My interpretation
-
Child_OfThe_Moon — 13 years ago(October 04, 2012 03:39 AM)
Sorry Ken Slaggbut I think you missed the point of this film - it 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 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.
I think even that is only a surface interpretationas Anna (Adjani) explains after the scene where she goes insane, hers is a struggle between chance and faith. Anna's lack of faith in the marriage and her inability to commit to it (her 'disease') rubs off onto Mark, and he ends up sacrificing his sanity and the welfare of his son for the chance that his wife will return to normal. Instead of having enough faith in the situation to accept the divorce, Mark denies her disease by dismissing her violence/insanity and refuses to believe she is a murderer, and consequently ends up personifying the disease himself by mimicking her behavior.
Even though Anna realizes she is in an ongoing battle between meaninglessness/chance and belief/faith, she can't make a choice because she doesn't know which is which; she could have faith in a new man and his ideas (Heinrich himself symbolizes faith/belief in God), or she could have faith in what she already has, by remaining with her husband. Anna's preoccupation between which path is the right one to take seems to be what drives her mad. When Anna harms Heinrich in order to keep the disease alive, Mark loses his fear of Heinrich and kills him, further solidifying his belief that faith is weak/hopeless and chaos/chance is the only reality. This causes Mark to spiral further into madness until the end, where he rejects Anna and his diseased self/the monster by killing them. However, he has also rejected Helen (another symbol of faith), opting instead for a belief in neither/the middle ground (he chooses Margie).
It seems that Mark has made the right decision, in the last scene when young Bob, influenced by his diseased parents, seems to sense danger, while unsuspecting Helen goes to open the door. But instead of opening herself up to harm's way, we see Helen invincible to the evil forces that await her. So in the end, either faith does hold some miraculous protective power, or it is the harbinger of evil in disguise. -
GleamingMemory — 13 years ago(October 04, 2012 03:56 PM)
"This causes Mark to spiral further into madness until the end, where he rejects Anna and his diseased self/the monster by killing them."
I don't believe Mark killed Anna and the monsterwas she not killed by the shootout by the police? The monster escapes, right? Goes back to the apartment where Helen is?" -
shuttlebug — 13 years ago(December 02, 2012 04:02 AM)
It's so weird on this message board that people feel so concrete about their interpretations. I don't find anything simple about this movie, whether it's an allegory for divorce or about an actual demon or about straight-up people experiencing psychosis/mental collapse I just don't find it plausible that someone can be like "This is what it's all about. It's that simple. There ya go, now you've got 'Possession' all figured out, on to the next movie." It's not simple because it's an extremely intricate movie with immense complexity. There are scenes that are edited into the film that throw you off once you feel comfortable with one idea/interpretation. The narrative becomes incoherent, will begin to make some sense, then fade out of focus again there are moments in the film that feel so deliberately random and chaotic that it makes me feel that it's impossible to pinpoint everything down so easily, so cut and dry, you know?
I just love discussing the film without achieving an objective to "figure it out completely" but more to just reflect and analyze the possibilities it's like a mirror within a mirror, within its reflection is an endless loop of interpretations. I have my own personal interpretation, and that alone makes the movie really frightening and scary for me. I found it entertaining on that level because it functions well as a horror film, which is what drew me to own/watch it, but it's also so complicated that you cannot possibly categorize or box this movie up into one explanation, one genre, one theme, one allegory, one metaphor, etc. I like how the OP just says "this is my interpretation" instead of saying this is "THE" interpretation because we can go back and forth on this board forever if we want to claim that someone isn't "getting it" when they're actually providing a solid possible interpretation. That's what is fun about the movie but equally frustrating as an audience. -
Bree_33 — 12 years ago(May 08, 2013 01:08 PM)
I agree with kinoman-2:
The very reason why this film was lambasted by so many people is because it requires the full use of imagination on the part of the viewer. Those who like films to be linear or over-explained (almost 90% of all films and almost 100% of all Hollywood films) will call this film confusing, baffling, hysterical, etc. However, very few directors are able to use cinematic space as Zulawski does in this film. This doesn't appeal to your rational part, it's supposed to connect with you on spiritual or deeply emotional level, it's supposed to appeal to something in you that can't be rationalized or explained verbally. Possession is a piece of pure cinema, no less.- __@
`<, - ()/ ()- -__@
`<, - ()/ ()
nec spe, nec metu - __@
-
cherryblossompromise-613-638357 — 12 years ago(November 29, 2013 04:14 AM)
The reason it ended up banned was through the rejection of the sequence where Anna is having sex with squid like monster and the child committing suicide.
I only literally found the film yesterday, after searching for years for it to watch. And it is inexplicably good and complex. And a fantastic portrayal of a marriage breakdown, that affects the psyche of all involved. -
warrior-poet — 11 years ago(January 06, 2015 01:19 PM)
Exactly right! Like films such as "Take Shelter", "The Babadook", "Triangle", etc. "Possession" allows for multiple simultaneous interpretations, all of which coexist to varying degrees of literal meaning on one end, allegorical meaning on the other. To confine the film into just one interpretation is folly. While ultimately up to each individual viewer to pinpoint their preferred interpretation, I think it's wise to understand that films such as this are imbued with multiple layers that are not mutually exclusive.
I'm something new entirely. With my own set of rules. I'm Dexter. Boo.
-
ben_oblivion — 12 years ago(January 22, 2014 03:03 PM)
I think Shuttlebug summed it up best by stating the film is much too intricate and complex to have a single interpretation, and that almost any interpretation has validity on some level or layer of the film.
That being said, though the title and very concept on the film itself is a metaphorical play on Catholicism based demonic possession, I believe the fact it is used as the title is evidence itself that it is purposely and merely the easiest, most shallow, and most transparent layer of the film. I think for it to be as straightforward in that regard as The Omen, Rosemary's Baby, or The Exorcist, it would require either or both the filmmaker's own belief in a God/Satan system of reality, or in the very least an attempt to use the audience's belief in this system to frighten them. We must remember that horror is oftentimes a reflection of the creator's own fear of their external experience, for if they did not fear the subject themselves how could they ever convincingly portray it as fearful to someone else? Possession does not seem to give any true, clear validity to the belief in Satan or in the Christian-based God, and never mentions this dichotomy of evil despite delving deep into the exploration of what "God" is. I suppose, with a stretch, Sister Chance could be interpreted as Satan, but a further and more detailed understanding of how chance is used in the film pretty much dismantles that.
I personally believe more so in the validity of the "psychological manifestation of her guilt/desires into her idolized, surrogate family unit" interpretation, I think there are a lot of things in the film that support this, but again, it is merely a layer, a small fragment, and rather rudimentary to the film as a whole. Yes, this film and many others coming out of this particular aspect of this particular European culture at this particular time are steeped in the ideas of psycho-analysis. The psychological state of the characters, and especially the psychological effect they will have on their son, is openly discussed in the film. However, this is not a Cronenberg film, Zulawski is clearly not commenting on the dangers of psycho-analysis, the pharmaceutical industry, the practices of doctors, or anything of the sort that Cronenberg seems so periodically obsessed with, and often times similarly uses physical manifestation to explore (The Brood, The Fly, Dead Ringers).
The more complete, deeper, and profound meaning of this film, though I do not claim to have found it or know anyone that has (despite many of my friends writing huge papers about this film for school), lies somewhere in the realm of the metaphysical, the exploration of this concept of "god", and the creation of reality. My own farfetched-ness aside and digressed, I must still agree with Shuttlebug in that there are far too many unexplained threads and dangling concepts purposely left throughout the film to illicit any solitary interpretation. This is not a film of answers, it is a film born from questions.
In regards to the child killing himself at the end, I'm not so sure that is truly what is happening. Perhaps. I cannot discredit it. But it seems far too easy and straightforward, aside from the simple fact that drowning yourself is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT and takes an incredible amount of dedication and tolerance to pain, which I just don't think that child would have. It is important to note the occurrences earlier in the film. The first shot we see of the possible family unit, the first shot that is inside the house itself, is of Anna in the kitchen, and Mark in the bathroom, watching his son in the bathtub. He calls for Anna to "Come and admire him", and they watch and laugh while he plays in the water. Again, the child is in the bath the first time Helen, the teacher/surrogate mother character, comes to the house. Note what game is being played in this scene. Bob, the child, is making his father count how long he can hold his breath under water. This bathtub incident at the end of the film is not a secluded occurrence, it is steeped in symbolism and playing off many things we already subconsciously know, the least of which being that the bathtub is this child's safe space, the place he feels the strongest connection to his father and his family unit.
Something unmentioned here that I find seemingly very important is the use of location. I don't believe anybody I know, and probably anybody on this thread, would be able to fully and accurately interpret that because it is a different of culture, a difference in the way our perception has been built and effected every moment of our lives, because nobody I know grew up in the shadow of the Berlin Wall in the 1970's and 80's. The opening shot of the film is the Berlin Wall stretching into the distance as far as the eye can see, and the second shot is it stretching out in the opposite direction. Then, later, when he finds Anna's house of horrors, discovers the bodies in the fridge, and is spinning around