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" So out-and-out bonkers that the film itself seems imbued with an unholy spirit, Possession remains one of the all-time great cult classics, a pseudo-horror shocker that puts the rest of its demonic-possession brethren, from The Exorcist to this weekend&amp;#039;s Deliver Us from Evil, to shame. Its camera constantly circling, circling, circling to suggest a spiral into depravity, madness, and irrational evil, Polish director Andrzej Zulawski&amp;#039;s 1981 masterpiece is like no other film before or after it, a swirling, hallucinatory portrait of a marriage in shambles and a wife, husband, and lover ensnared in a stew of passions that lead only to Armageddon. Even when its Repulsion-by-way-of-Kubrick-by-way-of-Cronenberg story so intimately expresses its protagonists&amp;#039; internal states that it loses basic coherence, there&amp;#039;s a frightening majesty to its lunacy. To see it is to never forget it. The story is set in bleak Berlin and concerns spy Mark (Sam Neill), who returns from a long mission to find that his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) has been sleeping with another man. This thrusts their relationship into turmoil, which Zulawski stages as a series of increasingly violent arguments and tantrums in which the two scream, weep, and claw at each other with a ferocity that lets the film get knee-deep into the characters&amp;#039; shared pit of resentment, anger, bitterness, hurt, and desperation. Anna&amp;#039;s new man turns out to be Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), a strange, weathered German hedonist dressed in open-buttoned shirts who lives with his mother and believes in taking what he wants no matter the consequences. Heinrich&amp;#039;s attempts to make Mark understand and accept Anna for who she is merely drive Mark into further misery, especially given that her departure also means that, in the process, she&amp;#039;s abandoning their young son Bob (Michael Hogben). The first third of Possession plays like an extended depiction of the fallout from adultery and divorce, with Zulawski&amp;#039;s camera so regularly up-close-and-personal with Neill and Adjani that the atmosphere becomes suffocating. That mood is amplified [warning: spoilers ahead] once it&amp;#039;s revealed that Anna is, in fact, also seeing another man \u2014 and, as learned first by a detective hired by Neill to follow Anna, then by that snoop&amp;#039;s boyfriend, and then by Heinrich and Neill, Anna&amp;#039;s second lover is a hideously tentacled, blood-streaked monster that feeds on the corpses of her murder victims. And did I mention that Bob&amp;#039;s schoolteacher is an Anna doppelganger? Or that, in a flashback, after she speaks to a giant church crucifix in guttural moans, Anna miscarries on a subway tunnel floor, flailing about with a profane intensity \u2014 all screaming, grunting, body-contorting, milk carton-smashing wildness \u2014 that culminates with her retching on the floor as fluids pour forth from her ears and her crotch? In both form and content, Possession is nuts. From its incessant twin imagery and its use of white and red, to its corresponding shots of people holding and staring at naked torsos, Zulawski&amp;#039;s film is awash in symbolism, only some of which makes total sense. Yet that overarching feeling of not quite grasping everything the director is going for is precisely what enhances the film&amp;#039;s power. To watch it is to feel as if everyone involved is possessed by a vision \u2014 of sin, of power, of abuse, of primal urges \u2014 that&amp;#039;s all the more terrifying for eschewing true lucidity. Whether Zulawski means for all of his supernatural material to be taken at face value is never completely clear, even as the story barrels toward a finale of apocalyptic portent. By avoiding intelligible A-B plotting, he locates a larger feeling of hopelessness, anxiety, and despair familiar to anyone who&amp;#039;s ever felt deceived and spurned by \u2014 or in frantic need of escape from \u2014 a loved one. Possession&amp;#039;s surreal combination of marital drama, sexual thriller, and gory monster movie \u2014 replete with an endless stream of mumbo-jumbo philosophical dialogue \u2014 makes it a singular work. Yet what marks it as a great work is its lead performance from Isabelle Adjani. While Neill is a committed counterpart, exuding unruly dementia as a man driven beyond reason to hold on to the woman he loves, it&amp;#039;s Adjani&amp;#039;s one-of-a-kind turn as a tormented spouse that truly commands the screen. Her big eyes alternately radiating sorrow, dread, spite, deviousness, and far-off insanity, Adjani is a force of unbridled, unfathomable nature, tearing through the film (and herself, as when she takes an electric knife to her throat) with destructiveness that&amp;#039;s stunning in its vehemence. Regardless of whether she&amp;#039;s possessed by the Devil, some unspeakable evil, or just the all-consuming grief and desolation that can come from the death of a marriage, Zulawski views her condition as soul-deep, strange, and inexplicable. Which, in turn, transforms Possession from a run-of-the-mill demonic-takeover tale into something more mysterious. Not to mention, in its bewildering end-of-days final sights, far more haunting. Watch the movie on YouTube "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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