Possession (1981): A Mind-Bending Masterpiece That Defies Explanation

Let me be crystal clear: you absolutely must watch Possession without any prior knowledge. Don’t watch a trailer. Don’t read detailed plot summaries. Just go watch it now—it’s available on Shudder, Criterion Channel, Metrograph, Kanopy, or Hoopla if your library has access. Trust me on this one. Come back after you’ve experienced this cinematic fever dream, and we’ll discuss the madness together. Fair warning: this isn’t for the faint of heart.

Possession is the kind of film that remains elusive even when you know exactly what happens. After two viewings, listening to three different podcasts, and reading countless articles, I’m still not entirely sure what transpired in certain scenes. But here’s the thing—I absolutely loved every bewildering minute of it.

The film immediately plunges you into the disintegration of a marriage set against the stark backdrop of the Berlin Wall—a powerful metaphor for the emotional chasm between its two leads. Sam Neill, impossibly young and disarmingly handsome as Mark, and Isabelle Adjani as Anna, deliver performances that rank among the most extraordinary in cinema history. Watching Adjani is emotionally exhausting—she oscillates between unsettling detachment and explosive, high-octane delirium with terrifying ease and speed. When you learn her performance allegedly gave her PTSD, you’re not surprised in the slightest.

The third pillar of this cinematic trinity is Heinz Bennent as Heinrich, the man Mark suspects Anna is leaving him for. He moves through scenes like a ballet dancer who’s had one too many drinks, with something almost Tommy Wiseau-esque about his delivery. (It certainly doesn’t help that he keeps repeating Mark’s name in increasingly bizarre ways.) In a more conventional film, his performance would seem absurd, but in the abstract nightmare of Possession, Bennent fits perfectly—careening through frames, alternately assaulting and seducing Mark.

Director Andrzej Żuławski doesn’t just elicit unhinged performances from his actors; he creates live-action paintings. The scene where Mark and Ana sit in a café at the corner of a bench, facing away from each other as they discuss their separation, is pure visual poetry. (Before Mark erupts, hurling chairs and tables in a freakout for the ages.) Sam Neill violently rocks a chair back and forth as the camera tracks him with expert precision. The film is simply gorgeous—until it absolutely isn’t.

What begins as a bad acid trip about a failing marriage transforms into a nausea-inducing body horror in its second half. We discover Anna isn’t leaving Mark for Heinrich at all. In fact, Heinrich is just as desperate to win Anna back. Instead, she’s involved with what Anna Bogutskaya (host of The Final Girls podcast) calls a “Lovecraftian fuck monster.”

This grotesque creation—tentacles, oozing orifices, uncanny humanoid features—was crafted by Carlo Rambaldi, who won Academy Awards for special effects on Alien and E.T. It feeds on people—their bodies, but also their souls. Anna seems to believe it’s some sort of deity, something holy. She uses it to explore parts of herself she’s repressed or lost in her relationship with Mark.

The men in her life can’t satisfy her, so she creates an ideal lover. What starts as a slimy creature, not unlike the baby from Eraserhead, eventually becomes a doppelganger of Mark himself.

And then there’s the subway scene. If you’ve heard of Possession before, it’s probably because of this sequence. Adjani hurls herself around a deserted tunnel, grunting, screaming, convulsing, before oozing blood and god-knows-what all over the wet concrete floor. As a viewer, I felt emotionally drained after watching it. It’s three of the most intense minutes ever committed to celluloid, and even if the rest of the film was terrible, Possession would be worth watching just for this scene.

There are so many different interpretations of this film. I’m still not entirely sure what happens at the end. Did their son Bob drown himself? Is Mark’s doppelganger the antichrist? Is Helen also a doppelganger? (I think so.) What’s the deal with Heinrich’s mother? Is Anna possessed? Or is the titular possession about the men in her life trying to exert ownership over her?

In the month since I first watched this movie, I’ve told everyone I know about it. I can’t stop thinking about it or talking about it. Possession isn’t just a film—it’s an experience that burrows under your skin and stays there, demanding to be unpacked, discussed, and revisited again and again.

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