Possession

Directed by Neil LaBute
Written by David Henry Hwang, Laura Jones, and Neil LaBute
Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam, and Jennifer Ehle
USA, 2002

B-

When we think of history, we may immediately associate the word with endless facts and impersonal thoughts. Possession, a movie that appears snooty but reveals itself as a hopelessly amorous melodrama, reclaims the past as a breathing world leaking into the present. Time, in fact, is seen as a boundary made to be crossed. The story splits itself between two different eras and spreads itself over vistas and scenery foreign to American eyes. The exoticism gives the illusion of highbrow detachment, but the film morphs into a lovely, sermonizing romance, so universal in its message it borders on banal.

Director Neil LaBute is surprising us again. While his first two films were stagy and somewhat stilted, his third, the delicious Nurse Betty, alluded to Hollywood movies and conventions as if they were Homer and Shakespeare. With his latest, LaBute – who once belonged to the brotherhood of young, morbid American filmmakers – has departed from the atmospheres of both the theatre and the cinema to the spirit of literature and painting. Moments of Jean Yves Escoffier’s cinematography seem to echo the sentimental color and framing of French impressionism, and maybe that’s why LaBute finds it so hard to sustain a substantial scene. Possession does not even pretend to be important; the film has the magnificent lightness of a soufflé or an Emily Dickinson poem, but even the lavish, soapy plot twists fail to give it sufficient emotional gravity.

As we follow scholars (Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow) sniffing out the secret affair of two Victorian poets (Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle), we are treated to luxuriant views of the British Museum, emerald landscapes, and English mansions. Against type, neither of the experts looks bookish; instead, both embody other predictable caricatures. LaBute favorite Eckhart plays an irreverent and sincere American, and the dainty thespian Paltrow sports her British accent as a frigid feminist. But, just as the poetess abandons solitude with her girlfriend for a daring new life with her male correspondent, these cagey modern romantics break through ice and end up cuddling.

The history here begins with nineteenth century poetry but branches off into personal family history and the legacy of that old force that creates the writing: love. The repressed, flirtatious researchers dissolve into silliness, but the dreamy, artistic bond between Northam and Ehle lifts the film, and rewards us with a beautiful sequence evocative of famous scenes in Casablanca. This adaptation of the well-respected A.S. Byatt novel taps into the force of relics and words and the spaces inhabited by great minds and great loves. If it isn’t a grand success as a movie or as screenwriting, at least it suggests the deep romance of written communication and gives me hope that the book actually achieves exquisite passion.

By Andrew Chan [SEPTEMBER 7, 2002; ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER]