Possession

Imagine Bergman's 'Scenes From a Marriage' filmed by Dario Argento using Kubrick's 'Shining' steadicam. I can't pretend to have actually UNDERSTOOD this intellectually rigorous horror film, but I do know that it is arguably the most beautiful film of the 1980s, that ugliest of cinematic decades. The chief source of this beauty is Zulawski's camerawork, unsettling, spacious, constantly mobile, it achieves the kind of elaborate shots you normally expect with cumbersome, expensive equipment with the nimbleness of a handheld camera. Static scenes in repetitive milieux are subjected to awesomely complex movements, as the camera encircles, tracks, reveals, blocks, opens up space, creating a narrative that never stands still, offering us different, usually startling viewpoints within the one scene. What is most remarkable is its transformation of scale - the film is set in Cold-War Berlin, a famously constricted city; the plot takes place mostly in inhumanly modern apartments or on streets, and yet the sense of size, scale, space is as monumental as a Fordian Western. This is apt for characters who are simultaneously confined and alienated by their environment. Even scenes of flamboyant repulsiveness, the puling monster mounting Isabella Adjani, Mark's lavatorial dispatch of Heinrich, have a clarity of composition that is simply breathtaking. Unlike most horror films, which open with images of normality against which to measure the transgression of terror, 'Possession' hurls us into its relentless unpleasantness in medias res. Zulawski opens at full speed and never lets up. Mark in his car looks out at a city he hasn't seen for some time as if it is an alien land, full of troubling images, including an iron cross. Anna rushes to meet him. We assume they are husband and wife, reuniting, but their talk if full of exasperated dislocation. Mark has apparently come home too early. They have a son; after making love, their post-coital talk is full of Antonionian misunderstanding, uncertainty, alienation, cruelty. These scenes create the mood of the whole film. 'Possession' is shot in English with a French lead by a Polish director. The dialogue has a stilted quality, like a translation from some lost original; this sense of not-quite-rightness extends to the acting, and the scenes themselves, which seem too mannered, too abrupt, too stylised to seem natural. This sense of the drama being at one remove from some original 'reality' is perfect for a film about alienation - people alienated from themselves, each other, their marriage, their home, even their identity. The horror that constitutes the film obviously has its roots in the female hysteria (one scene in a subway, remembered by Anna, has her miscarry, as she pours out blood and milk, the essence of her femaleness spilling from her; the toilet scene between Heinrich and Mark has a gynaecological terror similar to Argento's 'Suspiria') and male bestiality that cannot be hidden by affluent modernity, but this, on its most basic level, is a harrowing portrait of a failed marriage, horribly truthful to anyone who has even rejoiced in that institution. All the while we are constantly reminded of the contemporary political reality - Mark's espionage (or is he an assassin?) activities; the wired Berlin wall with its faceless surveillance guards (a divided city, a divided marriage, literally divided people, the * and the madonna). The film has a lot of talk about faith, chance, God, good and evil, but its true power is recognisably more mundane, yet more unaccountably wrenching than that. One should not overlook the comic sense that flickers through the film, the exaggeration of scenes by prolonging them (the restaurant scene), and the Franju-like waltz-of-death music.

The very reason why this film was lambasted by so many people is because it requires the full use of imagination on the part of the viewer. Those who like films to be linear or over-explained (almost 90% of all films and almost 100% of all Hollywood films) will call this film confusing, baffling, hysterical, etc. However, very few directors are able to use cinematic space as Zulawski does in this film. This doesn't appeal to your rational part, it's supposed to connect with you on spiritual or deeply emotional level, it's supposed to appeal to something in you that can't be rationalized or explained verbally. Possession is a piece of pure cinema, no less.

Acting, colour, camera movement and story thrown into hyperactivity…What do you get? Well, the headache inducing, enthralling Possession. Beautiful, erotic and extremely disturbing, Andrjez Zulawski's film (admired by the Italian Master of the Macabre himself, Dario Argento) is an extreme assault upon the senses. Mark (played excellently and deliberately over-the-top by Sam Neil) returns home from secret government work to his wife in Berlin, cue many shots of the Berlin wall representing the couple's marital breakdown. However, Mark's wife, Anna (a truly unforgettable, no holds barred and hypnotic performance from the lovely Isabelle Adjani) is behaving inexcusably strangely. Mark finds out that she is having an affair with Heinrick (another crazy performance from Heinz Bennet) and confronts him only to find that the lover has not seen Anna for some time. This is the part of the rollercoaster ride before your cart plummets into some real thought-provoking, unsettling and scary surrealism. Possession is definitely the film that requires many subsequent viewings. Excellent performances that frequently go way OTT, dreamily fluid camerawork and migraine inducing metaphorical horror, this is a true beast of the imagination. Love it or hate it, it is a true original masterpiece that is definitely not for all tastes. If films were placed in boxes and divided by flavours, like crisps, POSSESSION would sit in a box entirely by its self, awaiting only those who can take it. Go into it with an open mind like you've never gone into a film with one before. It can seriously mentally damage you if you try and figure it all out on that initial viewing, so beware; if there is truly anything to work out. The now infamous miscarriage in the subway scene is confusing, painful and sickening to watch and nothing like it can be found elsewhere. This is a hell of a film, if you're prepared for it! `This for me exceeds anything thrown up by The Exorcist for sheer impact on the nervous system.' David Thompson - Sight and Sound

"Possession" is a weird horror film by Polish art house director Andrzej Zulawski.Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill("Event Horizon","Omen 3")star as a couple who's marriage is on the rocks.Adjani claims to have a lover-she has a surreal affair with an octopus creature.First of all this movie is great,so every horror fan should check it out.Obviously some people don't get it-maybe they were expecting some cheesy horror bloodbath,who knows?Of course there's some exceptional gore including where Adjani slices into her own neck with an electric carving knife and a scene where she has a miscarriage on the metro which is quite disgusting(and possibly due to this scene the film was classified as a video nasty),but the atmosphere is really creepy and weird.The acting is awesome-especially an incredible performance by Isabelle Adjani.Watch this film with an open mind and an open heart,and I guarantee you will love "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.