Possession (1981)

 Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession"


It can get a bit fatiguing sometimes to constantly be watching films, I will admit. The more films you watch, the higher your standard for film gets. This is especially true if you're watching standard, non-game-changing films, like I have been for the past couple of weeks. Then, there is a film that will eliminate your fatigue entirely and reinvigorate your soul and your love of film all together. For me, that film was Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 psychological horror drama, "Possession." 

I went into the film fully realizing the icon status of this cult classic. However, I had no idea how much I would fully enjoy this film. Perhaps one of the greatest films from the 1980s that I have seen thus far. I was completely blown away.

The film centers on a young couple living in West Berlin as they navigate the emotional turmoil of going through a separation. Things get complex when the behavior of both parties become increasingly erratic. I won't go into the specifics of what exactly happens, but I was watching the film completely ignorant of what was actually happening and what was going to happen next. 

Watching the film, I was less interested in the plot specifics and 'what it all meant.' I think sufficive to say that the film's themes goes into the pains of divorce (specifically the director's divorce), the traumatic split between East and West Germany, and the chaotic uncertainty of the Cold War and nuclear fallout. The specificities of how these themes play out in the film through the psychological horror and even body horror is all meant to aid in the more important element of the film. For me, the most important element of the film is its tone. When watching the film, I had an overall feeling I got. The "WHAT" element of the plot was less interesting to me than the accomplishment of tone. 

The tone of the film is simply the feeling of chaotic uncertainty, of a flailing grasping at something. A terror, an unknown. The pain of being alive and the pain that comes from other people. The achievement of this tone and ambiguous 'feeling' that the film emits can directly be applied to the before-mentioned themes of separation. The film was made in West Berlin in 1981 and the terror of nuclear war drenched the decade and the region with uncertainty, along with the painful separation between families and people of the city and of the country all together. This pain, chaos, and uncertainty all get translated through the complete and utter bonkers storyline and plot points of the film. 

Overall, I was completely floored by this film and will be thinking about it quite a bit moving forward. It was utterly insane in the best possible way. It made me feel completely uncertain about everything, insane, and nihilistic about the behavior and fate of humanity as we know it.



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