POSSESSION (1981)
Label: Umbrella Entertainment
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 124 Minutes
Video: 1080p Widescreen (1.66:1)
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with Optional English SDH Subtitles
Director: Andrzej Żuławski
Cast: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Heinz Bennent
Possession (1981) is the harrowing dissection of a marital break-up, with couple Anna (Isabelle Adjani, The Tenant) and Mark (Sam Neill, In The Mouth Of Madness) spiraling into madness as they crumble under the weight of a their disintegrating coupling. Their lives have devolved into daily screaming matches punctuated by outbursts of violence and self-mutilation, with Mark who seems to be trying to salvage the marriage while she becomes more unhinged and distanced. When she asks for a divorce Mark suspects that his wife is having an affair, and those fears are confirmed with the revelation of a lover named Heinrich (Heinz Bennent, The Serpent's Egg)... but she also has another more sinister lover, one more supernatural in nature that neither men know of.
Despite the affair Mark refuses to give her the divorce, soon after Anna flees apartment leaving Mark alone to care for their young son Ben. Already a hot mess Mark further spirals out of control without her, slipping in and out of manic and catatonic states, losing his already tenuous grip on reality. He seeks out and confronts Heinrich about the affair, and while Mark attempts to assault his wife's lover he is instead bloodied by the the man who reveals that Anna's left him as well, and he has no idea where she might have gone. Returning home Mark finds Anna at the apartment, where he confronts here about her whereabouts before beating her bloody before she storms off. The next day a venomous argument in the kitchen results in Anna taking an electric-knife to her own neck, in the aftermath Mark can be seen in the kitchen cutting his own arm repeatedly with the same electric knife. Yeah, these two aren't healthy for each other, and dysfunctional doesn't even begin to capture what's happening here!
After the neck-shredding wound Anna again disappears with Mark hiring a private eye to track her down. In the interim he takes up a brief affair with his son's school teacher Helen (Adjani in a dual-role), whom he notices looks remarkably like his estranged wife. The investigator tracks her down to a shitty unfurnished apartment in Berlin and under false pretense gains access to the dwelling, but inside he discovers more than he bargained for, a strange tentacled creature. In shock at the sight of it Anna's slashes him with a broken-bottle, and then the film gets even stranger! There will be more deaths, a subway miscarriage of nightmarish proportions, more psychotic behavior and a freakish apocalyptic ending. It certainly gets a bit weird and wild, and that's why I love it!
What a weird and beautiful film, they just don't make 'em like this anymore, that's for sure! A strange, frenzied psychological thriller set in the shadow of the oppressive East Berlin Wall. Sam Neil and Isabelle Adjani's quirky and unhinged performances are spectacular, particularly Adjani who gives a terrifying performance during the subway miscarriage/possession scene, it's pretty gut-wrenching stuff as she seeps various fluids from pretty much every possible orifice, bizarre stuff! Neil is an underrated actor and this might be my favorite performance from him, definitely check out him out in other stuff like Event Horizon (1997) and John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness (1995), both of which also feature him playing character well beyond weird. The film also benefits from some grotesque special effects and make-up from Italian legend Carlo Rambaldi (Alien, Dune), but what anchors the film are the passionate and erratic performances from the two leads, daring stuff that at times threaten to go right off the rails completely, particularly Adjan who completely loses herself in the role, truly a bravura performance.
A few quick facts, the film was banned in the UK as a Video Nasty alongside the films of Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento but watching it now I can hardly see why. It's harrowing and creepy but not overly offensive or even that graphic. Apparently much like David Cronenberg during The Brood director Andrzej Żuławski was enduring a bitter divorce with his wife at the time with a child thrown into the mix, you can see it's influence on the film. In the US the film was re-edited and cut by some forty minutes with a new score and some poorly executed solarization effects that's a train wreck that incomprehensible.
Audio/Video: Andrzej Żuławski's Possession (1981) arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Umbrella Entertainment as part of their Beyond Genres imprint, in 1080p HD widescreen framed in 1.66:1 widescreen. This is definitely not the same restoration utilized by Second Sight Films for their UK Blu-ray back in 2013. Not sure what the source is for this HD scan but it is a bit of disappointment. The color-grading is quite significantly colder with a prevailing blue push that stains whites a light blue and saps color delineation with corpse-level cold skin tones from start to finish, and contrast is weak. It's also overly bright, but then oddly dim in other scenes, and there's looks to have been some DNR applied in areas that soften textures and skin pores that were easily visible on the Second Sight Blu-ray. Checkout the screenshot comparison below to see what I am speaking of.
Screenshot Comparison:
Top: Second Sight Blu-ray (2013)
Bottom: Umbrella Ent. Blu-ray (2021)
Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 with optional English subtitles, the sound design is fantastic with a creepy but sparse score from Andrzej Korzynski - it's powerful stuff, definitely a film that brings the visual and audio elements together in superb fashion, with dialogue, effects and score are well-balanced and crisp.
Onto the extras we have a bit of better news, Umbrella carry-over all the extras from the Second Sight release and add a few others. We begin with a pair of archival audio commentaries, one with director Andrzej Żuławski and a second with co-writer Frederic Zulawaski. We also get the fantastic 51-minute retrospective making of documentary and interviews with director Andrzej Żuławski, composer Andrzej Korzynski and producer Christian Ferry. Then onto two featurettes, one about the movie poster artist Basha who created the theatrical artwork, and a second featuring a comparison of the original cut and the awful re-cutting of the film for cinemas and home video in the U.S.. The last of the Second Sight extras is a International Trailer and the English Trailer. Another nice addition is the U.S. cut of the film in standard definition and looking to have been sourced from a VHS tape. It's an inferior version but interesting nonetheless, featuring alternate scene, a different score and some weird solarization special effects added to it.
Possession arrives in an oversized clear keepcase with a reversible sleeve of artwork that features three artwork options including the original Basha movie poster artwork and VHS art. The disc itself features the Basha artwork as well, as does the Beyond Genres branded/numbered slipcover.
Special Features:
- The Other Side of the Wall - The Making of Possession (52 min)
- Audio Commentary with Director Andrzej Żuławski
- Audio Commentary with Co-Writer Frederic Tuten
- US Cut of Possession (87 min) SD
- Andrzej Żuławski Interview (36 min)
- Repossessed – The Re-Editing of Possession (12 min)
- A Divided City – The Locations of Possession (7 min)
- The Sounds of Possession: Korzynski on Zulawsi - Interview with the composer Andrzej Korzynski (19 min)
- Our Friend in the West – Interview with Producer Christian Ferry (7 min)
- Basha: The Unsung Heroine of Polish Poster Art (6 min)
- International Trailer (3 min)
- U.S. Trailer (2 min)
Possession (1981) is a extremely weird, paranoid psychological thriller with some pretty horrific elements and visceral arthouse leanings. It's a tense bit of insanity that makes for a rewarding and uncomfortable watch, a film that gives us a pretty destructive view of a relationship falling apart. I am quite happy that we have a region-free Blu-ray of this insane film with solid extras, but the disappointing scan is less than pleasing.
More screenshots from the Umbrella Ent. Blu-ray:
Extras:
