There is perhaps no one more qualified to delve into the absurdities and successes of Andrzej Żuławski’s melodrama, Possession, than Repeat Offenders Section Editor, Nicholas Chang. As Nic lets us in on his thoughts surrounding his most rewatched and beloved film of 2023, we’re forced to reconfigure our perceptions of the ‘unhinged’ woman and empathise with her plight.
Content Warning: Mentions of Domestic Violence and Self-Harm
This article contains vague spoilers for Possession.
Love is a beautiful danger. It’s how relationships develop. Sometimes, they continue steadily or evolve into marriages where both partners become committed to each other for the rest of their lives. However, every couple tends to have their issues, some of them being slight and others being turbulent. Behind closed doors, these conflicts derive from the incompatibility of their needs, where the true colours of each partner come to life. But while there are no right or wrong answers in relationships, society tells you that there are. In heterosexual relationships, society will tell you it’s the wife who’s in the wrong; that she’s the most emotionally unstable partner because of her femininity, and that she is at fault for most relationship problems. Regardless of how her male partner behaves, he gets a pass and the blame is always deflected onto the woman. Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession seems to give in to this idea, only for Isabelle Adjani’s purely committed performance to recontextualise the unhinged woman trope through a feminist lens.
Its origins can be traced to two factors: one being Żuławski’s divorce from actress Malgorzata Braunek, which left both parties – and their son – traumatised, and the other being Żuławski forced to leave Poland and emigrate to France due to his de facto ban. Due to the resulting emotional despair, he became inspired to write the screenplay for Possession, offering a pessimistic, unrelenting breakdown into a disintegrating marriage, but while it follows the perspective of international spy Mark (Sam Neill), it is all about Anna (Isabelle Adjani).
When Mark returns home from a mysterious espionage mission, his wife, Anna, wants a divorce. Confused, he deduces her infidelity with Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), an eccentric figure posing under the guise of sexual liberation and freedom. While attempting to restore order to his family and take full-time care of his son, Bob, his attempts to control Anna lead to many shouting arguments and instances of domestic violence and self-harm. However, as he realises Anna is hiding things and may have another lover, Mark determines to find out the truth by hiring a private detective to follow his wife – only when he does so, the truth becomes far more harrowing than expected.
The less said about Possession, the better. Even writing a spoiler-free piece is challenging, let alone attempting to describe its chaotic nature as ‘unhinged’. Realistically, even this is too tame a word to describe Possession. This is a film that screams at you, never relents from its volatile filmmaking, and forces you to bear witness to the heightened emotions of its characters, where the expertly manipulated relationship drama adds unpredictability to its terror.
However, a closer examination of Isabelle Adjani’s performance means tapping into her inner conflicts. Since we experience the narrative from Mark’s perspective, her emotional meltdowns are devoid of context or rationality and her world is impossible to understand. But we know that she will stop at nothing to fulfil her needs, even if it means storming out of her apartment covered in blood after being beaten up by her ex and then running out into the road to cause an accident to stop Mark from following her. Without delving into spoilers, Anna’s secret not only makes Possession’s narrative unpredictable and its genre elements gut-wrenchingly effective, but it adds a further demented dimension to her characterisation that makes for compulsive viewing.
It’s when Heinrich sends Mark footage of his time with Anna that we learn of her position as a ballet instructor, in which we bear witness to her mistreatment of a student by forcing her into a painful position before dismissing her to compliment another student instead. She uses this incident to vent, not to Heinrich, but to us viewers about how nobody taught her to reach her potential and how she has been weighed down by the disappointments in her life. It’s where she remembers, “That’s why I’m with you. Because you say I for me.” Cut to Anna’s ramblings about the relationship between faith and chance, her incessant guilt of betraying Mark by her infidelity with Heinrich, and her fear and loathing of herself because “[she is] the maker of [her] evil.” Even when her relationship with Heinrich has made her self-aware, the root of her unhappiness has grown.
This is where we shift to Anna’s perspective. A significant flashback shows her in church, looking up at the irresponsive statue of Jesus Christ, which is captured in high-angle shots. As she stares up, Anna begins to whimper, as if waiting for an answer from God about herself. But the silence remains. Her whimper turns into whining, and the despair cannot be contained further. She moans louder, only to be met with a stronger silence, and symbolically, the low angles of her reaction shots demonstrate her complete powerlessness.
Now comes the scene you may know Possession for; the subway scene. It’s the one where Anna, walking alone in one of the tunnels, gazes distantly, detaching herself from reality. She laughs hysterically, recognising that God is not just failing to answer her, but that the men in her life have been possessive of her. Losing control of her physical composure, she lets out inhumane, nearly demonic screams and hits herself against the wall, before smashing her groceries and wallowing in the mess she creates for herself. As she continues to shriek and hyperventilate, she engages in a seemingly animalistic dance, giving the impression of undergoing a demonic possession whilst remaining in control, never once taking caution as she lets her body hit against the wall. How this scene ends must be seen with a more complete picture to understand it, but Adjani’s final, piercing screams are unforgettable, and since seeing it for the first time, they have been imprinted in my mind.
There are many ways to view Possession’s infamous subway scene. To view it without context is to lose the emotional significance. Anna’s breakdown seems over-the-top and even laughable, but without learning about her unstable emotions, her inner conflicts and her relationships, we would be shut off from her. She would become just an unhinged female character written with no depth or sense of reason. When the original American cut of Possession rearranges the narrative, it plays the scene earlier and prevents viewers from experiencing her emotional turmoil, leaving them to assume she has become the target of demonic possession. This scene is anything but that.
What Anna’s meltdown represents is the sheer hopelessness in her life, how her potential has been wasted by clinging to the societal norms expected of her, and the lack of self-control afforded to her by the men in her life. She has been played for a fool, used, betrayed, controlled, and lied to, and her needs have been neglected. If she continues playing the role of a housewife, she suffers alone. If she tries pursuing her wants, the men in her life try to stop her. No matter what she does, Anna is trapped in a losing situation. She has long passed the breaking point where she can no longer cope with the suffocating demands of the people around her, and in the only scene where she is alone, she uses her brief freedom to finally lose herself in her emotions. It’s this extra depth that adds such a heart-wrenching relatability to her character and that makes you feel for her situation, and it’s through Żuławski’s empathy that he reaches depraved lengths to achieve for Anna that prevents her characterisation from feeling misogynistic.
But it’s Isabelle Adjani who makes this scene. When she filmed the subway scene in two takes, she received an important instruction from Żuławski: “Fuck the air.” Her screams and convulsions are of such an extraordinary nature that it becomes a hypnotic, operatic act of insanity. It is utterly terrifying to observe, but the more you listen to her screams, they are not only for her but for all the repressed women suffering silently in their traumas and unable to leave their domestic situations. Her catharsis is not for herself but for the audience now able to finally empathise with her situation. It’s through the committed hysteria that Adjani translates to her characterisation that Possession’s over-the-top melodrama transforms into an emotionally harrowing experience. Adjani is an undeniably mesmerising presence, where her boundary-pushing performance embodies the unhinged woman, then recontextualises the trope by letting us into Anna’s world. Despite the narrative being surrounded by such illogic and confusion, we can now understand her, because she is not much different than from us.
Without Isabelle Adjani, there is no Anna. And without Anna, there is no Possession.
Possession is not a film for everybody. It defies traditional genre conventions and gives in to the language and world of its unadulterated insanity, but Anna’s story matters because of how essential it is to an understanding of heart and soul. It won’t make sense when you see her arc unfold, but it all makes great sense for the narrative. Don’t try to understand. Let yourself feel the emotions. Give in to the melodrama and horror that awaits you. By opening yourself up to Anna’s story (and an all-time great performance from Isabelle Adjani), you’ll find yourself open to the many harrowing realities of women in Anna’s position. And it is horrifying and cathartic.
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