Possession

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Movie Info

Usually misattributed to the horror genre, this challenging and highly unusual drama stars Isabelle Adjani as a young woman who forsakes her husband (Sam Neill) and her lover (Heinz Bennent) for a bizarre, tentacled creature that she keeps in a run-down Berlin apartment. In the beginning, her husband knows nothing about the monster and sincerely believes that his wife is insane. He has her tailed by private detectives, whom she kills and feeds to the creature. Still unaware of what has happened, the husband contends with the reserved and inadvertently seductive presence of his wife's look-alike (also played by Adjani), a schoolteacher who frequently comes to tutor his son while his wife is away. Though tempted by her quiet goodness and beauty, he is still passionately in love with his wife and even after he finds out about the murders, he stays by her side and helps her conceal her crimes. Filmed amidst the oppressive backdrop of the Berlin Wall by the expatriate Polish director Andrzej Zulawski (who was unable to work in his homeland after too many clashes with the authorities), the picture is so relentlessly intense and so deliberately esoteric, that most viewers would find it too hard to connect with. Still its symbolism, its unbridled and flashy directorial style, and the tour de force performance by Isabelle Adjani earned this unique tale a cult following in Europe. The version originally released in the U.S. had 45 minutes chopped out; in this form, it is barely comprehensible and looks like a cheap, gory feast. ~ Yuri German, Rovi



FilmWalrus 

Review of Possession (1981)

Sometimes it can be quite difficult to review a film that is very close to your heart. One must try and separate the nostalgia from the contemporary appeal and the personal reaction from the critical analysis. With “Possession” (1981) it is doubly hard, as the film is aggressively inaccessible physically (the director’s cut Anchor Bay DVD is out of print and relatively rare) and intellectually (“challenging” doesn’t begin to describe it). Perhaps I should start out by saying that few viewers will react to the film as favorably as I (although Mad Dog and my oldest sister share the fervor) and many will find it alienating, disturbing, uncomfortable and interminable. These reactions are quite natural and not many casual film fans will see how brilliantly these reactions (amongst others) are constructed.

My goal with this essay is to give a review of the film along with an in-depth critical reading centered upon the themes of marital division and sexual confusion. Since this paper is meant to be readable by both those who have never seen the film and those who have had the honor, I will keep the spoilers to a minimum.

What exactly is “Possession?” It’s an art-film/drama/horror hybrid from Polish exile director Andrzej Zulawski made in West Berlin in 1981. It stars Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani. Adjani was in a career slump due to a reputation as ‘difficult to work with,’ but “Possession” earned her a surprise Cesar (French Oscar) and the top acting prize at Cannes. By the decade’s end she’d have three more Cesars. Watching her committed performance, far outside the boundaries of where most actors dare to venture, it is not hard to see why this was a turning-point in her career.

A plot summary is necessary, yet I don’t want to give certain key elements away. While not necessarily a twist-type movie, there is nothing quite like the shock of seeing “Possession” without knowing the full story.

Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna (Isabelle Adjani) are a married couple already on the brink of divorce as the film begins. Mark returns home after a mysterious trip abroad (we see him being paid with a suitcase of cash by a government organization) only to discover that in his absence, Anna has been conducting an affair. Anna’s friend Margie has been taking care of their son, Bob, but refuses to tell Mark the name or address of the interloper. After several marital fights Mark eventually discovers that an obnoxious ‘guru’ named Heinrich is the secret lover and the two have a confrontation. In a secondary subplot, Mark is also astonished to discover that Bob’s teacher, Helen (also played by Adjani), looks identical to his wife. Soon, Anna disappears again and this time even Heinrich doesn’t know where she’s gone. Mark hires a detective to find her and the terrible truth is gradually revealed.

What is missing from any cursory description is the spirit that makes both the drama and horror of this film so evocative. On the drama side, Mark and Anna’s split is represented on a mind-boggling number of layers. Most overtly is the white hot intensity of the acting, delivered almost entirely in screams and gestures that tear through the actors’ entire body. On a scale from 1 to 10 in acting pitch (not quality), with “Pickpocket” (1959) as a 1, “Goodfellas” (1990) as a 10 and “Lust for Life” (1956) as an 11, then “Possession” rates a 26.

Mark and Anna are shouting at each other by the opening five minutes. After the opening ten they are fighting in public. Within half an hour they are physically beating each other with unrestrained ferocity. The level of frustration, rage and insanity only continues to rise. Zulawski expertly selects props (blanket, electric knife, meat grinder) and actions to augment the performances and add to the anxiety during their sparring matches.

In one surreal sequence we see Anna arguing vehemently while stuffing laundry into the refrigerator. The capstone example is a flashback scene with Adjani alone in a subway station carrying groceries. She delivers a performance packed with unrivaled intensity and bravery (dwarfing even Isabella Rossellini in “Blue Velvet” (1986)) as the consequences of her unhappy marriage overtake her. She undergoes what at first appears to be a seizure, shattering her groceries against the wall and jerking about as though possessed (hence one meaning of the title) in a single, tortuous long take.

Most of the fights occur in the apartment shared by the family. The camera places us uncomfortably amidst these battles, in the hyper-awkward situation of a third-person in the room who desperately wants to escape the presence of such seething fury. Few films save Mike Nichol’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966), Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” (1973) or perhaps the films of John Cassavetes have ever depicted such uncomfortable scenes of mutual, inescapable torment.

The tension and electricity of the performances is literally inhuman, and it becomes quickly obvious that we are not really watching ‘realistic’ acting, but something far more extreme. Yet despite the excesses on display the camera records the events with unflinching and unflattering coldness. The tone is deadpan serious. This had the added advantage of bolstering its cult appeal and allowing interpretations ranging from artistic enjoyment of the authenticity and audacity to amused marvel at the hyperbole. To quote Mad Dog, “Possession is seriously one of the only movies I like genuinely as much as I like it ironically.”

[Image: Neill delivers one of the film’s most impossibly sincere lines: “You know what this is for… THE LIES!” before slapping Adjani]

Before ending my discussion of the performances, I must mention the brilliantly, outrageous Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) who plays Adjani’s self-possessed second lover. The director designed him based on every quality he disliked, and Bennent comically recalls every egotistical male who believes he’s reach the pinnacle of sophistication and sex appeal through his own recipe of mysticism, training, drugs and fashion. He makes a sharp third point in the love triangle; his ability to stir hatred a perfect compliment to the couple who never run out of anger to vent.

In terms of style and themes, Zulawski does an excellent job showing the destruction of a relationship through the breakdown of communication. The characters are isolated, inarticulate and unable to make contact with each other either physically (in person, by phone, through others) or emotionally. The marital breakdown is externalized, too, within the setting. Zulawski camera often lingers on the foreboding Berlin Wall, ever present outside the windows. However, whether Zulawski intends the fractured marriage to be a metaphor for the Germany’s political divide or vice versa, remains debatable.

Further, Bruno Nyttan’s cinematography balances the many apartment-bound scenes with a paradoxical combination of division and claustrophobia, often isolating the rival spouses with a shallow depth of field. A crisp close-up on one lead is thematically composed with the other in a deep-staged out-of-focus position. The characters seem to inhabit planes of their own, often further sub-framed apart by doors and other strong verticals (see also the mirror-lined café corner in the second screenshot).

In the film’s latter half, the terrible aftermath of the marital discord earns a final, horrifically potent symbol.

With little space to move around and often little more than bare walls to use as background, Zulawski still endows each set with a unique ambience. The native hues and contrasting palettes of the family’s blue-tinted apartment and Anna’s private yellow apartment creates unsettling atmospheres and oppositions. The director uses his minimalist locales to good effect, but goes beyond the existential emptiness so easily and frequently employed by filmmakers critical of modernity’s sterility. His compositions sustain fear, estrangement, tension and madness with equal adroitness.

For a two-hour Polish art-film about the dissolution of marriage, Zulawski manages an impressive visual dynamism. The camera is constantly moving, although often in unexpected ways. In one transitional shot the camera dollies right to follow Anna as she enters her apartment, but rather than follow her in or cut inside, the director reverses the motion and dollies back to the empty car she arrived in for no apparent narrative purpose. Another scene involves an elliptically rotating crane shot on a hemispherical spiral staircase.

The cuts are nearly exclusively hard and conspicuous, making use of high contrast and unexpected changes in location. Rarely is movement given a clean entrance or clean exit, so the viewer feels forever thrown into the action as it happens and without closure.

The actors are also on the move and not just with the expressive gesticulations mentioned earlier. The staging and blocking shows remarkable finesse, such as one memorable scene in which Anna arrives home to find Mark rocking back and forth in a chair. As they begin to fight, the wide-angle lens exacerbates Mark’s swinging sensation towards and away from the camera. The focus puller struggles to keep up. Again, the audience feels the uncomfortable proximity to the private bickering.

Another example of conspicuous staging is a version of what Giallo Fever lovingly calls “the ‘Tenebre’ shot” after the 1982 giallo that uses it so effectively (although it is not the originator). In such a shot, a character in the foreground moves aside to reveal another character behind them, commonly used to get a quick shock/distress reaction as we realize the killer is about to strike.

Near the end of “Possession” there is a scene where the two leads have sex on the kitchen floor, exchange whispered ravings and then plan a desperate course. The ‘reveal’ occurs after Anna has briefly blocked the door to pick up her purse. Rather than a killer, we see their child, Bob. We still have the shock/distress effect but the reason is more psychologically nuanced. The irresponsibility of the characters’ behavior dawns upon the audience anew. We realize that Bob’s trauma at the hands of these parents (who conduct themselves far outside the limits of social norms or mental sanity) is probably worse than witnessing the primal scene.

In fact, much of the film deviates from conventional depictions and readings of sex and sexuality. Heinrich, for instance, has an unusual relationship with his live-in mother and mentions at one point that he has a previous family that he left behind somewhere. Included in Heinrich’s personal mysticism is a strange pre-occupation with his body. He almost always has his shirts open to reveal his chest and runs his hands over himself as he moves about in a manner reminiscent of bad interpretive dance.
One can read Heinrich as a man more in love with himself than the women who serve as conquests; food for his ego. His fluid, bizarre staging (at one point spinning down a staircase with his hand above his head) and sexualized self-love combine briefly with the set design of his own apartment in the scene where Mark fights Heinrich: In the screenshot below, Heinrich is about to kick Mark in the head. Note the strange graphic match with the photo on Heinrich’s wall, neatly referencing his narcissism and obsession with his body.

Heinrich’s sexual confusion is fully matched by Anna and Mark, who have numerous issues of their own. Anna’s migration from Mark to Heinrich and beyond shows a search for sexual and emotional fulfillment (which she also explicitly states at one point) while Mark’s involvement with Anna’s look-alike, Helen, begins to weaken his grip on his relationships and reality.

[Image: Helen, played by Adjani now with green eyes and brown hair]

Like the theme of split relationships, the issue of sexual confusion is not just manifested in the content of the “Possession,” but the form as well. Throughout the first half of the film an atmosphere of tension (sexual and otherwise) pervades the slower moments. At these times, intensity still glows in the eyes of the actors, but no violent physical events provide an outlet for the energy. Deprived of any solid idea on where the film is heading, there is a certain fear that almost any violation of acceptable norms and behaviors might occur on a moments notice. One visual motif that plays upon such tension is an uncomfortable wide-angle arrangement with a character (visible in the background) gripping a naked torso in the foreground.
[Images: How do we read these shots? The backs we see belong to Bob, Anna and Mark (from top to bottom).]

We see this shot three times:
1) When Mark finds his son covered in fifth and takes off his shirt to clean him.
2) During a rare moment of marital calm as Mark puts his naked wife to bed (but does not have sex).
3) Before Mark and Anna have sex on the kitchen floor.

The composition seems both sexual and possessive (possibly even violent) although the context is very different. The repetition of such an unusual camera shot in situations that are difficult to read and harder to predict induces anxiety and ambiguity in the audience as they try to assess the meaning and motivation in the gaze and grip of the characters. In each case there is a loaded anticipation/fear as we await what will happen next. Further complicating our understanding of these moments is the loss of gender specificity from the cropped rear view of the foreground figures.
The audio work also instigates a systematic ambiguity; here between sexual pleasure and pain, a dichotomy that epitomizes the couple’s attraction/repulsion issues. Pleasure and pain is linked through the frequent auditory motif of moaning. In one of the first instances we discover Anna is a ballet instructor and witness her strictly teaching a group of young girls. Anna ruthlessly grips one girl’s outstretched thigh and holds it in place for an uncomfortable period as the child emits choked cries. The combination of the physical contact between the two women, the extreme close-up and the rising moans makes the shot feel strangely pornographic.

During the subway scene that follows shortly after, Anna makes rhythmic cries that are difficult to read until the conclusion of the scene. In the climactic example, Mark heads towards the sound of grunts in an unknown house and walks in on his wife having sex, but whether her cries refer to pleasure or pain is still ambiguous. The final shot of Mark and Anna together involves Anna emitting a cry while on top of Mark that seems to quite explicitly combine the pleasure/pain dichotomy. This constant play with our interpretation of sound, places us within the system of sexual confusion central to “Possession.”

The music is composed by Andrzej Korzynski and goes a long way towards establishing the proper mood of tension and alienation. Certain pieces return to accent key moments or punctuate the dialogue, though usually with a subtlety not found in the rest of the film. The music never bridges the hard cuts (which might have served to ‘heal the cut’ so to speak), but rather kicks in simultaneously with the new shot to throw us that much more off balance. The combination of music and sound in the disturbing, uncertain finale elicits an intellectual query (we aren’t quite sure what is going on) as much as an emotional response.

Finally, I want to put a shout-out to the special effects designed by Carlo Rambaldi. According the DVD commentary he worked with almost no time or money, but his stunning results are impossible ignore. Interestingly, Rambaldi has a direct connection to my precious Italian horror. He did special effects for less than 25 films, but managed to work on personal favorite giallos by the three great Italian horror masters: Mario Bava on “Twitch of the Death Nerve” (1971), Lucio Fulci on “A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin” (1971) and Dario Argento on “Deep Red” (1975). Rambaldi also did the effects for “ET: The Extra-Terrestrial” (1982), providing one of two direct links to Stephen Spielberg (the other being Sam Neill via “Jurassic Park” (1993)).

[Image: A final-act pink sock… now it all makes sense!]

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