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This is what the inside of my head looked like after watching Andrzej Żuławski’s “Possession.” My critical capacity was flummoxed. I was left staring glassily at the screen. I tottered to the kitchen for a drink of water, as if I had just stepped off a monster roller coaster. As, indeed, I had.
Żuławski is a technically proficient, non-linear, slyly inveighing MADMAN. During the first hour of the film, I determined to turn off this one-star horror show many times, but my will was not my own. I could not push “stop;” I could not avert my eyes. Żuławski mastered me, then drained me until I could not judge, analyze, or criticize. By the final scene, I could no longer think at all. I just was.
The 1981 poster for “Possession.”
“Possession” has a nominal plot about a divorcing couple (very young and very hot Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill) living in West Berlin, right next to the Berlin Wall. Many scholars and critics have done incisive social and political interpretations, likening the schizoid turmoil of “Possession” to the schism of Germany itself. But for me, it is really about the fires of hell and Żuławski’s emotional immolation during his own difficult divorce. Imagine a rabid dog tearing into a bloody carcass and you will begin to understand the experience of watching this movie.
The emotional violence of this film is diabolical and the sexuality is consumingly perverse. Isabelle Adjani turns in a performance that she may never have recovered from. The film builds to the point of no return when Adjani, alone, screams, falls, rolls, and cries as if she is miscarrying her very soul. I have never seen an actor and a filmmaker rub the audience’s nose in such horror so pitilessly, until the audience must submit to the magnificence of their abandoned depravity, or, as I prefer, artistry.
I am not telling you that this film is good or bad. I do not even know if I like it or not. But it deserves 5 stars because Żuławski and his actors achieved what they intended. They hollowed me out and threw away the pulp.
After watching this, consider checking out “The Untamed” (2016), a Mexican film, directed by Amat Escalante, that I swear is a remake of “Possession.”
