Metro Pulse/Movie Guru/Possession

Movie Guru Rating:
Unconscious (1 out of 5)

Comment
on this review

Possession leaves you wondering who sucked out the feeling

by Adrienne Martini

Even though it is a truly bad movie, Possession�may actually be perfect in one tiny way. The bedraggled end of the summer movie season—the doldrums in which we now find ourselves—is tailor-made for vapidity. And this Neil LaBute ode to uninteresting movie-making fits the post-Labor Day slump with breezy aplomb, which is, quite possibly, the only breezy and/or aplomb-y thing about Possession.

Soon, of course, all this will be behind us. The studios will start gearing up for Oscar season and great flicks will beckon from every multiplex like hookers from Amsterdam's doorways. But now—now is the time when everything looks better than it could possibly be and summer's lassitude has left even the most ardent cineaste in a languid stupor. Which still doesn't excuse the mess that is Possession.

It's a damn shame, really. A.S. Byatt's book is a scorcher, both in terms of readability and content. Her Possession is a novel full of passion of all sorts—for language, for mysteries, for intelligence, and, yes, for the flesh. Byatt's tale of two British scholars—a profession and nationality that only she could make seem lascivious—in search of a poet's missing years is a compulsive read. You devour each page like a ripe peach, juice dripping from your chin and hungry for the next bite.

Not so LaBute's movie, where passion is reduced to an anemic exercise. Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart as the two academics exhibit not just a lack of chemistry but inhabit a vacuum in which chemistry could not exist. This absence of feeling works for Paltrow's character, who is the sort of stereotypical thin-lipped ice queen often portrayed as haunting the women's studies department.

Eckhart's role, however, shouldn't be as vacant. His Roland Mitchell drives the action—the whole plot is precipitated by his theft of a priceless document. Yet you can't imagine Eckhart's Mitchell having enough energy to steal a pen from the bank. On the whole, Paltrow does the best with what little the script provides (and, tangentially, how many more roles will she take to get her money's worth out of that "Learn British Dialect While You Sleep" tape?) while Eckhart merely bobs along.

Fairing somewhat better are Jeremy Northam as fictional poet Randolph Henry Ash and Jennifer Ehle as his object of obsession, the equally fictional poet Christabel LaMotte. Something about repressive Victorian society or existing in lushly filmed flashbacks adds heat to their romance. Still, these performances feel as if all of the best stuff was left on the cutting room floor—a complaint that afflicts Possession as a whole. Honestly, if this movie needed to be longer in order to round out all of the players, then, please, tack on an extra half-hour or so. As it stands, however, there's really nothing overly interesting about these people and their dilemmas.

The script is partly to blame for Possession's problems. Byatt's book is an exceptionally text-heavy one; the mystery that Paltrow and Eckhart's characters chase is discovered through found letters, diary pages, and poems. It's nearly impossible to convey the richness of the text on the screen, short of constantly having the two characters reading to each other, which doesn't make for scintillating drama. Unfortunately, this is the route that screenwriters Laura Jones (Oscar and Lucinda), David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly), and LaBute drive. It makes for leaden storytelling that never comes to life.

What's puzzling is how this could happen with LaBute as the film's director and one of its screenwriters. His previous work—In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors especially—has been notable for its fierce, polarizing passion. While his recent Nurse Betty�didn't capture the same sort of fire as his first two films, it still had a spunky spark. Yet Possession�lacks any sort of fire at all and, instead, is weighed down by ponderous pretense and shallow characterization, which is puzzling given the depth of the source material and the list of large talent in the writing room. Perhaps LaBute's director's cut was abused by misguided studio execs. But it's hard to extend doubt's benefit to someone who comes off like such a misanthrope. Let's pin the blame on the studio heads, though, since no other scapegoat seems evident.

So why bother with Possession, given its uninteresting, uninspired badness? It provides a touchstone, dear readers, a nadir from which to better appreciate the good movies that the end of the year promises. And while there may be a few dogs in that crop, none could fail more completely than LaBute's latest, for which we should all say thanks.