MoPoshy
Absolutely brilliant
Abbigail Bush
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
Allison Davies
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
tieman64
"So much of the language of love was like that: you devoured someone with your eyes, you drank in the sight of him, you swallowed him whole." ― Jodi Picoult Neil LaBute's "Possession", loosely based on an A.S. Byatt novel of the same name, follows two interweaving love stories. Taking place more than a century apart, both romances rotate around a love for literature, a love which is designed to echo both our and LaBute's love for prose, but which doesn't quite work on screen. LaBute's not strong enough a visualist, and much of his film simply consists of dry letter reading and dull narration.The film's "present" day romance stars Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow. He's an American scholar in London on a fellowship to study celebrated Victorian poet Randolph Ash, she's a professor researching the life of Ash's suspected lover, another Victorian poet named Christabel LaMotte. In an attempt to get to some "historical truth", Eckhart and Paltrow track down poems, letters and correspondences between these two Victorians, and of course become romantically engaged as they do so.Though more flowery than LaBute's other films, "Possession" never strays far from LaButian cynicism. For most of its running time love is portrayed as being inherently possessive, an act of acquisition, rife with double-speak, deception and mad longings. Our characters in the present – both cold, stuffy academics – themselves maintain a modern scepticism toward romance. Eventually, however, the film becomes perhaps the most optimistic of LaBute's "relationship films"; social mores, constrictions and preconceptions come falling down, there remains the hint or hope of something more and our heroes themselves seem to learn about a way of loving that has been lost to their (post-)modern selves.It's immensely difficult to make a film about literary detectives. Polanski did well with "The Ghost Writer" and "The Ninth Gate", but he's an old hand with a camera. LaBute's less sure of himself, and seems to think orally (or with prose?) rather than visually. Much of his film consists of unintentionally funny shots of rolling British countrysides and po-faced letter reading. Bizarrely, LaBute also opts to change the nationality of Eckhart's character. This destroys an entire subplot from Byatt's novel, which painted the dying of a literary/academic class and portrayed a wealthy man's possessive and obsessive postimperial, neocolonial mission to appropriate the past – to shut it down and forbid others from delving into it – and seal it instead into antiseptic, air-conditioned multi-media storage rooms. LaBute's film is less political, and perhaps less depressing.LaBute often gets compared to David Mamet. In this regard "Posession" most resembles Mamet's "Oleanna", another film about professors, possessiveness and the power of language.6/10 – Worth one viewing.
rsternesq
I think Mr. Eckhart is nice to look at but doesn't convince me that he is a lover of poetry. was Jude Law busy? I think Ms. Paltrow is the luckiest person ever born. As a matter of fact, she was born exactly one half of one inch from home base and declared to have had a home run and. indeed, run the bases in record time. But for the accident of her birth, we would never have had to deal with one film after another that demonstrates how lucky she is and how unlucky we are. Sometimes talent is inherited and sometimes nepotism leads to ... yet another example of the perpetually miscast and unappealing mother of Apple boring us to tears. The story works better as a book than a film because while it makes little sense, it was helped with very nice prose. Perhaps had it starred an actress with some warmth and style we would at least have enjoyed watching it wander from one improbability to the next. Oh well, at least as she gets older we will be spared the incessant drum beat of how marvelous she is and she will become the next former young beauty who has less and less opportunity to wander vacantly through various movies like a lost member of the audience but for her very good luck in her choice of parents. Can't wait.
moviesleuth2
Stories that center on relationships (such as romances or character studies) must be developed carefully and delicately. Done right, they can be fascinating to watch. Done poorly, they can quickly become boring. Unfortunately, despite it's acclaimed art-house director and cast of well-known actors, "Posession" falls firmly into the latter category.A graduate student of Victorian-era poetry named Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) has stumbled onto a potentially fascinating discovery: two famous poets, Howard Ash (Jeremy Northam) and Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle) may actually have been lovers. Now Roland, along with another expert, Dr. Maude Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow) are on their trail. Along the way, they are developing a romance between themselves."Posession" does more things wrong than it does right. The biggest problem is the underlying story. I haven't read the novel by A.S. Byatt, but judging by the film, there isn't much story to begin with, certainly not enough for a 102 minute film (and it's not especially interesting). Either that, or the screenplay is worse than it already is. Plot holes abound, subplots are started and left unfinished, and more importantly, there's no balance between the dual tales.The performances by the actors don't help much. Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart are the biggest names in the cast, but unfortunately they're the ones we have to spend the most time with. Both are good actors (Paltrow won an Oscar, though undeservedly, and judging by Eckhart's climb to fame and versatility, it's only a matter of time before he gets a statue), but they have no chemistry. At least Eckhart, a Neil LaBute regular, makes a game try. That's more than can be said for his co-star, Gwyneth Paltrow. I've never been a big fan of Paltrow; she's always a little whiny and seems off. She can muster a decent British accent, but that's only the surface. As Maude, she's pretty boring, and for someone whose sudden romance is the unofficial beating heart of the film, she has no chemistry with Eckhart. The 1850's lovers, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle, aren't exactly better, but they have chemistry, which makes them more appealing.The film isn't a total loss; it looks great, and I always have a special place in my heart for historical mysteries (even poorly done ones). But honestly, "Posession" isn't worth your time.
T Y
Two scholars chance upon some documents that reveal more about the relationships of a clutch of impossibly uninteresting historical figures. The two eras are cross-cut to strike sparks that generate no heat. I really love the idea that a movie might be about two scholars (you know... adults!), but this is listless and suffers from too many unlikable leads (Eckhart, Paltrow, Ehle). Eckhart is miscast and really adrift as a sensitive man right out of some woman's most delirious 'romance novel' fantasies; a buff stud/research assistant. But nothing scholarly that comes out of his mouth sounds remotely natural. He talks about events in the lives of poets like he's doing color commentary for the big football game. He's just all wrong. And Paltrow seems to have taken this part on a dare, to prove she could be even more chilly and insufferable than viewers found her previously.Clearly this is a movie aimed at female ticket-buyers, but from Neil LaBute? ...it's sooo clumsy! There must be a moment when you're filming this as you watch the dailies, that you realize your stars have no chemistry and the movie has no momentum, even within the woefully tired and inert romance genre. Porn for women. Awful.
