*Content warning: This review contains discussion surrounding psychological distress, violence, sexual content, and miscarriage.*
“Possession” (1981) is a supernatural psychological horror film directed by Andrzej Żuławski. The main character, Anna, abandons her family and her husband, Mark, seemingly for an extramarital affair. However, as Mark digs deeper into her erratic behavior, he discovers a truth far more grotesque and otherworldly than he could have imagined. We, Angelina Liu PZ ’28 and Ava Samson PZ ’28, will provide an in-depth analysis of the film — examining its plot, central themes, and cinematography — before concluding with our perspectives on what we consider its most powerful scene.
For Liu, the film centers around the breakdown of marriage — but within that narrative framework, there is an underlying theme of repression. This repression manifests in the characters, but most intensely in the repulsive, tentacled creature we watch grow and morph under Anna’s care.
We interpreted this creature to represent a perverse manifestation of Anna’s desires and resentment. She craves to be loved and cared for, an equal partnership, tender and passionate, lovemaking — none of which she can find in the cold, controlling, abusive Mark.
Instead, she finds them in the creature, hidden away in her secret apartment, a grotesque, pulsating lump of flesh. Anna’s pent-up desires have rotted and festered for so long they have become this monstrous entity. The more she represses her desires, the more the creature evolves, its intuition and capabilities growing ever more complex throughout the film, its metamorphosis speeding up to match the pace of her deteriorating marriage.
As such, an unhealthy relationship dynamic exists, Samson argues, ultimately leading to the deterioration of the two protagonists’ psyches. As their marriage progresses, a discrepancy grows between their true identities and their idealized counterparts.
An integral aspect of this theme is witnessed in their “clones” of one another, which respectively represent the rigid standards they hold each other to. While distancing himself from Anna, Mark meets Helen, their son Bob’s schoolteacher, who is a spitting image of Anna. The viewer quickly recognizes how Helen’s demeanor symbolizes the docile, compliant, maternal figure that Mark always desired in Anna.
In contrast, Mark’s clone is a grotesque, alien-like creature with whom Anna shares a hidden intimacy. This peculiar character symbolizes Anna’s guilt and detachment from her relationship with Mark. While the monster repulses outsiders, it offers solace and normalcy to Anna amid the chaos of her marriage.
Their marriage, and the film itself, are dominated by bleak and unnerving scenes, where the characters act increasingly more irrational and the occurrences become progressively more surreal.
There is an ongoing sense of hopelessness and deprivation in Anna and Mark’s relationship as they sink deeper into self-destruction throughout the film’s progression. Samson best labels this hopelessness as unconventionally immersive: While typical films maintain a fourth wall between actors and audience, “Possession” seeks to provoke viewers in various scenes where Anna stares directly into the camera, daring us to judge her.
The unsettling crescendo culminates in an ending scene that oozes apocalyptic dread, with the reality constructed for us by the film and the narrative expectations upending and tearing apart. Liu sees the finale as jarring because no rational explanation, even within the bounds of the film’s constructed reality, can account for what we witness in the ending scene. We are left with a sense of impending doom.
Contributing to the bleak and eerie nature of the film are the symbolism and imagery used in various scenes, which serve no logical purpose in the plot but are placed deliberately to provoke discomfort from the audience. In a scene where Mark interrogates Anna about her extramarital affair, intense sensory imagery transforms an ordinary domestic scene of a housewife preparing dinner into a sinister one.
The kitchen they stand in is clinically white and clean, noticeably marred by the startling red of the bloody meat that Anna hacks at with anxious urgency. As the atmosphere of the scene swells with tension and Mark’s questioning grows more aggressive, the sporadic hum of the carving knife turns into the dreadful wail of the meat grinder, as pulpy red ribbons ooze from its mouth.
Anna does not utter a word throughout the sequence, permeating the scene with a palpable suspense — as we viewers brace ourselves for the inevitable tipping point.
Additionally, we found the experimental camerawork incredibly impressive. In the beginning, Anna and Mark’s lives are documented in an almost sterile manner, with some scenes being recorded in full with little to no stylistic camera movement.
As their relationship progresses, however, a culmination of tracking shots, wide-angle lenses and unclassified visual composition becomes increasingly utilized in a manner that feels almost irrationally disorganized.
Towards the film’s climax, when Anna runs haphazardly through the subway station, the camerawork becomes so disorderly that it almost feels out of step with the chronological plotline. But this enigmatic style of filmography is entirely calculated; its voyeuristic nature intends to evoke discomfort among viewers, as if we are the audience to a performance not meant to be seen.
One prominent scene in the film is the infamous subway scene, where Anna experiences a miscarriage, aimlessly running alone throughout the station and yelling out in pain. It is rage, fear and hysteria at its most unfiltered, visceral, unchoreographed expression of emotion that is so disturbing because it is so raw.
We watch as Anna is scorned, objectified and dismissed in her roles as both mother and wife. Despite Mark’s suffocating presence, he abandons Anna to complete solitude and vulnerability during her miscarriage in the subway.
In many respects, Samson sees this moment as both transformative and liberating, allowing Anna to engage in a violent act of release as she unearths the most profound depths of her psychological agony.
The typical depiction of female rage in visual media is frequently presented with palatability in mind: We watch women sob while their makeup remains in full tact, yell while still maintaining a level of collectedness and ultimately fall apart in a sterile, unthreatening manner that I feel strips rage of its true nature.
Anna’s breakdown is distinctive — her loud shrieks and sporadic mannerisms are not intended to serve as a pleasant spectacle, but rather to shock and disgust, and most fundamentally, to resist.
The irony is that despite the obvious, her breakdown feels involuntary to Liu. It feels like Anna is being tortured, her body and mind subjected to abuses beyond comprehension. She is possessed by a force beyond rational cognition and free will as she slams into walls and emits noises of pure despair. Simultaneously, her body seizes with increasing passion, as if she’s relishing in the expression of her emotion. She loses her grasp on reality while simultaneously letting it go by choice. It is both terrifying and liberating.
Ava Samson PZ ’28, recommends David Lynch’s “Inland Empire,” and Angelina Liu PZ ’28 recommends Satoshi Kon’s “Perfect Blue” for your October viewing pleasure
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