Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski made Possession (1981) after his self-exile in France and the great success of The Most Important Thing: Love (L'important c'est d'aimer, 1975). Set in West Berlin, Possession explores Anna and Mark’s marriage dissolution into chaos, and, in that sense, it is a domestic drama, full of political connotations implanted by the constant depiction of the Wall. However, due to its puzzling story that includes violent fights, unexpected killings, inexplicable doppelgängers, hysterical performances, and a notorious miscarriage scene in a subway station, somehow explaining the presence of the film’s polymorphic monster, Possession is often limited to the genre of horror, and its complexity is overlooked. Indeed, the state of Possession is pandemonium, and Żuławski’s anarchic artistic mentality, attracted by a turbulent directorial approach, only intensifies the sense of disintegration, despair, and horror in the film. But chaos only rules in a well-designed form, as little seems incidental in Żuławski’s compositions. Taking a closer look, one can observe a solid geometry that divides the cinematic space while imprisoning the protagonists into two separate worlds that do not communicate. Division, therefore, becomes a kind of ‘leitmotif’ in Possession, present in Anna and Mark’s alienated relationship, in the characters’ contrast between themselves and their doppelgängers and, finally, in the partitioning of Berlin.   

Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski made Possession (1981) after his self-exile in France and the great success of The Most Important Thing: Love (L’important c’est d’aimer, 1975). Set in West Berlin, Possession explores Anna and Mark’s marriage dissolution into chaos, and, in that sense, it is a domestic drama, full of political connotations implanted by the constant depiction of the Wall. However, due to its puzzling story that includes violent fights, unexpected killings, inexplicable doppelgängers, hysterical performances, and a notorious miscarriage scene in a subway station, somehow explaining the presence of the film’s polymorphic monster, Possession is often limited to the genre of horror, and its complexity is overlooked. Indeed, the state of Possession is pandemonium, and Żuławski’s anarchic artistic mentality, attracted by a turbulent directorial approach, only intensifies the sense of disintegration, despair, and horror in the film. But chaos only rules in a well-designed form, as little seems incidental in Żuławski’s compositions. Taking a closer look, one can observe a solid geometry that divides the cinematic space while imprisoning the protagonists into two separate worlds that do not communicate. Division, therefore, becomes a kind of ‘leitmotif’ in Possession, present in Anna and Mark’s alienated relationship, in the characters’ contrast between themselves and their doppelgängers and, finally, in the partitioning of Berlin.