Possession (2002) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
Starring Aaron Eckhart, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle, Toby Stephens, Trevor Eve.
Directed by Neil LaBute.
Rated PG-13.
"We shouldn't be doing this. It's dangerous."
Possession tells of two romances, more than a century apart, and botches both of them. It is a shockingly horrid effort from acclaimed writer-director Neil LaBute, who does much better work when his characters spend their time being nasty to each other. Here, he's enamored with a concept that screams for depth, but the overwhelmingly facile script is unwilling to provide it. Neither story goes anywhere, and their juxtaposition grabs our interest only because of LaBute's visual trickery.
The premise seemed nothing if not watchable; certainly, I didn't expect the spectacular failure that the film delivers. Aaron Eckhart, present and accounted for in all of LaBute's movies, stars as Roland Mitchell, an American sent to the Museum of London as a research assistant to a professor of Victorian Poetry. While snooping around in the museum's gargantuan library, he stumbles upon two love letters written by legendary (and fictional) poet Randolph Henry Ash, long thought an angel when it came to monogamy, despite the fact that he and his wife were known not to have consummated their relationship. It seems that the master of amorous Victorian poetry had a secret mistress and was quite passionate about her.
Roland suspects that said mistress may have been another well-known poet named Christabel LaMotte, and he consults Dr. Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow), a master of the subject. At first skeptical, the icy professor of women's studies assists Roland in his hunt for further clues, and the two begin to uncover details about Ash and LaMotte that no stuffy, not nearly so gorgeous scholar had even imagined. Of course, they couldn't do any of these things without falling in love with each other; this, even though Roland has explicitly sworn off relationships with women and Maud is dating Roland's slimy, snotty, very British fellow researcher, in a role tailor-made for Hugh Grant but given instead to Toby Stephens.
Aah, but this isn't simply one of those bibliophile detective stories, a genre understandably more often seen on page than on screen. Every time Mitchell and Bailey uncover something relevant to the lives of Ash and LaMotte, the movie zooms back to their time, where the former is played by Jeremy Northam and the latter by indie queen Jennifer Ehle.
Actually, to call Possession a detective story would be to insult every detective in the history of fiction. Roland and Maud's sleuthing is completely at the mercy of other elements of the narrative, which is punctuated by "revelations" -- you could set your watch by it -- to allow LaBute the opportunity to jump a few centuries back or forward. And I was never able to purchase the lovely-as-ever Gwyneth Paltrow as a British poetry scholar, though I did bring myself to accept Eckhart as an easygoing research assistant.
The scenes set in the past are far more problematic than those in the present day. Constricted by Possession's structure, they lumber along, encumbered by the tiresomely long-winded letters and documents incessantly read in voice-over by either Eckhart, Paltrow, Northam or Ehle. It is easy to see that LaBute was trying to give these scenes the lush, romantic, ultra old-fashioned feeling of Ash's poetry, but he fails because his ardent attempts at this are evident in every frame. This tonal failure may not have been such a problem had LaBute not shoved all of his eggs into one ridiculously undersized basket: aside from his half-assed attempts at Merchant/Ivory-lite, there is nothing to justify the plot line's existence, not even dialogue.
The romance between the professor and the research assistant is hardly more successful than the one between the poets. The movie desperately wants to make us understand that Roland is Afraid of Women and that Maud Can't Get Close, and bludgeons us with these factoids every chance it has. I had no vested interest in their relationship because Possession doesn't treat them intelligently.
Judging by his first three efforts, one might come to the conclusion that Neil LaBute could care less what you think about his characters or his films, or that he does care but doesn't want you to know it. He does a complete 180 with Possession, a movie that tries so hard and so earnestly to make the viewer feel specific emotions at specific times that it sets itself on a crash course with the ground. All cinema is manipulative, but success depends on concealing that manipulation. The gears 'n wheels of Possession are more obvious than the hands of a clock, more blatant than Ash's poetry.
Grade: D+
Up Next: Blue Crush
©2002 Eugene Novikov
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