SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot.
Andrzej Zulawski’s first and only English-language feature was originally released in the UK in 1982, around a year after its Cannes competition premiere. Though it lost to Man of Iron (by Zulawski’s former mentor Andrzej Wajda), it picked up a best actress award for Isabelle Adjani’s primal shriek of a performance as Anna, whose sudden, unexplained decision to walk out on husband Mark (Sam Neill) jump-starts the rollercoaster that follows.
This cut little ice with the Director of Public Prosecutions, who ludicrously included it on the official ‘video nasties’ blacklist compiled in the wake of one of the more virulent moral panics to which British officialdom occasionally falls prey. While this was undoubtedly a badge of honour for most of its shoddy companions, it did Possession a major disservice, though it’s fitting that a film so full of paranoia, oppression and surveillance (it’s set in Cold War Berlin, Mark’s job seems espionage-related, two detectives meet decidedly sticky ends) should itself fall victim to similarly irrational emotions – and, in the US, severe mutilation, losing more than a third of the original running time. It’s worth noting en passant that the BBFC never had a problem with it, passing it uncut on three separate occasions, including the theatrical release that preceded the legal threats.
Although it’s easy to see why it was pigeonholed as a horror film, its first half presents what is still one of the most viscerally vivid portraits of a disintegrating relationship yet committed to film, comfortably rivalling Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, David Cronenberg’s The Brood and Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. When Anna leaves, Mark runs the gamut of grief responses, going berserk in a café (crockery-smashing, chair-throwing) before shivering on a bed in a cold sweat as though undergoing cold turkey. After he attempts to assault her combat-trained lover Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), there’s a doomed attempt at reconciliation that sees Mark and Anna take turns to mutilate themselves with an electric carving knife.
Like Bergman and Cronenberg, Zulawski was dealing with very personal demons: he’d just undergone a psychologically traumatic divorce from his first wife, actress Malgorzata Braunek. At one point, Mark sticks a feather down his throat to induce vomiting, and Zulawski seems to have done something similar when conceiving the film, spewing out every raw emotion that he could recall. These are uncomfortable scenes to watch, partly because there’s a child involved (the real-life equivalent of Anna and Mark’s ten-year-old son Bob grew up to be director Xawery Zulawski who, on the evidence of Chaos and Snow White and Russian Red, is very much his father’s son) but mainly thanks to the pervasive impression that Zulawski is grabbing us by the scruff of the neck and rubbing our faces in private grief. The camera constantly tracks and circles the couple as though possessed by a pathological voyeurism – camera operator Andrzej Jaroszewicz achieves effects comparable to the Steadicam work in The Shining but with far more limited resources.
The film’s second half is what earned it lasting notoriety, as it involves Adjani shacking up in a dilapidated apartment to pursue a relationship with a tentacular monstrosity that seems to have erupted from her own id, possibly via a spectacular five-minute freakout in an underpass. In fact, despite its love of human flesh (both living – Adjani’s – and recently killed), the creature is marginally less repellent than the unctuous Heinrich, who still lives with his mother despite apparently being a one-man Kama Sutra. Its precise function is never made clear – a physical embodiment of the notion that the disintegration of the family breeds monsters? A writhing surrogate for the dark and twisted secrets underpinning even the most outwardly healthy marriage? A recurring doppelgänger motif (Mark and Anna have clones of unspecified origin, physically identical but temperamentally opposite) is also left unexplained, but Possession is self-evidently far more than just another monster movie. Those prepared to make the leap of faith demanded by Zulawski’s ultra-confrontational, deliriously overwrought, symbol-crammed approach will find the experience, like that of Ken Russell’s equally maligned The Devils, very hard to forget.
Michael Brooke, Sight and Sound, November 2010
The common negative view of Zulawski’s cinema was that his plots were wilfully baffling, that his camerawork was too florid, that he encouraged his actors to emote and gesticulate as if in some continual state of paroxysm. But this was an entirely superficial impression. Underlying the heightened nature of the films was a deep, questioning soulfulness related to literary antecedents coupled with a vision of cinema open to shifting levels of perception and fantasy.
For many years his only film to have had any kind of impact in Britain was Possession, shot in English in a divided Berlin in 1980, which even achieved the distinction of being briefly classified as a ‘video nasty’. Described by its director as a ‘fairy tale for adults’, it was born from two impulses: the director’s return to Poland after a period abroad to find his son alone in a flat and his wife elsewhere; and a viewing of Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, which Zulawski felt had no fruitful conclusion.
In his vision of a marital break-up, the protagonist (Sam Neil) discovers his wife (Isabelle Adjani) to have acquired not only a preposterous lover but also to have conjured up a monster which she visits for sexual gratification. Doppelgängers proliferate and the crises build to an apocalyptic ending. Is it psychological drama, or a horror film? Zulawski in effect created a genre of his own, while following a path that has also been trod – to greater acceptance – by David Cronenberg and David Lynch, filmmakers happy to twist narratives in unexpected ways and make the viewer become anything but passive.
In 1980 Isabelle Adjani won an award at Cannes for Possession, but not before having been so shocked by her viewing of the film to the point of attempting suicide. Zulawski’s method of working with actors had evolved out of watching the experimental theatre work of Jerzy Grotowski, as well as trips he made to Haiti to witness voodoo rites. He would admit to putting his cast – especially actresses, who he believed needed to be liberated from themselves – under trances to prepare them for their scenes.
David Thompson, Sight and Sound, bfi.org.uk
POSSESSION
Director: Andrzej Zulawski
Production Companies: Oliane Productions, Marianne Productions,
Soma Film Produktion
Producer: Marie-Laure Reyre
Production Manager: Jean-José Richer
Germany Production Manager: Klaus-Michael Kuehn
Unit Managers: Harald Muchametov, Axel Behr, Jurgen Schmidt, Knut Winkler
Screenplay: Andrzej Zulawski
Adaptation and Dialogue: Andrzej Zulawski, Frédéric Tuten
Director of Photography: Bruno Nuytten
Camera Operator: Andrzej Jaroszewicz
Special Effects: Daniel Braunschweig, Charles-Henri Assola
Creature Special Effects: Carlo Rambaldi
Editors: Marie-Sophie Dubus, Suzanne Lang-Willar
Art Director: Holger Gross
Costumes: Ingrid Zoré
Wardrobes: Barbara Lutz, Helmut Preuss
Make-up: Ronaldo de Abreu, Laurence Azouvy
Music: Andrzej Korzynski
Sound Recording: Karl-Heinz Laabs, Norman Engel
Sound Re-recording: Jacques Maumont
Stunts: Herbert Wiczorek, Willy Neuner, Dragomir Stanojevic,
Radevic Miorier
Cast
Isabelle Adjani (Anna/Helen)
Sam Neill (Marc)
Margit Carstensen (Margie)
Heinz Bennent (Heinrich)
Johanna Hofer (mother)
Shaun Lawton (Zimmerman)
Michael Hogben (Bob)
Carl Duering (detective)
Maximilian Ruethlein (man with pink socks)
Thomas Frey (pink socks’ acolyte)
Leslie Malton (Sara, woman with club foot)
Gerd Neubert (subway drunk)
Kerstin Wohlfahrt
Ilse Bahrs
Karin Mumm
Herbert Chwoika
Barbara Stanek
Ilse Trautschold
France-West Germany 1981
124 mins
DISCOMFORT MOVIES
Eraserhead
Mon 1 Jul 20:40 (+ extended intro to the season by curator Kimberley Sheehan); Sun 14 Jul 17:50; Sat 27 Jul 20:50
The Lost Weekend
Sat 6 Jul 15:10; Sun 21 Jul 17:45; Mon 29 Jul 20:40
Requiem for a Dream
Sat 6 Jul 20:45; Fri 19 Jul 18:20
A Woman under the Influence
Sun 7 Jul 19:30; Sun 28 Jul 17:20
Bug
Mon 8 Jul 18:15; Thu 25 Jul 20:50
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Tue 9 Jul 18:10; Mon 22 Jul 20:35
Threads
Thu 11 Jul 18:15; Sun 21 Jul 15:15
Possession
Mon 15 Jul 18:00
Funny Games
Mon 15 Jul 20:45; Sat 27 Jul 14:15
Climax + Strasbourg 1518
Tue 16 Jul 18:10; Sun 28 Jul 20:20
Crash + Titane
Sat 20 Jul 18:15, 18:30
Audition Ôdishon
Wed 24 Jul 20:45; Wed 31 Jul 18:15
Skinamarink
Sun 28 Jul 14:20; Wed 31 Jul 20:45
Relaxed Screening: Eraserhead + intro and discussion
Mon 29 Jul 18:10
SIGHT AND SOUND
Never miss an issue with Sight and Sound, the BFI’s internationally renowned film magazine. Subscribe from just £25*
*Price based on a 6-month print subscription (UK only). More info: sightandsoundsubs.bfi.org.uk
BFI SOUTHBANK
Welcome to the home of great film and TV, with three cinemas and a studio, a world-class library, regular exhibitions and a pioneering Mediatheque with 1000s of free titles for you to explore. Browse special-edition merchandise in the BFI Shop.We're also pleased to offer you a unique new space, the BFI Riverfront – with unrivalled riverside views of Waterloo Bridge and beyond, a delicious seasonal menu, plus a stylish balcony bar for cocktails or special events. Come and enjoy a pre-cinema dinner or a drink on the balcony as the sun goes down.
BECOME A BFI MEMBER
Enjoy a great package of film benefits including priority booking at BFI Southbank and BFI Festivals. Join today at bfi.org.uk/join
BFI PLAYER
We are always open online on BFI Player where you can watch the best new, cult & classic cinema on demand. Showcasing hand-picked landmark British and independent titles, films are available to watch in three distinct ways: Subscription, Rentals & Free to view.
See something different today on player.bfi.org.uk
Join the BFI mailing list for regular programme updates. Not yet registered? Create a new account at www.bfi.org.uk/signup
Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email