country's government.

An early film appearence by Sam Neil that may just be his top performance as an actor. The creature is a top of the line creation by Special Effects artist, Carlo Rambaldi. Shares some similarities with David Cronenberg's The Brood(1979), and Mario Bava's Shock(1977). A daring motion picture that should be watched by mature and open minded people. Possession(1981) blew my emotions away with its tense opening scene to its spine tingling and chaotic final moment.

Surely other Zulawski movies like "La femme publique" and "L'important c'est d'aimer" have dark, disturbing moments, too, but "Possession" must be the most terrifying of them all. It all begins perfectly normal, like something that could happen every day, anywhere in your neighborhood: Anna (Adjani) leaves Mark (Sam Neill), she confesses she found a new lover already a year ago, and then the breaking up of their marriage naturally affects their little son, too. "I'm the maker of my own evil", Anna says once, and the evil she creates is visualized literally as a slimy demon, whereas Mark "creates" a school teacher looking exactly like Anna (and also played by Adjani), a woman so pure and innocent they go to bed together without having sex, and of course the idealized woman immediately takes care of his son ... and the dish washing ;-). The torment and hysteria of destroyed love is perfectly set in a Berlin before reunification, with the wall appearing countless times in the frame: an obvious symbol that divides what used to belong together, just like the characters in the movie. The "possessed" Adjani delivers an unforgettable performance, but if you are going to watch this, be prepared for more blood and guts than in "The Exorcist".