Possession 1981 [upd] < ESSENTIAL 2025 >
If you’ve only seen the famous GIF of Isabelle Adjani convulsing in a subway tunnel, you know the image but not the context. Directed by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski, Possession is a brutal, beautiful, and baffling masterpiece. Here’s why you need to see it—and how to survive the experience. On the surface, the plot is simple: Mark (Sam Neill) returns home to West Berlin after a long business trip to find that his wife, Anna (Isabelle Adjani), wants a divorce. She has been having an affair.
Sam Neill, fresh off Jurassic Park fame, has called it the most difficult role of his career. He and Adjani reportedly hated each other on set, which only fuels the film’s volcanic energy. Possession is not a "good" movie in the conventional sense. It is a masterpiece of chaos. Watching it feels like a fever breaking. possession 1981
Adjani was so traumatized by filming this scene (which took over a week of 12-hour days) that she reportedly tried to cut her own throat on set. The director had to talk her down. If you’ve only seen the famous GIF of
But this is no Kramer vs. Kramer .
As Mark follows Anna through the divided city, the film dissolves into a waking nightmare. Their arguments are not arguments but exorcisms. The apartment walls sweat. The camera spins like a trapped animal. And then... there is the apartment Anna keeps renting on the other side of town. Inside, she is harboring a grotesque, tentacled, unnamed thing . On the surface, the plot is simple: Mark
In a single, unbroken take, Anna walks through a narrow, tiled tunnel, drops her shopping bags, and begins to convulse. Milk and blood pour from her body. She laughs, screams, and collapses in a spastic, orgasmic fit of despair. It is not acting. It looks like possession.
Yes, this is a horror movie about divorce—where the “monster” is grief, infidelity, and the destruction of the self. You don’t watch Possession ; you endure it. And no scene encapsulates that better than Adjani’s legendary subway corridor breakdown.