Possession (1981)

Product Information

So, either this means the new release is, as you say, "director approved" with an asterisk, i.e. they use the old restauration as a baseline for their tinkering with the 4K transfer, or the French rights-holders are lying and claiming that he approved the 4K transfer. Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.67:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Andrzej Zulawski's Possession arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Mondo Vision.

clever enough. While the Hebrew here is more or less straightforward translations of the English words likeforms when they become the final letter of any given word. Those final forms should obviously be found on the

ago actress Frances Farmer, and, like The Possession, containing the "Based on a true story" statement. A commentary-free look at how much or how little the Berlin locations used in the film have changed in the 31 years since the film was made. had a much more thorough education in Hebrew than I ever did, had to provide the actual translations. But here's the In the scene shown, the blue tone present in some transfers of the film (and in the "before" image which was adjusted to show those same colours) is specific to the transfer itself. It was not present in the original film. As a portrait of a relationship collapsing into madness the film would be strong enough meat, but underscoring the drama are a number of potent metaphoric strands whose purpose and interrelationship require at least two viewings to untangle and fully appreciate. Chief amongst these is a fascination with duality, appropriate in an ideologically and physically divided city (this choice of location was a deliberate political statement on the exiled Zulawski's part), which is most literally realised in the figure of warm and kind-hearted schoolteacher Helen, who bonds with the couple's young son Bob and is an idealised dead ringer for Anna and at one point looks set to replace her in the family unit. It's uncertain whether this visual similarity to Anna is actually the product of Mark's own loneliness and wish fulfilment or a genuine doppelgänger whose male equivalent is slowly taking shape in Anna's bedraggled apartment, a creature born of Anna's unhappiness and neurosis (given disturbingly gooey shape by master creature creator Carlo Rambaldi). It's a concept that was successfully road-tested by David Cronenberg two years earlier in The Brood – no surprises, then, that the broken relationships in both films were autobiographical in origin and the product of the directors' hostility towards their respective ex-partners.

Possession: Other Editions

As is stated more than once in the extra features, Possession is a film you either love or hate, and if you loathe it then too bad because I adore every minute of the bold bugger. Gorgeously directed and featuring two genuinely extraordinary central performances, it's a unique and almost unclassifiable film, part relationship drama, part horror, part political allegory, and a good deal more. Second Sight has done the film proud with this Blu-ray, with a solid transfer of the director's cut of the film supported by an excellent selection of top quality special features. Highly recommended. A brief but informative look at the work of Polish film poster artists Barbara Baranowska, aka Basha, who designed the poster for Possession that features on the cover of this very Blu-ray disc. This history is provided by Daniel Bird's soberly delivered but well-written narration, illustrated by the often striking posters themselves. response to seeing things like "Based on a true story", but The Possession is so far fetched and outlandish that

Movies featuring the important sounding imprimatur "Based on a True Story" or the like would seem to have a higher laughing at the depiction of a "minyan" gasping in unison when the box is mentioned and (even worse, heaven forfend)A most engaging interview with composer Andrzej Korzynski, who recalls meeting director Zulawski at primary school ("we sat on the same bench and made trouble together") and his subsequent seven-film collaboration with him. Tantalising clips from three of Zulawski's films are included, with particular focus on his banned and nearly lost science fiction epic On the Silver Globe. So it seems as if like LCQF essentially did what Second Sight is going to do, which can still be as accurate as anything the director would have or could approve. Yes. The Sounds of Possession - in this video interview, composer Andrzej Korzynski discusses his contribution to Andrzej Zulawski's Possession. The two gentlemen have collaborated on seven feature films. In Polish, with imposed English subtitles. (20 min). The above post explaination doesn't line up with LCQF's restoration notes which consulted multiple sources to get the color timing they landed on. Second sights explanation also doesn't say much other than instructing people that an OCN doesn't have a baked in color timing which is obvious for anyone who has worked with film negatives or digital raw files really available to me, or frankly the desire to attend regular services, I turned instead to folklore and some of the really

Slarek is still reeling from POSSESSION, Andrzej Zulawski's extraordinary 1981 collision of relationship drama, politics, horror, and a whole lot more, released this week on a splendidly featured Blu-ray by Second Sight. Daniel Bird here is joined by the film's American co-writer Frederic Tuten, whose thoughtful reflections prove every bit as revealing and entertaining as Zulawski's, covering new ground and bringing a welcome second perspective to previously discussed elements. Topics covered here include how Tuten came to be involved with the project, how it dented his liberal politics, his positive working relationship with Zulawski, the initial casting of Sam Waterston in the role of Mark, what Adjani brought to the character of Anna, working with Sam Neill, the subway scene, his disappointment that Zulawski chose to show the monster (which Bird convincingly counters), and a good deal more. Tuten and Bird are clearly on the same intellectual wavelength here, resulting in some fascinating and in-depth discussions on everything from politics to the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard. Again, a terrific extra. to right formulation. My wife and I first became aware of this because Hebrew has several letters which take differentIt is just worth pointing these things out, because people seemed convinced LCQF just did whatever and it was wrong and the Mondo Vision warm color timing was right. But as you can see from this, quite a massive amount of research from all different sources went into the color timing of the LCQF to make it as close to what appears to have been intended by the director as possible. People actually might not like it despite it being more on-target, but that isn't too uncommon when you watch a film with the same look for 20 years and then this new version comes along that looks a lot different; that doesn't make the new version wrong or worse though, and technically it might just be more accurate than the one you thought was accurate all along. What sells this even at its most fraught is a pair of boldly brilliant performances from Sam Neill and Isabelle Adjani. Perched on a fragile ledge on the brink of madness, they wrestle with their confusion and inner pain and bellow into the abyss without ever breaking the delicate tether that binds them to reality. Such acting requires a rare blend of fearlessness, raw talent and faith in the director, a willingness on the part of both to push themselves further than logic would normally dictate in a manner that electrifies every encounter between them and transforms their solo scenes into often memorable set-pieces. The most justifiably famous of these is Adjani's explosive subway breakdown, where distress mutates into wild and ultimately orgasmic hysteria and a climactic expulsion of something whose true form and intent we can at this point only guess at. Adjani is genuinely astonishing here, hurling herself headlong through the emotional meat grinder in a performance that bagged her the Best Actress César, but apparently took her some years to fully recover from.