Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981) (Patreon)

BY REQUEST: Beatriz Rivas

Well, where to begin? For about half the running time of Possession, I thought I might be watching one of the greatest films of all time. And while my opinion remained quite high in the end, I think Possession's ultimate trajectory shows just how difficult it is to make a totally clean break from realism. As one finds with a lot of today's "elevated horror" mavens, Żuławski eventually has no other recourse but to introduce concrete supernatural elements -- a monster of some kind -- in order to close the Möbius strip and bring his narrative to an end.

I understand of course that the end of Possession is not exactly crystal clear, just as I recognize that the essential nature of the Male Monster from the Id is never fully articulated. But its very presence reflects a failure of imagination. For example, when Heinrich (Heinz Bennent) and later Mark (Sam Neill) go to Anna's (Isabelle Adjani) apartment and Meet Ze Monster, it appears to exhibit mind-control capabilities, making the men flail, contort, and wrench themselves in satisfyingly inhuman ways.

But was this necessary? From the very beginning, Żuławski's direction produces a palpably contorted world. Human speech is expelled by the actors as if each word were a lump of food dislodged by the Heimlich maneuver. The simplest of movements are executed like gestures in a fitful modern dance, giving the sense that every muscle is being constrained by a stronger countervailing force. And Bruno Nuytten's cinematography stretches Berlin like taffy, deepening space, elongating buildings, and often swirling around Anna and Mark like a pesky insect.

In terms of Possession's articulation of space, I'm hard-pressed to identify a clear antecedent. The overall atmosphere of the film reminds me of 70s/80s Nicolas Roeg, but so much of his sense of dislocation and physical oppression is driven by his jagged editing. Not so with Possession, which sometimes feels like a Miklós Jancsó film that is trapped in claustrophobic interiors and hemmed in by the Berlin Wall. That is, the camera is restless because it "wants" to soar but instead has to fight for inches as the walls close in.

To a great extent, this oppressive tone is conveyed through extreme close-ups, as the camera, permitted no room to roam, must content itself by turning Adjani's and Neill's faces and bodies into cinematic space. Of course this is complicated, and made all the more uncanny, by their high intensity, inhuman performance styles. Adjani's performance in particular is feral and brutally physical, occupying a zone between Grand Guignol theater and unhinged modern dance. (Learning mid-film that Anna was a dance teacher, that this loss of control over her body is the obverse to the muscular control her failed career demanded, is much like the monster in that it narrativizes behavior that was much more frightening without context.)

As we know, Possession was Żuławski's break-up movie, and as such, it is a work that's laden with themes. It is impressive that as an artist, Żuławski had the self-awareness to create a character like Mark, whose smug rage for order is the delivery system for an all-pervasive misogyny. That is, he cannot recognize Crazy Anna as, to an extent, his own creation. The fact that this psychodrama is unfolding in a divided Berlin is also a fairly obvious, even literary trope. When the self is artificially split, set against itself, the result is psychosis, and as Anna demonstrates throughout, the eventual outcome is a kind of mutiny within the body, an externalized Other Will that does what the ordinary, domesticated self cannot.

Given the fact that we just lost Margit Carstensen, I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge her work here as Margie, Anna's friend, Mark's enemy, and an occasional caretaker for the couple's son Bob (Michael Hogben). Carstensen's performance is critical in that she is one of the only characters whose behavior comes close to normalcy. Then again, her hatred of Mark giving way to desire is a fairly evident sign that anyone who comes within miles of Mark and Anna loses their grip on reality. The couple emits toxicity.

We finally see this at the end of Possession when Bob is in the care of his teacher Helen, Anna's passive, doting doppelganger. He has experienced understandable anxiety, crying out in his sleep and demanding his absent mother. But it's only in the final moments that the poor kid finally snaps. Mark 2 shows up at the door, Helen goes to answer, and he frantically pleads, "don't open." Possession tends to forget about Bob, treating him like an afterthought who sometimes needs minding but at other times seems to disappear. The conclusion, though, emphasizes a fact that should've been foremost on Mark and Anna's mind. While they spiral into the existential abyss, they are passing the trauma down to the next generation. Bob's death is shocking to watch, implausibly staged and artificially sudden. That's because Żuławski understands that it's a murder disguised as a suicide.