The Moscow Film Society ended their month of Euro Horror at the Kenworthy Theatre with the film “Possession (1981)” on May 30. This film feels practically impossible to review as it’s more of an experience than a story. The movie opens with a deteriorating marriage front and center, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg for how unhinged this film gets. From close ups of domestic violence and infidelity to love triangles, doppelgangers, child abandonment, squid monsters and murder. No, that isn’t a mistake, squid monsters do play pivotal roles in Andrzej Żuławski’s “Possession.”
“Possession’s” main characters are Mark and Anna, two deeply flawed humans with questionable backgrounds living in a chaotic world; Cold War West Berlin. The audience is quickly thrown into a roller coaster of frantic energy as Mark grapples with his marriage falling apart. None made better for Anna’s cold responses as she admits to cheating on him. Quickly Mark spirals into a depression and rots away in his hotel room full of his own sorrow and pity. Alas, these two never get to recover from any of these emotional pitfalls and must pull it together for they have a child to raise in the middle of the Cold War.
Parenting forces Anna and Mark to spend time with one another, and when these two share screen time, it’s never in a manner of calm and collected. It’s a screaming match, asking about betrayals, the whys, the unending disappointments and any other barbed insult a couple could throw at one another as their love fades for one another. The only way for these encounters to deescalate is for them to run out of fuel, and that means violence.
On one side, a wife taking drastic measures to get out of a small room her estranged and upset husband has cornered her in. On the other, a husband breaking from emotional trauma and physically slapping his wife repeatedly. Yet they can’t stop being in each other’s lives, always coming back broken in need of repair in each other’s arms.
Their problems are never solved though, and the fact they return to one another isn’t an admission in wanting to change, it’s a desire to return to something they already know. This is apparent the next day when the emotions flare, all while their son takes these moments in somewhere off screen in the small apartment they share. Like I said, the deteriorating marriage is only the tip of what this film is about.
Once the film introduces the first doppelganger is when viewers are finally reminded that this is a horror movie. Her name is Helen, and she is the spitting image of Anna. But unlike Anna’s, cold, detached, dream-like air, Helen is warm, gentle, and kind to a fault. A perfect healer for Mark, but too perfect. Everything we have been shown in this movie so far is such a far cry from what Helen represents. She is always wearing white, making it so she literally lights up the deep blue colors that cover every scene in the movie. However, a perfect human does not exist.
The search for the perfect relationship brings both characters to their demise. Mark and Anna are possessed to do some truly horrific acts in the pursuit of what they think will make them happy. That’s what makes Possession a truly remarkable movie, and it’s how the movie gained its cult-like status. At its core, it’s about something we all go through as humans. The journey of life and putting back the pieces every time a decision blows up in our face. Just remember not to get lost and diluted into thinking you can find that perfect relationship as it could lead you right into the arms of a squid monster.
Ricky Simmons can be reached at [email protected]