Possession – Andrezj Zulawski
1981
Two worlds exist within Zulawski’s Possession (1981); set in Communist
Berlin, the film’s location presents the tear in the psycho-geographical fabric
of both characters and place, depicted in the opening shots of scare-crow like
metal rails that line the concrete wall. This divided setting also pre-empts
the divided selves within the film, where doppelgangers fall from nowhere and a
woman’s psychological breakdown is physically embodied in a monstrous other
that exists outside of her self.
A psychoanalytical reading via
Kristeva would suggest that the reptilian creature that Anna lives with is the
personification of a sexuality that cannot be controlled by either her husband
Mark (played by Sam Neill) or her Tantric lover Heinrich. In fact, there is
much in Possession that lends itself to psychoanalytic readings, not least the doppelgangers;
the return of repressed drives that fuel the destructive relationship between
Anna and Mark. But to do so might well ignore some important motifs and images
in the film, not least its setting in post-war Berlin, but also the apocalyptic
imagery that accompanies its bizarre conclusion. As Victor Galstyan writes:
Is
[the film] meant to critique the patriarchal/capitalist structures of Western
society, the stifling repression of the Communist system or is it a Freudian
poison-letter to the castrating horror of the female body? The film’s lasting
power lies in its omnifariousness, which enables it to withstand any number of
readings.[1]
I have recently been reading Gaston
Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. In his book, Bachelard approaches domestic and
intimate spaces from a phenomenological viewpoint. I was struck by his
discussion of the dialectics of outside and inside space, space which from a
phenomenological perspective suggests the notion of being and nothingness.
Thinking of the self, the subjective ‘I’ that forms the basis of
phenomenological thought, he states that “outside and inside are both intimate
– they are always ready to be reversed, to exchange their hostility”. Narrative
spaces are full of these dialectics – the Jekyll and Hyde schism of inner and
outer self, but having recently watched Possession
I was stuck by the impact of place upon self, and how the divided world of
Berlin in the 1980s, itself a hostile environment with an all-too-visible
architectural wound cutting through its geo-political landscape.
“intimate space loses its clarity” write
Bachelard, “while exterior space loses its void, void being the raw material of
possibility of being. We are banished from the realm of possibility.”
I couldn’t help thinking of
Zulawski’s film at this point; its geographical spaces seem interlinked with
psychological space. But to understand Zulawski’s images, the spectator must
attempt to bracket out the context of the film – and this is difficult when you
consider the powerful impact that the grey landscapes have upon our
understanding.
Anna’s psychological space is crowded;
she is claustrophobic and Zulawski underscores this with repeated close ups of
her, the mise-en-scene confining her between multiple doorways which evoke both
escape and the utter absence of escape. Amongst the clutter of domesticity, inner
space provokes breakdown, mentally, physically. With outer space should come
freedom, but she is followed, if not by a camera that pushes in on her bloodied
body, then by her two lovers, two men working for a detective agency. Men
surround her, own her, try to possess her. Anna’s subjectivity is lost amongst
men; in the scene where Mark plays back a home movie made by his rival, Anna
stares at the screen, talking to the two men in her life when she says “that’s
why I’m with you. Because you say ‘I’ for me”. Later on, she ridicules Mark by
saying “you look at me as if I need you to fill me up.” In essence, Anna’s feels
that her sense of self is defined by men and her descent into madness is
accompanied by the destruction of Mark and Heinrich for whom Anna is simply a
receptacle for their own insecurities.
Anna’s sexuality cannot be
contained by the two men in her life. Mark admits to Anna that when she’s away
“I think of you as an animal as a woman possessed.” Mark admits here that he
needs Anna to be a beast, because this is the only way he can explain her
behavior. And yet, in thinking of Anna as a beast, Mark is also admitting the
desire for the Other, this beast that exists within her. His attempt to control Anna is depicted
during their scenes of self-mutilation when he binds Anna to him with a
bandage: dog-like, on a leash.
Her presence in outside space
produces mayhem – a breakdown truck spills its load trying to avoid her. She
cannot wait to be inside again, rushing to her other home, the home which
provides sanctuary for her away from the possessiveness of patriarchy. Here,
yellowed wallpaper, grimy, the very opposite of the clean domesticated spaces
of her apartment with Mark; this is a place of decay. Freudian’s might call it
a womb-space, the slimy Lovecraftian thing which clings to the walls could well
be a mucal representation of some disgusting embryonic creature. Anna feeds it
with blood, as if she is feeding the schism in her self.
Anna says that goodness is only
some kind of reflection upon evil; the film embodies this in its depiction of
doppelgangers but also the domestic spaces within the film. Marital harmony
depends upon tidy spaces – note the clean lines of Mark’s apartment. When Helen
comes to stay, he admires her domesticity, running his fingers along clean
surfaces, caressing appliances as if they were a substitute for the female body,
thanking her for being the obverse of his feral wife. For Anna, the domestic
space reflects her own psyche; at one point she stuffs laundry into the fridge,
suggesting the interchangeability of the domestic appliance, it’s heterogeneous
shape and colour. Groceries are smashed off the walls of the subways in the
abjection of the miscarriage scene; severed heads reside in the vegetable tray
giving new meaning to the fridge’s ‘drawer of death’. In fact, Zulawski points
up the inner violence and frustration contained within the straitjacket of
domesticity: in one remarkable scene, Anna stuffs meat into a grinder and
clothes into a washing machine even whilst she and Mark scream at each other. Wardrobes
– scattered clothing; symbols of struggle. Clothes thrown in, thrown out
I can’t think of another film
which strips away the mask from cosy domesticity and reveals the utter
frustration and psychological meltdown that waits at its core. The kitchen, the
bathroom, corridors, hall-ways – all become scenes of psychosis, breakdown,
underscored by Mark’s search for order even in the maelstrom: “.
Earlier, Mark claims to Helen
that he is at war with all women to which Helen replies:
“There is nothing in common among women except menstruation… I
come from a place when evil is easier to pinpoint because you can see it in the
flesh. I find pathetic these stories of women contaminating humans.”
The notion of Woman as embodiment
of disease is as old as Eve; in Possession,
disease is the phenomenology of division, the thing that is borne from angst
and paranoia. Anna recognizes it in the abjection of her being: “We are all the
same – different versions in different bodies; like insects” she says. There is
so much rage in Anna, in her world. Rage and pain. Think of the scene in which
she all but tortures a young protégé in a sadistic ritual that emphasizes the
notion that only through pain will the female body know ambition and a desire
for success.
“Fear does not come from the outside. Nor is
it composed of old memories. It has no past, no physiology. Nothing in common,
either, with having one’s breath taken away. Here fear is being itself. Where
can one flee, where find refuge? In what shelter can one take refuge? Space is
nothing but a ‘horrible outside-inside’”
What Possession does is make this fear manifest in the body of both Anna
and the thing that she has given birth to. To move beyond narrative absurdity,
the spectator must equate the thing with Anna’s inner space
Anna’s breakdown is a breakdown
of being, a spiral into the madness of division. She feels the world as a
crumbling decaying wreck and the thing that lives in the house is not merely an
exterior manifestation of her sexuality; this would be too simplistic and the
scene in which she is having sex with this Other would suggest narcissism.
Instead, if the thing is the exterior manifestation of fear itself, fear of
what is to come, then it no longer becomes narcissism.
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