Film: Possession
Release date: 25th October 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 119 mins
Director: Andrzej Zulawski
Starring: Shaun Lawton, Sam Neill, Isabelle Adjani, Heinz Bennent, Margit Carstensen
Genre: Drama/Horror
Studio: Second Sight
Format: DVD
Country: France/West Germany
This is an English-Language release.
Thoroughly disturbing and beyond classification, Andrzej Zulawski’s first and only English-language film, Possession (1981) spent the best part of two decades in ‘video nasty’ hell before finally being officially released uncut in the UK in 1999. It has since gained somewhat of a cult following within the art-house community, and has now been given the re-release treatment courtesy of Second Sight Films.
The story focuses on the frenzied relationship between Mark (Sam Neill) and Anna (Isabelle Adjani) whose marriage is on the brink of tatters.
Mark returns from a lengthy and mysterious business trip abroad to discover that Anna is being unfaithful, as he finds that she has been having an affair with aging spiritual guru-type named Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) for over a year. Anna promptly leaves Mark, presumably to live with her new lover, and tensions mount as she haphazardly returns to the apartment to see their young son Bob (Michael Hogben).
Anna’s mental state begins to deteriorate violently, prompting Heinrich to appear one day claiming not to have seen her for a while. Mark hires a private detective agency to find and follow Anna, assuming that she has left both men to bed somebody else. They find clues that suggest something much stranger is afoot, portending a series of bizarre and nightmarish developments…
Conceived at the time of a messy divorce between Zulawski and his spouse, Possession feels like a very personal document of that mindset; an exorcism of the demons that plagued that emotionally charged period of the director’s life. It comes as little surprise then that this erratic fever comes across in most of the production’s facets. The camera is highly energetic, indebted to the then recent developments in steady-cam technology, allowing Zulawski to be incredibly expressive with position and movement. The juxtapose employed between scene changes where all sound – including music – will end abruptly on the cut from one scene to the next gives the film a jarring immediacy that helps promote the undercurrent of uneasiness present throughout. However, Possession’s madness is perhaps best personified through its acting.
Performances from the principle love triangle are highly dynamic and very unnatural; it almost feels like there was a bet between Neill, Adjani and Bennent to see who could chew the most scenery. They each possess the kind of gestus one would expect from a stage play rather than a film; the opening scenes bristle with the gapless, zero punctuation energy that can be found in some of Samuel Beckett’s work, whereas latter scenes demonstrate a demented madness akin to theatrical practitioners such as Antonin Artaud. It’s suggested early on that Anna is being guided by forces beyond tangible comprehension, whilst Mark is brought to sheer despair over his wife’s seemingly senseless betrayal. It is Heinrich’s overt physicality that is perhaps the most strange and least befitting, creating some unintentionally humorous moments along the way. The film’s musical accompaniment also lets the proceedings down slightly, painfully reminding the viewer that they’re watching something from the early-80s.
Zulawski’s camera on the other hand, and as mentioned before, is simply wonderful, and helps eclipse many of the film’s niggles; spawning sequence after sequence of fluid composition and dynamic content, capturing the tormented and overwrought marital spats between Neill and Adjani with breathtaking lucidity. The flipside of the coin is that the film does come across as being incredibly ‘arty’ as a result, which is immediately at odds with its video nasty heritage. On that note; Possession is frequently labelled a horror film due to its more vulgar and occasionally gory imagery, but this isn’t strictly true. There are no scares as such but the film’s performances and technical execution do create an uneasy and unpredictable mood that bodes a pervading feeling of tension and dread which, funnily enough, many straight up horror films criminally lack. The downfall of Mark and Anna’s marriage and, ultimately, their sanity makes for an intense ride.
Despite not being a horror film in the traditional sense, there are some moments that are terrifying, such as Adjani’s iconic freak-out in the subway underpass, causing her to spasm, writhe and excrete bloody pus from multiple orifices; deep in the throes of being consumed by an unknown power. Carlo Rambaldi (who went on to design the title character for E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial the following year) provides his practical effects-based wizardry for this sequence, as well as the equally infamous ‘creature’ scenes, which are best not explained in full, lest it ruins the overall experience – Possession is a film best viewed with as little prior knowledge as possible, save for its initial premise. Needless to say, Rambaldi’s effects are appropriately creepy, foreshadowing the film’s downward slope into nightmarish delirium.
As a result, fans of David Cronenberg and David Lynch will find much weirdness to revel in. Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979), in particular, shares much with Possession; made in similar circumstances – the result of Cronenberg experiencing a painful divorce and custody battle – and as a result, there are similar themes present, chiefly: the destruction of the family unit due to the wife’s ongoing psychosis, who is ultimately perceived as being inhuman and monstrous by her husband. However, it could be argued that Possession has returned the favour by informing some of Cronenberg’s subsequent output – Videodrome (1983) and Dead Ringers (1988), for example – not to mention future works by David Lynch, the films of Japanese director Shozin Fukui and Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009).
Part domestic drama, supernatural mystery, horror and paranoid thriller, Possession is truly beyond genre categorisation and shouldn’t be seen as a mere tasteless ‘video nasty’. Its occasional pretentiousness and arty behaviour will likely put off some viewers, whilst others will be enraptured by its cryptic denouncement, religious undertones and symbolism, prompting many a late night discussion as to what it all means. Possession is one of cinema’s great enigma’s, which is sadly a rarity nowadays, and offers a unique, challenging and ultimately haunting experience that not only lingers in the mind long after its finished, but demands multiple re-viewings thereafter. Recommended. MP
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