Explanation, Please…
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combatreview — 16 years ago(April 29, 2009 05:35 AM)
Well, it's about a secret agent who's come back home during a time of heightened international tension, to discover that his wife has been having an affair. Then after some lovely rows in which furniture is thrown, she runs off and her exact duplicate turns up as a babysitter. Meanwhile, the husband has tracked down his wife's lover, an insane German weirdo with a thing for medallions and karate, and presumably hypnotism given that his smug face is way too ugly to convincingly pull Isabelle Adjani.
After a weird conversation it turns out that neither man knows where Izzy has gone, so the freaky German guy hires a private detective to find her. Meanwhile, Izzy has set up in a dingy flat where she kills people, chops them up and puts them in the fridge, inbetween having sex with a tentacled monster that frankly looks like somebody has sneezed on her bed during a nosebleed. The private detective turns up and she stabs him to death before putting him in the fridge. Then Freaky German lover boy appears and gets stabbed, much to his surprise. He goes to Sam Neill for help and says "Sam Neill, help, she craizy!" Sam Neill helps by smashing him over the head and drowning him in a blocked toilet.
Then Sam Neil finds his wife, and she explains that she had a freaky miscarriage in a subway where she basically went completely mad and threw her shopping everywhere, before having some weird episode staring at an effigy of Christ. They get it on. Then, later, Sam Neill catches Izzy in flagrante with the now much bigger tentacle-monster, which is wildly pleasuring her naked screaming form.
Then Sam Neill goes for a motorbike ride and is shot at by some coppers. He staggers up an iron staircase when Izzy appears, looking luminous and accompanied by his perfect duplicate - the monster in its final form. It seems to be a bit Antichristy. Then they all get machine gunned by the coppers and only Mr Antichrist gets away.
Back at home, Sam and Izzy's son is scared by a strange figure arriving at the door - Mr Antichrist, we think. As Izzy's double goes to answer the door, the kid runs up stairs and throws himself, face down, in the bath. Then there's a nuclear war.
Really, I can't think how you didn't follow all of this.
Mind you, as you said, it's also about the breakdown of a marriage. The emotions of violation, horror, and anguish all find expression here, but presented by surreal means. The first time I watched it I found it emotionally very raw - even thought the story is seemingly fantastical gibberish, it actually conjures a disturbingly accurate sense of the hysterical pitch and circular pain of a breakup. So it's kind of 'true' despite being fantastical. -
jriddle73 — 16 years ago(May 17, 2009 09:34 AM)
Mind you, as you said, it's also about the breakdown of a marriage. The emotions of violation, horror, and anguish all find expression here, but presented by surreal means. The first time I watched it I found it emotionally very raw - even thought the story is seemingly fantastical gibberish, it actually conjures a disturbingly accurate sense of the hysterical pitch and circular pain of a breakup. So it's kind of 'true' despite being fantastical.
The story is about how each of the two principals create, in their own way, a doppelganger of the other, creatures presumably cleansed of all the unpleasantness that led to the end of the relationship, but still products of the broken emotional state that created them. The end of the relationship is analogized to the literal end of the world.
It really is a great movie.
"The Dig"
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/ -
jriddle73 — 16 years ago(May 18, 2009 03:03 PM)
Here:
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/2008/12/possession-1981.html -
jriddle73 — 14 years ago(August 01, 2011 12:45 AM)
True enough.
"The Dig"
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/ -
cry_ablaZe — 14 years ago(August 02, 2011 01:05 PM)
for me the strongest message in all of the film is at the very end when the kid runs upstairs and basically drowns himself. as a child from a broken marriage it symbolizes to me that children are the most unfortunate subjects in such a situation. the kid drowning himself as a consequence goes to show how a kid can go to extreme lengths to put the blame on himself maybe or even put himself in danger/pain to avoid the conflict of the parents.
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jriddle73 — 11 years ago(December 22, 2014 04:46 AM)
It is the end of the world for him.
"The Dig"
http://cinemarchaeologist.blogspot.com/ -
DingusStudley — 10 years ago(November 19, 2015 08:47 PM)
I know this is a year old response, but i didn't think the kid was drowning himself. That seems like far too fantasticial and bizarre of a thing even for this movie. I figured he was playing dead, he clearly feared what was happening.
Any ideas as to why he yelled don't let him in? Did he somehow know this wasn't his real dad? Was he happy with the kind teacher and knew how awful things were with his parents, and thus didn't want them around? -
GleamingMemory — 10 years ago(November 23, 2015 06:52 PM)
Dingus Studley: This film is an allegory for divorce. The "monster" is actually the product of Adjani's internal guilt, shame and deep sexual desires that have been physically manifested into the external reality. The monster evolves into a replicate of her husband - her idealized husband. Adjani's own doppelganger appears in the form of her lookalike - the school teacher Helen, who is the idealized wife, in Sam Neill's eyes.
At the end, when the monster goes back to the house (After Adjani and Neill are killed) the boy begs Helen not to open the door and then promptly drowns himself (or hides, if that's how you want to perceive it) in the bathtub - the "idealized" husband and wife are reuniting but the boy senses that it is a doomed marriage, as he already knows the troubles of his family life. That is the symbolic meaning behind the whole world ending at the film's end: they are a dysfunctional family unit destined to end destructively. Nothing in this film is literal. Like I said, it is an allegory.
The film was in part based on director Zulawski's own ruined marriage and the film on some level explores the devastating effects of divorce and the stress upon the children involved. It isn't really much of a "horror" film in the classic sense as it is a psychological drama.
