POSSESSION
DVD Region 2. Second Sight.
Back
in the days of the Video Nasty witch hunt, nothing summed up
the stupidity of the police, the DPP and the tabloids as well
as the prosecution of Andrzej Zuwalski's Possession,
and intensely powerful and creative movie that was reduced to
the level of 'octopus sex film' on the basis of a single scene
that didn't feature octopus sex. Thankfully, common sense for
once prevailed and the film was acquitted of obscenity charges,
but other than a brief VHS re-release in the late 1990's, it
hasn't been seen in the UK since. So Second Sight's DVD is a
welcome, if overdue treat.
Possession
is about many things, but at the heart of it is a marital breakdown.
Sam Neill is Mark, a likely government agent (it's never really
explained) who returns home from a mission to try and patch
up his failing marriage to Anna (Isabelle Adjani). Anna has
a lover, the slimy Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), and it's fair to
say that neither of them are handling the situation well - Mark
vegetates in a hotel room for three weeks, Anna leaves their
young son alone in the flat, and they have intense physical
confrontations as Mark flips between pushing her away and begging
her to return. But it soon turns out that she has moved on from
Heinrich, and now has a mysterious new partner - a grotesque,
evolving tentacled creature that she will do anything to protect.
Possession
is a remarkable film. Set in a grey, depressing West Berlin
(the Wall is literally right outside the couple's window), it
would be a deranged, intense film even without the bizarre creature
- if you think you've ever had a bad breakup, this film might
make you think again. Neill and Adjani are both at full throttle,
reaching levels of hysteria so overwhelming that you worry for
their sanity at times, Adjani especially going all out as she
not so much descends as plummets into madness. The infamous
'birth' scene is rightly notorious for the level of dementia
the actress shows, and never loses its power.
While
not a horror film, Possession certainly ventures
into that area, and does so impressively. Carlo Rambaldi's monster
is worryingly authentic, and the violence has a sickly reality
to it - possibly because so much of it is quite intimate and
small scale (the scene where Adjani takes an electric knife
to her neck is still shocking). The creature could've derailed
the film, but given the deranged nature of what we'd seen to
far, its appearance isn't that odd.
Zuwalski's
direction is thankfully restrained - he lets the wildness happen
within the characters, and the film itself has a sedate, cold
feel to it. There's a political part to this story - it was
his first project after leaving Communist Poland and it's clear
that the evil he sees in the story isn't just that involving
tentacled creatures - but it's not laid out in a heavy-handed
manner, instead making up a part of the general insanity (after
all, what could be more insane that a city split in two by a
giant wall?).
As
powerful now as it was on original release in 1981, Possession
is a disturbing, astonishing, sometime darkly comic and often
moving tour-de-force that straddles the arthouse and the grindhouse
while ultimately transcending both. A must see movie.
Second
Sight's DVD also contains admirable extras - an excellent 50+
minute retrospective documentary by Daniel Bird that tracks
the film from concept to completion, and a 30 minute French
language interview with the fascinating, if sometimes grumpy
director.
DAVID
FLINT
BUY
IT NOW (UK)
BUY
IT NOW (USA)
