Misunderstood Monsters: What’s Love Got to Do with It in ‘Possession’?
By Matt Konopka
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Welcome fellow monster kids to Misunderstood Monsters. This is where I, Matt Konopka, sink my fangs into all sorts of beasts, ghouls, and creatures from above while I search for the humanity behind their frightening exteriors. From monster favorites such as The Wolf Man to obscure monsters like the whistling Shadmock, there is more to these fiends than bad hair days and gooey tentacles. Within them all is a piece of ourselves.
Director Andrzej Zulawski was a visionary filmmaker who saw film as a weapon. Not just a form of entertainment, but a visual blade that could cut deep into the soul. There is perhaps no greater example of this belief than his cult classic, Possession. Ferocious. Horrific. Powerful in ways words can hardly describe. In terms of cinema, it’s one of the most stunning displays of a dying love ever depicted on screen, with a creature at the center of it representative of all the anger and passion and heartache that comes with separation.
Inspired by the grief over his own divorce at the time, Zulawski wrote Possession with Frederic Tuten, intent on capturing the indescribable feeling of that terrible period. In it, we meet Mark (Sam Neill), a spy who has just returned home to West Berlin only to discover his wife Anna (Isabelle Adjani) wants a divorce. She admits she has found another lover in a peace and love eccentric, Heinrich (Heinz Bennent). Devastated by the news, Mark hires a private investigator to follow Anna, eventually discovering that she is harboring a dark secret that goes far beyond her affair, one with tentacles and an insatiable hunger for all things sexual and devious.
That’s the simple explanation of a film that by all accounts defies explanation. What plays out during the two-hour runtime of Possession is a dubious tale far more complex than a creature feature “about a woman who fucks an octopus,” as Zulawski once described it. The film is so divisive in its perplexity, in fact, that it received both a standing ovation and boos from the crowd when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981. This is because it taps into something so very primal and uncomfortable that it either feels like a reflection of your worst memories or like something deeply personal that you aren’t supposed to witness. Upon seeing the film, Adjani referred to it as “psychological pornography,” saying “the camera has no right to go that deep down in the soul.” Right or wrong, that penetration of the mind Possession achieves is what makes its monster so fascinating.
As we later learn, the so-called “octopus” — more of a slimy mush pile with tentacles — is a creature Anna has been keeping in an apartment known only to her. There, she makes sweet, sweet love to it in between murdering anyone who lays eyes upon the thing. Zulawski originally meant to feature the monster more, but thanks to a complete lack of preparation from special effects designer Carlo Rambaldi, he was forced to cut down its screen time. As a result, the creature is even more of an enigma than intended. Yet, underneath all of the slimy flesh is a rather simple metaphor for that thing we so desperately crave and want back in the midst of an ending relationship: passion.
Told from Mark’s point of view, what Anna wants and what she becomes is in many ways viewed as monstrous. She assumes Mark sees her as “a monster, a whore,” to which he later confirms, “I think of you as an animal. A woman possessed.” Whether or not Anna truly is overtaken by a sinister force ceases to matter. We see everything through Mark’s eyes, and what he sees is the woman who betrayed him, the mother tearing his family apart, the love he once knew but claims to feel nothing for now. Even Anna’s blue dress with the various knots in the back takes on an almost “other” form as if her spine is protruding and warping her image. After Heinrich reports to Mark about what he saw in Anna’s apartment, Mark suggests that the frightened fool may have seen God and been unable to comprehend it. But, considering it’s only men who see the thing, is it not a possibility that what Mark and these men are observing is the sexual power of Anna, an incomprehensible force that scares them and appears hideous to their male egos?
Zulawski presents this perception of Anna as the monster, but — and this is part of the reason the film has received such praise over the years — he is careful to not confirm Mark’s viewpoint. Just the opposite. Throughout Possession, it’s Mark who comes off poorly. He says he feels nothing for Anna, yet he fights tooth and nail to keep her. He screams at her in the middle of a coffee shop after she displays shock over him declaring he’ll no longer be a part of their son’s life. He hits her out of frustration that he can’t understand her (if he ever did in the first place). What neither he nor Heinrich can grapple with is that Anna yearns for the freedom to explore her passion outside of the confines of what both of these men want from her. “Fuck your needs,” says Mark. Anna is tired of being chained down to what men want. The creature resting in the bed of her apartment is merely the manifestation of her own needs which she seeks to satisfy. No wonder Heinrich is intent on killing what he views as his new competition.
So, yeah, Anna “fucks an octopus,” and all across the world, tentacle porn enthusiasts wept. And yes, she murders men as her gooey, gradually-becoming-more-human lover watches from the corner of a shadowy apartment reflective of her subconscious desires. Yet Anna is no more a possessed vessel as she is a woman desperate to experience the love she and Mark once had. The “octopus” eventually finishes transforming into a copy of Mark, a copy which finds the copy of Anna (aka schoolteacher Helen), bringing on what appears to be the apocalypse. This is Zulawski’s somber way of saying that the initial passion we feel in a relationship is fleeting. It grows and it changes, but it can never be recreated, no matter how much Anna or anyone else wishes it to.
Anna’s “monster” was never the monster. The monster of Possession is the terrifying inevitability of life and the knowledge that love doesn’t always last. There are no heroes. No monsters. Only two people who are unhappy and lost in how to deal with that. That confusion kills them in the end, kills the world, even, a necessary lesson that when it’s time to let go, we must. Letting go is the only way any of us can ever be free. 🩸
About
Matt is a writer and wannabe werewolf who began his love of horror at the ripe old age of 3 with Carpenter’s Christine. He has a horror podcast called Killer Horror Critic which he does with his wonderful wife and has previously been published on Bloody Disgusting, Shudder’s The Bite, and Daily Grindhouse. You can also find more of his reviews and ramblings at his blog, KillerHorrorCritic.com.
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