Possession - Andrzej Zulawski - 1981

If ever an argument can be made against generic pigeonholing then surely exhibit A for the prosecution would be Andrzej Zulawski’s apocalyptic horror/art-house/thriller/drama/surrealist domestic dispute picture Possession. The film is often advertised as a horror film in the vein of the European demonic possession films that were released in the wake of Bill Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), and one of the film’s region 1 DVD releases even sees the film unceremoniously dumped into a ‘Drive-In’ double pack with the late career Mario Bava Repulsion knock off Shock (1977). If there is one place Zulawski’s picture explicitly does not belong, it’s that ye old home of American teenage mating rituals.

The film begins with images of a decrepit late cold war era Berlin. Zulawski casts the action primarily in streets that surround that omnipresent image of government control and repression in the form of the Berlin Wall (it should be noted here that Zulawski is very much a victim of government oppression, he has, since this picture spent his career making films in France following suppression of his work in his native Poland).

We immediately find ourselves in the company of Mark (Sam Neill) who appears to work for some shady government agency, and is just returning from an extended assignment. He arrives home and is immediately caught in a domestic argument with his spouse Anna (Isabelle Adjani). With this Zulawski throws the audience immediately off kilter. The argument refers to many things we are not privy to, and tensions between the pair have clearly been building for some time, exploding before our eyes without clear exposition within the first minutes of the film, leaving the viewer confused in medias res.

For the first thirty or so minutes, the film comes across like Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) recast with mental patients. Both central performers give such extreme performances that it’s amazing that they remained stable following conclusion of the picture. Sam Neill, not a stranger to psychological horror, flits wildly between Somnambulistic calm and hysterical rage, whilst Adjani (who deservedly won the best actress award at Cannes for her performance) provides a stunning mental collapse that soon becomes deeply uncomfortable to watch. Previous to this picture my primary experience of Adjani’s work had been her ‘kooky’ turn in Polanski’s The Tenant (1976) and her purposefully muted and ethereal performances in Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978) and Herzog’s remake of Nosferatu (1979), which made the impact of her performance here all the more overwhelming.

After this opening half hour, and Mark’s subsequent hiring of a private investigator to find out what his wife is up to, the film’s previous preoccupation with the breakdown of a family unit makes way for surrealism and symbolism, as it is revealed that as well as conducting an extra-marital affair with the sinister bi-sexual kung-fu loving Terrence Stamp alike Heinrich (Heinz Bennett). Anna is also shacked up in a dilapidated squat with a creature that appears like the half formed afterbirth of a H.R. Giger creation (actually created by Carlo Rambaldi, who would go on to operate ET!) . A mess of phallic tentacles and goo, could this creature be a result of Anna’s frenzied insanity? (ala Cronenberg’s 1979 divorce catharsis The Brood) And holy shit is it slowly evolving into something more human possibly? (Clive Barker was surely taking notes).

The film descends further into delirium as Anna appears to miscarry in cinema’s most disturbing subway passage scene outside of Gasper Noė’s Irreversible (2002). Bodies begin to pile up, Mark gets involved in a relationship with an idealised doppelganger of Anna, the government agency decide they need to ‘terminate’ Mark’s contract, and all the while Anna’s secret lover begins to evolve as the plot moves towards complete Armageddon.

If this all sounds like unbridled chaos, that’s because it is. Fortunately Zulawski somehow manages to keep control of proceedings and directs with the assurance of someone who truly believes in his work. The opening half of the film is played out in cramped modernist apartments that seem to be as much made up of tight corridors as rooms. Zulawski’s camera prowling round the abodes with a frenzied abandon complementing our protagonists increasingly fractured states. By the second half though, he cools and we seem to be in a Berlin more akin to the Lower East Side in the early 80’s, large old spaces crippled by a decaying ghettoisation. He then turns everything on its head and creates an action cinema pastiche to conclude proceedings. By this point it is more than evident Zulawski is one of those precious mad fuckers who laugh in the face of the ‘language’ of cinema.

Zulawski has continued a career of defying generic expectations he has gone on to subvert such areas as science fiction, the period drama and the musical. A one of a kind maverick, enter the world of Zulawski with an open mind and reap the benefits of a disturbed and fevered imagination.

INLAND EMPIRE - David Lynch - 2006

Whilst one of the most critically regarded of the post ‘New Hollywood’ generation of American Auteurs, the work of David Lynch has always divided audiences. This is a man whose films carry such a distinctly subverted sense of scenario and logic that they have their own stylistic term (‘Lynchian’ now being pretty much a blanket term for any film considered “dark and weird”). Wading through his oeuvre, you get the increasing sense that only studio forced commercial imperatives have stopped Lynch from jettisoning such archaic forms as ‘narrative’ and ‘structure’ in favour of just completely discharging the cruel, grotesque and aberrant worlds that clearly inhabit his mind onto film.

Now freed from these fetters of studio imposition, and armed solely with a Sony PD150 (I’m no expert but understand this is only one notch above a standard commercial digital video camera), this is Lynch the painter and sculptor set free. INLAND EMPIRE presents us with Mr. David Lynch uncensored, unabashed and unbridled, the purest ‘Lynchian’ universe yet, mainlined uncut straight into our retinas. An experience that is by turns confusing, surreal, maddening, frightening, disturbing and hilarious.

Trying to define the film in terms of a brief synopsis is an unenviable task, but essentially the film concerns one Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), a Hollywood actress who receives her dream role in a film titled On High in Blue Tomorrows. This turns out to be a remake of a Polish production never finished due to the mysterious deaths of its two main stars. For the first 45 minutes or so this makes up the plot that we manage to loosely grasp on to. Beyond this point though we appear to enter the subjective world of Nikki’s apparent mental breakdown, as the film breaks off into strands way too numerous and sinuous to mention here as we delve deeper and deeper into planet Lynch for the next two hours (the finished product falling some eight minutes short of three hours).

Whether intentional or not, Lynch has created a provocative piece of work with INLAND EMPIRE. When cinema usually attempts to break free from the burdens of its status as the bastard child of literature, we find it confined to the margins of art installations. Lynch’s film attempts to defy such rules, the world he has created here does not have any obvious precedents in literature (an argument could be made for the great provocateur Joyce, but let’s not bother). This swirling sense of dream logic leaves the viewer with questions as to the nature of cinematic purity. Is INLAND EMPIRE in its staunch refusal of traditional storytelling devices, a final realisation of the language of cinema?

This unwillingness to compromise his vision unfortunately leaves the viewer having to do so at the cost of their own enjoyment. For example, our struggle to comprehend the events unfolding leaves us unable to fully appreciate the nuances of Laura Dern’s finest moment so far. In an unforgiving performance, Dern is forced to embody many difference characterisations and does so brilliantly. A bewildered film starlet, downtrodden housewife and destitute streetwalker, Dern embodies all the characters convincingly and with an empathy that lends a definite emotional resonance to a film that could otherwise appear too incorporeal to accommodate any sense of gravitas.

The new future world of digital Lynch also leads to a series of compromises. The freedom such small scale shooting has granted him comes at the cost of the lush cinematography we usually associate with Lynch. The PD150 gives the film the occasional look of a film student dissertation project, yet Lynch somehow largely works this to his advantage. The camera seems to spend 90% of its time in unflatteringly obtrusive medium close-ups with lighting rigged up with all the subtlety of fluorescent tubing in a late night takeaway. Lending the film a cold, paranoid, voyeuristic and increasingly claustrophobic look, it’s perfectly 21st century.

Continuing this theme, rather than the noirish Los Angeles pictured in Mulholland Drive (2001), here Lynch gives his adopted home town short shrift, there appears to be no middle ground between the opulent plasticity of the Beverly Hills highlife and the ragged boulevards of broken dreams around Hollywood and Vine. This makes for another fine addition to the ‘city of angels’ many unflattering portraits.

One area which undeniably remains strong is the soundtrack, despite the lack of compositions from regular collaborator Angelo Badalamenti, the music still carries the evocative ambiance we associate with Lynch, here appearing in the form of Eno like ambient passages and haunting chanteuse numbers (ala Julee Cruise). Lynch’s tendency to subvert pop standards remains solidly in place as well, this time “The Locomotion” being the track forevermore tainted with a certain seediness.

And so to finally return to my initial point, if Lynch as a director divides cinemagoers, then INLAND EMPIRE is the film that divides Lynch fans, while some will decree its unsettling fevered breakdown nightmare as his finest and truest work to date, an equal amount will no doubt see it as an overlong step too far into surrealism at the cost of structured enjoyment.

Personally I found the best method is to adjust to the film’s inner rhythm, start to get bored regardless, then find yourself drawn back in by a moment of pure audaciousness, repeating every few minutes for three hours.