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(Deep Cuts) POSSESSION: Divorce, Dopplegangers, and a Marriage Divided by the Berlin Wall

By. Davalyn Baker

 

This was my first viewing of Possession, the controversial and deeply personal project by director, Andrzej Żuławski. As the credits rolled, I sat up in bed and asked – “What on earth did I just watch?”

On the surface, POSSESSION is about the disillusionment of divorce. The film immediately starts with Anna (Isabelle Adjani) greeting Mark (Sam Neill) coldly after he’s been away on a spy mission. Saying their marriage is toxic would be a compliment, though they both love their son and each other very much, they should not be together. Anna tells Mark that she wants a divorce, but Mark refuses to let his possession of Anna go. He’s committed to this marriage, even if Anna is in an incestuous relationship with the entity she miscarried on the subway, because that entity eventually manifests into a doppelganger of her husband.

It’s chaotic. And messy.

Much like a real marriage.

As Anna’s mental state deteriorates during the progression of the film, Mark tries to hold tight to the last bit of grip he has on this marriage. And during this, their young son Bob unfortunately sits in between the toxicity of his parents’ crumbling marriage. At the time, Andrzej Żuławski, the director, was in deep state of depression as he was going through his own divorce. Much of the events he experienced influenced the story, including a moment where Żuławski came home to discover his son covered in jam after Żuławski’s soon-to-be ex-wife neglected him. Allegedly.

Sam Neill has a particular talent for playing men who discover that reality is considerably less stable than they thought. Pleatherface revisits another of his descents into hell in EVENT HORIZON, where Neill trades a collapsing marriage for a haunted spaceship...and things somehow get even worse.

Though Mark thinks Anna is having an affair, and Anna thinks the same – the main issue in this marriage is that neither of them seem to be happy. They enjoy their time with Bob, watching him play in the bathtub or reading to him, but their relationship is tumultuous. Despite Anna’s discord with Mark, her affair with a drug addicted egomaniac named Heinrich, the couple keep coming back to each other, and her murder spree in the dilapidated apartment where she hides her incestuous entity does nothing to quell the love they have for each other.

But this story just isn’t entirely about divorce. Not really. Żuławski struggled a great deal with censorship and the Polish government, who shelved or destroyed his film footage, and exiled Żuławski. His experiences post WWII were unbearable, and as he watched Berlin ultimately become divided, much like Anna and Mark’s dying union – and the effects that it had on its people. Anna’s apartment is located across the street from the Berlin Wall. She’s in the east; Mark works as an agent for the west. Their separation being much like the separated city which has wreaked havoc upon Żuławski and his artistic expression. The spaces that feature actors interacting are claustrophobic and stifling, but when they are out in the city it’s large and empty – lonely and run down.

Beyond that, there’s something quite apocalyptic and biblical in the translation of this story. Midway through the film, we see Anna gazing at a statue of Jesus Christ on the cross. Her eyes are pleading, hungry for a response. Each quest Anna goes on leading her to find a higher power. She wasn’t happy with her marriage to Mark, so she sought Heinrich. When Heinrich could not provide her what she was looking for, she went asking for someone – anyone to hear her. And someone did. Or perhaps, something. After gazing into the eyes of Christs’ statue, Anna experiences a violent miscarriage in the subway, telling Mark she had to release her Faith to go with Chance. It’s a confusing monologue but makes enough sense when we discover that the Faith Anna has miscarried in the subway takes on the form of the odd tentacle creature.

After one of their many fights, Mark takes Bob to school and runs into Bob’s teacher, Helen, who looks exactly like Anna though she is lighter in other ways. Lighter hair, lighter eyes, lighter wardrobe, and even a lighter mood. Though she is the exact replica of Anna physically, her demeanor is docile and quite submissive. Mark spends most of the film upset that Anna will not stay home and be the doting wife and mother, yet when Helen appeals to him, he still prefers the chaos and toxicity that comes with Anna.

Anna, on the other hand, is not satisfied. When Mark sends two private detectives and eventually, Heinrich to their deaths when the investigation results in the discovery of a tentacled creature, Mark finds himself protecting his wife. Even after she murders Margit, their family friend, Mark still makes sure Anna is undetected. Again, despite her mess, Mark loves his wife and even if she’s not satisfied with him or their marriage, he’s going through great lengths to protect her and the tentacled creature. When Mark does set his sights on the monster, he discovers it having sex with Anna, who repeats to him desperately, “Almost!” Unlike the others, Mark doesn’t seem to be upset or aghast at the sight of his wife tangled in the arms of a tentacle creature that seems to be taking on the form of a human.

This is all very bad, and there is no escaping the paths they’ve made. Mark leaves Bob with Helen and becomes mortally wounded by a group of men that have been spying on him the entirety of the film. Nevertheless, Mark is committed to this marriage, he climbs up the stairs to an apartment and is slowly dying as Anna walks in with a doppelganger of Mark. Unlike the real Mark and the doppelganger Helen, this copy has dark eyes, a dark wardrobe, and much more sinister personality. Helen is ecstatic however, because now she’s got the perfect version of her husband and someone to match the darkness within her. Her joy is short-lived when the same group of men that shot Mark, do the same to her, killing her, which prompts Mark to jump to his death. Doppelganger Mark immediately shows his hand by influencing a woman standing by her apartment to shoot the men downstairs as he makes his escape.

Doppelganger Mark finds Helen’s apartment and begins to knock, alarming Bob who pleads with Helen not to open the door. She ignores his constant cries and goes to open the door, and poor Bob runs upstairs and drowns himself in the tub – an unfortunate end where Bob found his sanctuary with his real parents. Downstairs, Doppelganger knocks, and Helen stares into the screen as the apocalypse happens outside.

Żuławski spent most of his adult life struggling in a tug-o-war with his home country. He’d survived and witnessed a traumatic transformation. In this story, though he focuses on his divorce he’s also showing the changes that happened after the creation of the Berlin wall. Stuck in a terribly messy relationship with Poland and though it hurt him, Żuławski still loved his homeland. He still focused on creating art in his homeland despite the frustrating censorship from the government. Being exiled surely felt like drowning in a tub while the world falls apart around you. Had he not been exiled the second time however, the world never has gotten the masterpiece that is POSSESSION, and eventually, his disdain for the powers that be resolved albeit at the cost of his art.

In POSSESSION, a collapsing relationship transforms the world around Anna and Mark into something increasingly nightmarish. Davalyn Baker finds another personal hell made frighteningly literal in THE BACKROOMS, where isolation, failed relationships, and the memories we refuse to confront become a maze with no easy way out.