Original subtitles

[Static crackles]

-Welcome back to part two of Dysfunctional Family Night.

I think I just discovered our our theme, Darcy.

Dysfunctional Family Night,

Because "The Mutilator" is all about a crazy father

deciding to kill not only his son,

but everyone who knows his son.

And this next movie goes beyond mere murder.

This movie is about the brutality of marriage,

divorce, child custody, and slime monsters.

But the slime monster is not nearly

as frightening as the other three.

So you know what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession",

which gives us an insight into what horror

was like in communist Poland.

And we need that, right?

-I guess, yeah.

-This movie is an examination of all the ways

you can feel really, really bad.

This is hardcore relationship horror.

Andrzej Zulawski decided to make this movie

after watching Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage",

which may be the second most depressing movie about marriage.

And at the end of that movie, he said,

"Okay, that was a good description

of what a bad marriage looks like from the outside,

but it needs to go deeper, it needs a monster."

So proving that Andrzej Zulawski is our kind of guy.

Because this movie really gets you --

it gets to you at a basic level.

You know how people say, "The movie took my breath away"?

Well, this movie takes your breath away

because you think you can't breathe and you're about to die.

-And you love that.

-Well, and you don't. I know.

-No, I do not have that thing

where I want to cry or get sad watching a movie.

-And yet you watch the most brutally violent movies.

-Yeah, because it's fun and that's not real.

-Well, this one is not real.

-But it feels real. -Well, and it does.

And partly that's because Zulawski wrote it

during his own divorce.

And some of the situations in the movie

actually happened in his life.

But we wouldn't be watching the movie today

if it was just a docudrama of his divorce,

even though almost everyone in the cast of this movie

would be classified as batshit crazy.

We have all been at some batshit crazy place in our lives, right?

I mean, the moments in our lives that we do not record

and put in the family album.

Anyway, before we all go to a really frighteningly

depressing place together --

this is train wreck art.

You're in the train wreck, but you decide to continue

to ride on the train instead of jumping off.

But before we go there, I just want to talk about one thing,

and you're going to think this is silly,

but it increasingly gets on my nerves.

-Uh-oh. -Well, all right.

Why do you say "uh-oh"? I haven't even started yet.

-It's a rant. It's coming.

-All right, well, it's just this.

I don't want to know what time it is.

-Okay.

-No, seriously, I would like to go through a whole day

without knowing what time it is,

because I think I'm becoming neurotic

from constantly being told what the time is.

-Becoming?

-Well, I know. I obsess over everything.

But why does your phone always have the precise time

from the Greenwich Water Tower

or whatever that thing is in London?

You know, why is that on your computer screen all the time?

Why is it out in front of the bank?

I can understand why it's in the train station.

Because if the train leaves at 5:03,

you need to know it's 5:01, right?

But 99% of our pitiful existences,

we don't need to know what time it is.

And not knowing what time it is makes your day better.

But that's actually a larger topic than the specific point

that I want to make about the movie,

which is, why in the world is it on the bottom of the movie

when you're watching the movie on any screen

outside of a cinema,

you know, not just the actual time of day,

plus the time elapsed in the movie,

but the time left in the movie is on your screen.

You're not supposed to know that!

-Why not? -Because it's a spoiler!

-I don't see it that way.

-Well, I mean, I could go deep into the classical

three act structure of screenwriting,

which nobody wants me to do.

-Right.

-But if you're in the thrall of a great story,

you should be in the third act of the story

before you realize that you're in the third act of the story.

And the stakes get to this monumental level.

But you don't know that yet

unless you happen to be glancing at the little timer thingy

and you see there's only six minutes left in the movie.

-Got it. -Okay.

You know, it's especially relevant for movies

like this one, the one we're going to watch right now,

because you don't know where it's going

and you don't know how it's going to resolve.

But more importantly, every time you think it's about to resolve,

it hasn't resolved yet,

which makes you dizzy if you're in a theater.

But if you're watching it on Shudder, you go,

"Hum, you know, this can't be quite life or death situation

because we still have 25 minutes left," you know?

Or if you're watching a crime show, you know,

"Hmm, this guy who looks really guilty right now

can't possibly be guilty

because they're introducing him at the 18 minute mark."

Plus, how does knowing the Greenwich what is it,

Greenwich Water Tower --

How does how does knowing the Greenwich Water Tower time

improve our lives?

-You're talking about two different things.

-Well, true, but it's this idea of knowing

the precise digital number to the minute all the time.

You can't say to somebody, "See you in the afternoon."

You have to say, "I'll see you at 2:45."

And then if you show up at 3:04, you're a jerk.

And all the minutes between 2:45 and 3:04

are stressful because you're going,

"Oh, she's obsessive compulsive. She's looking at her phone.

She's noticing every late minute."

-Okay, but I do like to know

the length of the movie before I start.

-Knowing the length of the movie,

that is sort of okay,

but the length of "Possession" would turn you off

because it's long for a horror movie,

and it shouldn't turn you off because it does not

drag in the slightest.

-Well, I really disagree with that.

But what is the runtime?

-I'm not going to say the running time.

Are you listening to me, Darcy?

I'm not going to say the running time because that's a spoiler.

-Okay. All right.

-What genre? All right. Let's start with this.

What genre would you say "Possession" is?

-An art film?

-It is an art film. That's not really a genre.

But I'll accept that.

The genre is really horror, Lifetime movie, domestic drama,

psychological thriller, with a queer subtext,

madwoman narrative, monster movie,

doppelganger story, crime story, political allegory,

mystery sitcom, action film.

-Okay. I see where you're going with that.

But sitcom?

-Sitcom, yeah.

The smothering mother character, the nosy friend character.

You know, all the tropes of the sitcom

are actually in the movie.

-Do you like it? -Do I like it?

You know how you feel when you when you finish

"The Revenge of the Mummy" ride at Universal Studios.

-Ooh, yeah. Orgasmic.

-Yeah, because you got terrified,

and then the terror was relieved.

-Yeah. -Okay, so you

ride it again, right?

All right, same thing here.

When this movie is over, you feel exhausted.

And you want to watch it again.

-I do not totally agree with that.

But we will talk after. -Okay.

This this is the best Polish film that we've ever shown.

And I mean, the film is in English.

Don't get don't get excited, no subtitles. It's in English.

But the filmmaker is very Polish.

-What does very Polish mean? Be careful.

-I only mean very European.

He grabs us by the throat, never lets go.

You know, there's never a take a break scene.

Like, you know, in America,

the guy fights off 17 ninjas, and then in the next scene,

he's having pancakes at IHOP.

You know, they always do that.

You know, that's the way an American action film would work

or an emotional drama like

"Kramer vs. Kramer" or something.

If Andrzej Zulawski had a scene with a guy

fighting off 17 ninjas, he'd want to have to fight off

19 Thai kickboxers in the next scene,

and then the scene after that would have to involve bazookas.

-I'm liking it more the more you talk about it.

-Well, let's stop talking about it.

Let's put our watches away and our little digital timers,

wherever they are, and let's get intense.

You know what "Possession" has in common with

"The Mutilator", Darcy?

-They were both shot with a camera.

[Laughter]

-Exactly. Yeah, that's true. That's all they have in common.

"Possession" is the sensitive story of a German spy

who comes back from communist Eastern Europe

to find his wife cold, remote,

ready to leave him, along with their confused 10-year-old son,

for what is apparently a highly sexually charged relationship

with a beefcake New Age guru.

And yes, that's what I said.

But the guru has a domineering mother.

But just when you think any of the three people in the triangle

could kill each other at any moment,

a fourth more powerful lover is introduced in a slum apartment

next to the creepy Berlin Wall.

And pretty soon, we've got sex so far beyond the word "kinky"

that we're going to have to call it something else.

You know, maybe, you know,

hypersonic, fetishistic, animalistic fornication.

And the result is several dead bodies,

as our two leads struggle

to figure out what true love really is.

And both of the lead actors, by the way,

say they were psychically scarred for life

by doing this movie.

And you'll see why, as the entire cast

goes collectively insane.

Sure, we've seen it before.

Actually, no. We've never seen this before.

We've never seen any scene in this movie before.

So let's just look at those Drive In totals and get started.

We have 10 dead bodies, five breasts, one whangdoodle,

one fistfight with two beatdowns,

one motor vehicle chase with explosions and crashes.

One cataclysmic freak out in the subway station

with gooey blood, raving restaurant destruction,

electric carving knife to the neck,

electric carving knife arm slicing, rib stabbing,

jagged wine bottle to the jugular.

Multiple gunshot wounds, homicidal toilet head dunking,

exploding apartment building, with fire,

exploding Berlin, multiple aardvarking,

car trunk body stuffing, bitch slapping,

bastard slapping.

Animalistic screaming. Random child abuse.

Wino banana theft, ballet class torture,

head rolls, gratuitous pink socks.

Gratuitous Crucifix. Kung Fu. Berlin Wall Fu.

Domestic violence fu, angst fu, self-mutilation fu,

Taj Mahal postcard Fu.

Drive-In Academy Award Nominations for

Isabelle Adjani as the brutally honest, hyperventilating,

psychotic spouse who says,

"Don't you understand? You disgust me."

Sam Neill as the psychotically jealous husband who says,

"Fuck your needs!"

Heinz Bennett as the supremely annoying kung fu lover

who says, "We don't have to be brutal to each other."

And Andrzej Zulawski, the writer/director,

for doing things the Polish drive-in way.

Four stars. Joe Bob says check it out.

Wow.

You know, normally they don't trust us at Shudder

with the so called "serious movie."

You know, this movie was in competition

at the fucking Cannes Film Festival.

It's definitely different from what we normally show.

-Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, it's pure drive-in, though.

This is an exploitation movie to the max.

-You don't think it's pretentious?

-Well, I do think it's pretentious, actually,

in two places.

And I'm going to point those places out.

But for the most part, I think Zulawski is a mutant.

I mean, one thing he said that I really agree with,

and most exploitation directors would agree with this.

He said, "Beginnings are useless,"

meaning most opening scenes in movies.

And you get exactly what he means

when you see the kickoff scene in this movie.

-True. It's a really weird scene.

-It's almost like a giant sign on the scene,

"Enter this movie at your own peril."

You know, like the deep end of the pool.

"No lifeguard on duty here."

You know, the apartment where they filmed most of this movie

is just a few blocks from -- this was during communist times.

So there was still a West Berlin and East Berlin.

It was a few blocks from Checkpoint Charlie.

And Checkpoint Charlie was the main crossing point

between East Berlin and West Berlin.

And therefore, that's where all the major confrontations

took place with people trying to escape East Germany,

and the brutal guards, you know, on the wall would gun them down.

You know, so an apt symbol of what this movie is about,

meaning a family divided and weaponized.

[Static crackles]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Heels clacking on pavement]

[Trunk slams]

-You can't just say you don't know,

that's what you said on the phone.

When will you know?

-I don't know!

-Do you want me to spend the night somewhere else?

In a hotel or something?

Do you want us to meet later on?

We can talk more calmly.

Do you need more time?

What do you need?

What has happened?

-Bob knows that you are coming back today.

-Well, I can pick him up after school

and take him to the zoo or something.

[Bob imitating siren]

-Come and admire him.

-Nee-na, nee-na, nee-na, nee-na, nee-na!

[Anna chuckles]

-Maybe all couples go through this.

-Yeah?

-One mustn't be afraid.

-No.

-One must speak honestly.

-Is it difficult?

-Is it difficult?

-I haven't been much help,

but I finished that job now, it's over.

-Maybe I was asking for too much.

-I was the one who had the right to ask.

-I know.

-No, you don't!

Who was I doing it for, after all?

-Were you unfaithful to me?

-The truth is not really.

Were you?

-No. -There's always someone else

-when these things happen. -Not in this case.

-All right, well...

what's happening to us is just natural.

Feelings change.

But without you, I wouldn't feel anything at all.

-What do you feel now?

-Are you really interested?

-No.

-There you are, you see. It's the same with me.

I don't even want you now.

-What time did you meet him?

-8:30. -Where?

-In the park.

-Was he willing?

-Yes, verbally.

-Did you sense or detect weariness in him?

-No.

A correct appraisal of the realities.

-Is it making him bitter?

-No, greedy.

-But you felt his power?

-You mean, did I feel fear?

No, because that would've prevented me

answering all your questions.

-How many vials did he take with him?

-Two.

-What procedure have you devised

for contacting him again?

-It's all in my report.

I suggest it's more economical to fill in my successor.

-We don't feel there's a need for a successor.

-I've completed my job.

-Brilliant.

That's why we want to re-hire you.

-It's out of the question.

-And what would be the reason for your refusal?

-Family. -Oh.

Couldn't we be of some help there?

-No.

-Wouldn't it be advisable for you to reconsider?

-I'm unable to do that.

-Would you be unable for a long time?

-I hope not.

-Aren't you allowing feelings to prevent you

from answering your own questions?

-Exactly why I'd advise you to hire my successor.

-Good.

Any questions?

-Does our subject still wear pink socks?

[Briefcase opens]

[Papers crunching]

[Footsteps stomping]

-Anna?

[Telephone rings]

-It's me.

-It's Anna?

-I am downtown.

Why downtown? I've been waiting all day.

-I need some time to think.

-What do you mean to think?

Think about what?

-To think about me.

-Well, where are you? When would...

[Anna hangs up phone]

[Phone slams]

[Objects clanging]

[Phone buttons clicking]

[Phone beeps]

-Hello? -Margit, this is Mark.

Now, I know there's no sympathy between us,

and it's hard for me to ask you for help,

but you're her only friend.

Now, just tell me the truth.

She has somebody?

-She wished you'd say or do something.

Something to reinstall you,

you know, a magic wave of the wand.

You arrived sooner than expected, Mark.

-Yeah, sure, this is all my fault.

Now, how long has this been going on?

-Quite long.

-Who is he?

-Oh, Mark.

I don't...

Your wife keeps her own secrets.

-Margit.

I don't have a magic wand, I don't intend to hang on.

But make her talk to me.

It'll be the way she she wants.

But this is not...

...proper.

Please.

[Phone clangs]

[Phone rings]

Yes?

-We're over, Mark.

-You have someone?

-Yes.

-For a long time?

-Does it matter?

-Yes.

-Yes.

-Do you sleep with him?

-Yes.

-Do you like it?

-Yes.

-More than with me?

-Yes.

-I see.

How do you intend to live now?

-We have to discuss it.

-Now.

-As you want.

-Half an hour at the Cafe Einstein.

-I'm too far for half an hour.

-Are you calling from there?

-Yes.

-Is he listening?

-No.

-But he is there.

-Yes.

[Phone slams]

-Will $800 a month for Bob be enough?

-I suppose.

-Will you move in with him or keep the apartment?

-I'll keep it if you allow me to.

-I've decided not to see Bob.

-At all? -At all.

-How can you say that?

-He's gonna be fucked up enough as it is,

and I don't want to fuck him up even more

by playing Sunday Daddy.

-What were you to him anyway?

-Precisely.

-But he knows you, he's yours, he needs a --

-A real father, full time?

Well, I thought I could be,

coming home from the war, so to speak.

You say it's better with him than with me.

-I get bored of it.

-Tell me...

-I think what you want to do to Bob is...

-Inhuman?

So what you're doing must be human.

How long is it gonna last?

-I don't know.

-One week? Two weeks?

And how do you dispose of ideas like honesty and loyalty?

If I could only believe that

it happened cleanly at first sight.

-Okay.

If it makes things easier,

I was in his bed the first night I met him,

if you have to know.

-What do you expect of me?

Look what you're doing!

[Glasses shattering]

-No one is good or bad.

But if you want, I'm the bad one,

and if I knew he existed in this world,

I would've never had Bob with you!

-Get out, get out!

[Furniture crashing]

Get out, get out!

[Mark screams]

[Anna shrieks]

[Chairs tumbling]

[Rotary dial spins]

[Phone rings]

[Tense drum music]

[Woman speaks faintly]

-Um, um...

-Hello?

Hello? Hello?

[Mark grunts]

-Ma, ma, ma.

[Mark grunts]

[Bed squeaks]

[Heavy breathing]

[Grunting]

How long have I...

Have long have I been here?

-Three weeks, sir.

-What happened? It's Daddy.

-Mommy said she would be right back,

but she never came.

Then Margit called and told me to be brave.

Because she had broke her leg

and she had to have the cast put on.

-You've been alone for a long time?

-Look, I've got a new boat.

-Did you get it from Mommy?

-No.

From Uncle Heinrich.

-Long ago?

-Yes.

-Yesterday?

-No, before you've come back from far away.

-Okay, little piggy.

Come on, let's get out of this mess.

How did you make such a mess?

[Key jingles]

-This is not always like this, Mark.

Usually I'm on time.

-I'm not interested.

I came to tell you that I can't live without you

and I'm ready to understand whatever there is,

but it doesn't look like it makes much sense.

-You can't take Bob away from me!

-I'm not trying!

You can continue to visit whenever you want,

but I'm taking over here.

Anna, is there anything I can do?

-You could just --

-Yes?

-I must -- -Yes?

-I must --

-You must restore order, you must leave him.

You will call him, you will say it is over.

Now, I don't care if you tell him you love him,

but he's not your family.

Your family is here.

You must call him now.

-But I can't on the phone!

-I don't trust you.

-I have to tell him face to face.

-I don't trust you.

On the phone!

-Oh, Jesus!

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!

-If you want to stay, make that call.

It's still quite warm.

I don't think you'll need a winter coat with a sweater.

[Anna exhales]

I can't stand to see you like this.

It could be the way you want. Just don't cry anymore.

[Anna breathes heavily]

-I am very sleepy.

[Phone rings]

-Anna is with me, and she'll stay with me.

[Phone slams]

-He phoned me, he said she won't be coming back.

Now, I have to talk to her right now.

Now, please give me that number.

-542-6261.

-Where is it?

-I don't know, Mark.

-542-6261.

[Buttons clicking]

[Phone rings]

Hello? -Yes?

-I want to speak to Heinrich.

-My son is not in town. Who's calling?

-Anna's husband.

-Anna's not here. I haven't seen her for weeks.

I miss her so much.

Hello? Hello?

Hello?

[Pages flipping]

-542-6261.

[Mark gasps]

What happened?

-Wee-wee.

-Shall I take you?

-Where's Mommy?

-She went to see Margit.

-Are you going too?

-I'm staying with you.

♪♪

Hello. I'm Bob's father.

I'll be bringing him to school from now on.

-I'm glad.

You're the father who went far away

and met the polar bears.

Hello.

-What is this, a joke?

-What are you talking about?

-I mean your wig!

-What?

[Laughs]

-I'm so sorry, it's impossible.

Have you ever seen my wife?

-Naturally.

Every day of the school year.

[Laughs]

[Static crackles]

-Wow.

A master study of just how bad people can feel

and make all the people around them feel worse.

It's like a Lifetime movie written so that everybody says

the cruelest thing they can think of in the meanest way.

Anna is obviously miserable. We don't know why.

Mark is miserable for obvious reasons.

He's still in love, but she isn't.

Their son, Bob,

the living, breathing product of this apparent mismatch,

is feeling lonely and abandoned, but mostly just confused.

And who buys a post card at the Taj Mahal and writes,

"I've seen half of God's face. The other half is you."

Heinrich does.

So I already hate Heinrich, and I hadn't even seen him yet.

Sam Neill, as Mark, does a great job drawing us into his pain.

So you almost want to go,

"Mark, not a good thing to say right now.

Go in a different direction."

I think the audience becomes scared for Mark,

afraid of what he might do to himself.

Usually if you're going a deep dive

into somebody's angst ridden family life,

you do it in the theater, not film.

That's what they specialize in in the theater.

"A Long Day's Journey Into Night."

"Death of a Salesman", "A Doll's House."

All the great classic stories

are about how families fall apart.

They're plays.

And the only reason I mention that is

that Zulawski was a theater director and a novelist,

so he could have done this story in a medium

better suited to a story like this.

But instead, he did a very interesting thing here.

He told his cinematographer,

"We're going to use wide angle lenses in every scene."

So what does that do?

It resembles theater because you're not sure where to look.

You have two people talking about very intimate things,

but you're not doing close ups on them.

You're not doing over-the-shoulder shots.

You're making them small figures in a large space.

So you can see that restaurant,

you can see that cluttered apartment.

You can see that massive apartment building

in the street and what is apparently the Berlin Wall

in that great opening scene

where the married couple is reunited, but they never touch.

And Mark never gets rid of those suitcases.

Zulawski is not showing us where to look.

He's not cutting. He's not zooming.

He's not doing close ups.

He's making us search for what we're supposed to see,

just like you do at the theater.

And when you do that, the scenes have to be so carefully blocked

and the set has to be so perfectly designed

that every object is in its proper place

and every movement is very precise.

And I mean, not for the actors.

The actors are not hitting their marks

or anything, like they do in soap operas.

The actors are obviously -- they're almost out of body

in the way they've inhabited these characters,

but they're pinballing over this vast landscape,

indicating that they're kind of lost and helpless,

which they are.

So grim.

But it gets grimmer.

Back to the movie.

You know, Zulawski said --

He said a couple of things that are interesting to me.

He said acting is a female occupation.

And I think, by that, he meant

that men are too much in their head.

You know, women are closer to the emotional core of a scene

if they let themselves go there.

And the other thing he said was,

"I make films about things that torture me,

and my medium is a woman."

So Isabelle Adjani didn't particularly enjoy

being his medium for torture,

but at the time he made this movie,

she was not very popular.

She was popular with audiences, but not with filmmakers.

She had burned all her bridges in both Europe and America.

She was known as being a diva.

She was known for being impossible to work with.

Trouble on the set, hard to control, spoiled brat.

So Zulawski had a limited budget, and he saw all of

Isabelle Adjani troubles as an opportunity

to get a great actress at a bargain price.

So he offered her the part.

She was also married to one of the greatest

French cinematographers, Bruno Nuytten.

So Zulawski got a package deal for the couple.

Zulawski was actually trying to hire both of them

at the same time without knowing that they were a couple.

And Adjani refused at first

because she didn't want to play a mother.

She was very concerned about seeming old

or not being beautiful in every scene.

And in fact, one day when they were shooting,

she told him she was not going to shoot

because her eyes were red and puffy

and the makeup man had told her she didn't look good.

So Zulawski went to her trailer and and said,

"Okay, so you think you're ugly

and you think your eyes are puffed up?"

And she said, "Yeah." And he says, "Well, if you don't

calm down and unpuff yourself

and be yourself in 15 minutes, I will kill you."

So 15 minutes later, she came out of the trailer

and she was ready to work.

Now, is that abuse?

Some people, including the Actors Guild,

would probably say so.

But the real abuse, if you really want to get down to it,

is asking her to go to these various dark, emotional places

in the course of this movie, as you will see here directly.

I'll do the background later

because I don't like interrupting this right here.

[Static crackles]

[Doorbell rings]

-You're Heinrich?

-Yes.

-I've come for Anna.

-Anna's not here.

-You want me to break down the bloody door?

-You don't have to, it's open.

We don't have to be brutal to each other

or even impolite.

Our situation is like a mountain lake

we are trying to swim in,

starting from different shores.

I'm not astonished you're here.

I was thinking about you just before you came,

so now that you're here,

let's be open to each other.

You can hate me as much as you like,

but it's you who wants to know things from me,

so please make it possible.

I'm suffering as much as you are.

The fact that Anna did not inform you

was harmful to everyone.

But I always accept Anna's ways,

as I think no one has the right to impose his will on anyone.

-So that's how you've changed her so much.

-Possibly.

But is it changing her or making her open to herself?

-So open she's inarticulate at night

and you have to speak for her?

-What are you talking about?

-We spoke on the phone last night, you and I, didn't we?

-Stop it. I just arrived from Hamburg.

You weren't listening to me.

I was just trying to make her comprehend that I love her.

I left the day you arrived

to give her a chance to decide for herself.

I allowed you your chance.

-Bullshit!

-I'm not obliged to listen to you speaking that way,

it's offensive.

-How long have you been fucking me over?

-A year.

[Hand slams]

-All my visits home, all that time.

-Yes.

-And this is what you mean by accepting Anna's ways?

-Precisely.

[Sink drips]

The key being the infinitive, to accept.

I have been honest with you.

Would you permit me to inquire on a specific point?

On your last visit home, were you content with your wife?

I mean, sexually.

-Why?

-Because in that period,

we reached a state of perfect harmony.

-Yeah.

-My mother.

-Is she here all the time?

-Yes.

-Even when you're fucking Anna?

-Of course.

[Mark grunts]

[Men grunting]

[Heinrich yells]

[Mark groans]

[Bob chatters]

-Where do you think he put the skins?

Down his new pajamas!

[Anna laughs]

-Yes?

Yes.

-♪ Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool ♪

♪ Yes, sir, yes, sir

♪ Three bags full

♪ One for the master

♪ One of the dame

♪ And one for the little boy

♪ That lives down the lane

Can I go out into the backyard?

-Yes, you may.

But you take your sandwich with you.

[Anna chuckles]

-Where were you?

-I wrote you, I was at Margit's.

-That's not true. I spoke to her!

-I was with him!

-That's not true either.

I saw him, I made steak from him,

but he's not lying.

-I was with friends!

-Who?

-New friends! -I'll check.

-Yes, check. Check, check, check, check!

-Why did you leave last night?

-To be alone!

-But you said you went to friends.

-Why are you nagging me? Can't you just leave me be?

-I could have perfect peace if you never came back!

-It's Bob! I have Bob! He is my son, too!

-Don't try to tell me that you care

about him all that much.

He didn't stop you from breaking us up.

If you really thought about him,

you'd give a thought to us, for Christ's sake!

-I do, I do!

-No, you don't!

You think about buying him a pair of shoes,

about making him a snack,

about telling him a bedtime story.

But if you really thought about him,

you'd think about us!

-Right, right, right!

You're always right!

But it's difficult, don't you understand?

It is difficult!

I didn't want it to happen, but it happened and now...

Don't come any closer!

-Anna, it's me!

-But don't you understand?

You disgust me.

I can't stand you touching me, you make me...

[Anna screams]

-You know, love isn't something you could just switch

from channel to channel.

I have your letters, "My love, trust me," you wrote,

and all the time you were fucking your ass off!

You want me to believe you're a --

-A whore, yes!

A monster, a whore.

I fuck around with everybody.

Whenever you turn around, I fuck around with everybody

on every corner!

You will let me go!

-Please don't make me force you.

-You can't stop me!

I'll open the window and jump!

-You need him that much?

-Oh, yes.

Oh, yes!

-Fuck your needs!

[Anna yells]

Do it again.

[Anna exhales]

[Anna chuckles]

[Anna wailing]

[Hand slaps]

[Anna grunts]

You know what this is for?

The lies.

-Then you'll have to add much more.

-Bitch, bitch.

[Door slams]

[Footsteps echoing]

Bitch, you bitch!

[Footsteps stomping]

What's gonna happen to us?

-It's up to you!

-Then stop coming!

-I have to go!

-I'll follow you!

-Don't even try!

[Truck speeds]

[Tires screeching]

[Cars tumbling]

♪♪

♪♪

[Kids cheering]

-Oh, it's Aunt Margit,

the angel of the extinct heart,

limping to the rescue.

And nothing can stop me.

Oh.

I know you can't wait to run off

and make a fool of yourself,

and I'm here to help you.

I'll look after Bob.

Give me your sweater.

[Margit chuckles]

-I loathe you, Marge.

[Margit moans]

-You're still full of belief, Mark.

I love seeing you miserable.

It's so reassuring!

-Shit, Marge.

-Yes, sir.

Mr. Zimmermann will be with you in a minute.

Second door on the right.

-Yes?

Sir.

How can we help you?

Please.

-I...

[Mark clears throat]

I would like you to follow my wife for a few days.

-Of course.

Wives, wives, wives, wives.

Are there any reasons you would like to give us?

You don't have to answer,

but often it is enormously helpful

in the investigation.

-My wife doesn't live with me anymore, but she visits,

or at least she has been visiting up 'til now, my son.

-I see.

-I have a photo of my wife here.

-Are there any other leads?

Family?

Does your wife have a job?

-She quit about a year ago.

-Friends?

-Her best friend is Mrs. Margit Gluckmeister.

She's in the directory.

Margit visits our place occasionally to...

to help out with Bob.

-All right, sir.

Now we must get down to practicalities.

[Mark grunts]

-Go to bed, tired boy.

Let's get you in bed.

Yes.

[Dogs barking in distance]

Oh, look at this.

Tired boy.

Let's get you to bed.

That's it.

On with the covers.

[Margit murmurs]

[Door slams]

-Excuse me.

[Plates clanging]

-How long is this gonna last?

-Excuse me!

[Plates clanging]

-I'm talking to you.

-Excuse me!

-You don't have the right to behave this way!

What have I done that you hate me so much, huh?

-Nothing.

-Do I deserve this?

-No.

Get off it.

[Mark yells]

Get off, get off, get off!

-This is...

Disgusting.

-Yes.

[Carving knife buzzes]

-Look what we've become.

-Yes.

-Talk to me!

[Carving knife buzzes]

I don't want you to be like this.

You know, when I'm away from you,

I think of you as an animal or a woman possessed,

and then I see you again, and all this disappears.

[Mincer buzzes]

You must try and help me.

Tell me.

Maybe it will help.

Are you happy?

Do you love him?

Does he love you?

Do you want to live together and have a family?

Am I in your way and Bob, too?

[Mincer buzzes]

And there's something else you must tell me.

What are you afraid to tell me?

Are you afraid of me?

Are you afraid I'll get mad again and beat you?

[Mincer buzzes]

Are you afraid I won't like you?

-Yes.

[Mincer buzzes]

-Anna, help me.

Help me!

[Mincer buzzes]

[Anna screams]

-No, no!

No, no!

No, no, no, no!

-Anna, there's Bob!

There's Bob, remember?

Good Christ, remember!

[Anna shrieks]

It'll be the way you want it.

It'll be the way you want it.

Hold it.

You don't have to say anything you don't want to.

[Anna mumbling]

You're my whole family.

[Kids faintly yelling]

[Carving knife buzzes]

-I have to go now.

-Would you wait for Bob?

-I can't now.

-Maybe we can both go and pick him up at school.

-I can't.

It doesn't hurt.

-No.

[Footsteps echoing]

[Bells tolling]

[Train screeches]

[Train screeches]

♪♪

[Footsteps echoing]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Footsteps stomping]

-I got your wife's address. It's in Kritzberg.

Sebastien Strasse 87, 1st floor.

She seems to be alone.

Do you want me to check this now?

Danke.

[Meat sizzles]

[Doorbell rings]

[Bells tolling]

[Doorbell rings]

[Pounding on door]

I'm sorry to bother you, miss.

I'm from the building manager's office.

We had a complaint about some broken windows somewhere

and the glass falling down on the sidewalk.

-Is that what it is?

-I'm afraid I have to check your windows.

-But I can assure you they're all right.

-How can you be so sure?

I just saw you come in.

It'll only take a moment.

-But I don't want you to be here!

-I quite understand, miss, but it's me or the police.

A lady got hurt on the sidewalk, a Turkish woman.

Now, you might say she shouldn't be here in the first place,

but she lodged a complaint, so what can I do about it?

-Nothing.

Please.

[Tapping on glass]

[Blinds opening]

Is it okay?

-Moment.

[Blinds opening]

-So?

-Excuse me, the bathroom.

-The bathroom doesn't have a window.

-Are you sure? -Absolutely.

-Some bathrooms have windows this side of the house.

-Not in this one.

-I'm afraid I still have to check it.

Of course, I --

-Would you care for a glass of wine?

-Wine? -Yes.

-No, I'm afraid I...

[Anna laughs]

-Yes, wine.

-I'm afraid you --

-Oh, come on, don't be so formal.

-Miss, it doesn't make any sense, I've got kids.

I only came for the windows.

I'm sorry, miss, but I still need to look.

[Anna chuckles]

-[Wine bottle breaks] -Oh, it broke.

[Sink drips]

-Was ist...

[Anna chuckles sadly]

[Ominous music]

[Anna screams]

[Anna screams]

[Static crackles]

-Worst private detective in history, right?

That was the most obvious and inept tale

that I have ever seen.

Okay, it's one thing to come back from a business trip

and find out your wife is sleeping with

some pompous ass new age guru who lives with his mother.

It's another thing to find out your wife has a secret apartment

in the slummy part of West Berlin,

the place where the angry unemployed

Turkish immigrants live.

And there's something in the bathroom of that apartment

that's so sacred and secret

that she will commit murder to protect it.

It looks like a slimy mollusk.

I mean, did she become a malacologist

while you were away?

Does she have endangered species of snails and slugs and clams

hidden away in the secret warrens of her filthy,

unfinished apartment?

Unfortunately, the detective doesn't have time

to explain any of this to Mark,

who is still recovering from the thrashing he took from Heinrich.

So this is where the movie asks the question,

"Who is Anna, and what does she want?"

Which is a way of saying, "What do women want?"

And I would add to that, "And do we men

really want to know what women really want?"

The shocking part of the movie here

is not so much that Anna is a murderer,

but that Mark is light years

away from understanding what motivates her.

Okay, background on Andrzej Zulawski.

I'm now going to give you a complete history

of the Polish film school movement between the years

1956 and 1963,

especially its relationship to the Italian neorealists.

And I'm going to start with the famous

Polish October uprising of 1956, better known as

"Gomulka's thaw",

leading to a period of liberalization

that inspired the Hungarian Revolution.

Only kidding!

If you want to know about any of that,

go over to the IFC Channel.

You know, use the search term

"So bored you'll become narcoleptic and watch 17 films

made by guys whose names you can't pronounce or remember."

Let me just tell you the part that you need to know

from all that.

Andrzej Zulawski was Polish,

and Poland was like every other communist country

in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.

They had a censorship committee

that had to approve every project.

But what makes Poland different from just about

all the other Eastern Bloc countries is that --

A -- the censorship was not as strict

because the country got

a lot of international attention for their movies.

They won a lot of film festival prizes.

B -- the Poles hated the Soviets just as much as they hated

the Nazis because they had been abused from both directions

during World War II.

So they were not so enslaved by the Russian attitudes.

And -- C -- the Polish filmmakers had learned to use

allegory and symbolism to fool the censors.

And then even if your film was considered

too hot for the censors and it got banned,

you could still smuggle it out of the country,

get it entered at the Cannes Film Festival

or somewhere else in the west,

and you could even get the film distributed in other countries.

So there were all these Polish filmmakers

who were famous in Western Europe

in the '60s, like Roman Polanski,

Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Kawalerowicz.

Can never say his name.

Kawalerowicz.

and Jerzy Skolimowski.

Write those names down.

We're going to have a spelling test later.

And then Andrzej Zulawski.

He was the baby of the group.

He comes along in the '70s and says,

"You know what? I'm going to dial things up to 11.

I'm going to test these fucking censors."

He was the bad boy who felt entitled

because both his father and his grandfather were prominent

Polish writers, so he was able to get a visa

to study film in France

at a time when most Poles couldn't travel.

And by the time he started directing his own films,

he had a "fuck you" attitude toward government interference.

And at first, he got away with it.

His first film was called "The Third Part of the Night."

Kind of an avant garde surrealist body horror film

about a guy who joins the resistance after the Gestapo

execute his whole family.

And that passes with no censorship.

Probably because it was based on his father's novel.

Miroslaw Zulawski was his father.

So the censors felt comfortable with it.

Novel's already out there.

What could possibly be wrong with the movie?

Then he makes a wild film called

"The Devil", a horror film set in the 18th century.

And this time, the Catholic Church complains

about it, and it gets totally banned.

So Zulawski leaves the country.

He moves to Paris.

He makes a French film called

"The Most Important Thing: Love."

And that's both popular and a critical success.

And so the Polish Ministry of Culture

feels embarrassed now that this artist

in exile is being supported by the west.

And so they invite him to come back to Poland,

and they promise him that they will fund his next film.

And that film is a science fiction epic called

"On the Silver Globe", based on his grandfather's novel,

"The Lunar Trilogy."

And Zulawski spends two years

shooting this story at locations all over Europe.

And then the Polish Culture Minister suddenly says,

"Oh, wow, I didn't see this before.

I see what you're doing.

This is an allegory. It's about totalitarianism.

It's an allegory about us, our government.

It's me!"

And so the minister shuts down production

when the film is 80% complete, and they not only shut him down,

they confiscate all his existing footage.

They order the standing sets to be burned.

They just go ape on this project.

And it's a miracle that Zulawski was able

to smuggle a workprint out of the country

so he could come back years later and finish the film.

But at that point, he was done with Poland.

He went back to France, and at the lowest point in his life,

unable to get work, going through a divorce,

caring for a small son that his ex-wife

didn't want to care for, he wrote "Possession."

And he originally wanted -- he wanted

either Detroit or Berlin for the setting of "Possession"

because he wanted it to portray, quote,

"People surrounded by evil."

And in his view, the automobile factory workers of Detroit

were similar to the fenced in people of Berlin,

you know, trapped by their circumstances.

He wanted to partner with an English speaking writer, though,

because he intended to shoot the film in English

and he didn't want it to sound stilted

or out of sync with the times, which were issues he had had

when his own novels were translated.

And so he went to New York, and he met with, of all people,

Charlie Bluhdorn, the chairman of Gulf and Western,

which was the parent company of Paramount Pictures.

Bluhdorn was an Austrian-American,

so he had heard of Zulawski.

So when they met, Bluhdorn says,

"What kind of picture do you want to make, Andrzej?"

And Zulawski says, "It's a story about a woman

who fucks an octopus.

And Bluhdorn said,

"Well, I don't think we would make that one, Andrzej,

but let me put you in touch with some indie film people."

And he did put him in touch with some indie film people,

including the French producer Christian Ferry,

and that led him to the American avant garde novelist

Frederic Tuten.

This is complicated, I realize.

So the two of them, Frederic Tuten and Zulawski,

they hit it off right away, and Zulawski showed

Tuten this 12-page treatment.

And then they holed up in the Gramercy Park Hotel

in New York City back when that place

was a kind of a ramshackle, run down kind of homey place.

I used to stay there myself after I read

SJ Perelman lived there.

Anyway, these two twisted geniuses came up with a script

for "Possession", and they had several false starts.

They had a company that wanted to shoot the film in Dallas,

which I think -- I don't know why they would want to do that.

Zulawski finally hooked up

with a French producer named Marie-Laure Reyre,

who secured funding from the Berlin Senate.

The actual legislative body that ran Berlin.

So forget Detroit, forget Dallas.

The film was destined for Berlin as a French-German

co-production in English.

[Laughter]

Okay.

That's the story behind the film.

All right. Roll the film. All right.

I didn't hear any gasps from you guys

when I used the term "malacologist."

A professional authority on the mollusk.

You know, you can say many things about me,

but you can't say that I don't know my mollusks.

You know, I'm no carcinologist. I'll admit.

That would be an expert on crustaceans, you know?

But give me a malacology equation, I'll nail it.

You know, no offense to the arthropod people, you know?

But come on, people.

There's only 42,000 species of crustaceans in the world.

Mollusks -- 200,000.

So we win.

[Laughter]

[Static crackles]

[Water splashes]

-How long?

-Uh, ages and ages.

Much longer than I could.

[Door buzzes]

-Nee-na, nee-na, nee-na, nee-na.

-Hi. I'm sorry to bother you so late.

May I see your wife?

-No, she went out.

-Nee-na, nee-na, nee-na, nee-na.

-That's not entirely true.

-She, uh...

She doesn't live with us any longer.

-Oh.

It's about Bob.

-Ah, Bob.

Bob is fine.

He's just beaten the world record in tub diving.

[Water splashes]

-Oh!

[Laughs]

-Hello.

-Come on, cut it out, Bob.

-[Laughs]

[Door buzzes]

Oh, look. Would you be so kind?

He's actually been in the bath for about an hour now.

-Yes, of course.

-I've called many times.

I wanted to discuss with you the redistribution of our parts

in this fundamentally vulgar structure.

The triangle.

In other words, where is she?

I've been giving a great deal of thought

to the illogical aspects of your rendering of the events.

Is Anna with you?

-And if?

-I'd only ask to have a talk with her.

-What if I said no?

-I'm sorry I used violence with you.

Now I'd only apply my psychic functions

to make her come to me.

-Oh, I'm so sorry, she's not here.

-Did I tell you I had a wife and a daughter?

-No! -They live in Cincinnati.

-And what does that do for you?

-They will always remain my first family.

Anna could be the second, and you, and Bob in some sense.

Do you have a dog?

-Would that I had.

-You misuse me.

It's stiff and blocked men like you that

lead us to the concentration camp.

Who are the crusaders of every blind principle,

so-called ideology humanity invents to strangle me.

Why don't you like me?

Why don't you draw in the platitude of my love

and pull me all the way you'd like to...

-Okay, I like you.

And I can tell you where Anna lives.

-Lives?

-Only, I don't know the guy's name.

-That's impossible. It doesn't make sense.

-Why not?

Because you think you've given her the supreme pleasure?

You with your yin-yang balls

dangling from your zen brain?

Okay, maybe it does boil down to a sexual contest,

in which case, I'm sure you win, hands down.

But is that all?

-Nee-na, nee-na, nee-na,

nee-na, nee-na, nee-na.

Nee-na, nee-na, nee-na...

-I used to be afraid of you.

But I don't think I am anymore.

-There's nothing to fear except God.

Whatever that means to you.

-For me, God is a disease.

-That's why through the disease, we can reach God.

-"Tracking something," said Winnie The Pooh,

very mysteriously.

"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer.

"That's just what I ask myself.

I ask myself, 'What?'"

What do you think you'll answer?"

He wants to say good night to you.

-Thank you.

You smell clean.

-Do you like Helen?

-I think so.

-Are you not sure?

-Well, I don't know her yet.

Do you like her?

-Yes, and who don't you like?

-Well, I don't like Heinrich,

and I don't like that sailboat.

-Why? He's funny.

-I don't like...

I don't like Mommy to like him more than us.

-Who's prettier? Mommy or Helen?

-Who do you think is prettier?

-You tell me.

-Our Mommy.

Good night, son.

Thank you.

-Do you have anyone to help you with him?

-Oh it's...

It's not a problem.

I have plenty of time.

-Bob won't say anything to me.

He keeps his words for himself.

He knows everything, senses everything.

Children are amazing.

-Yeah.

-After lunch, we have an hour's rest.

Bob very often falls sleep.

When he does, he cries or shouts.

Does he do it at home?

-No.

-Oh.

He screams.

It is very difficult to calm him down.

When he wakes up, he pretends that nothing happened.

-What can I say?

I'm at war against women.

They have no foresight.

There's nothing about them that is stable,

there's nothing to trust.

They're dangerous.

-There is nothing in common among women

except menstruation.

Excuse me.

I come from a place where evil seems easier to pinpoint

because you can see it in the flesh.

It becomes people so you know exactly

the danger of being deformed by it.

Which doesn't mean I admire your world.

But I find pathetic these stories of women

contaminating the universe.

-I'm...

I'm one of the contaminated.

-Because you never feel free, do you?

So sad that, for you, freedom seems to mean evil.

And what about lack of freedom?

-It's extraordinary.

♪♪

-All right.

Together, we can listen if Bob cries out.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

You don't have to make love to me.

-I'm not trying.

[Both giggling]

[Bob screams]

What happened?

-I want Mommy! My Mommy!

Mommy! Mommy! My Mommy! Mommy!

-It's okay, it's all right.

-Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!

-It's all right. -Mommy!

-Mommy! -It's all right.

-Mommy! -It's all right.

It's all right, it's all right, it's all right.

It's all right.

-I'm sorry. It wasn't very wise of me.

This makes you think you've been right all along.

Hello, Bob.

-I'm the big boss here.

-You're the little boss!

-Good morning.

I phoned you at home,

then I thought I might catch you here.

-I didn't tell you where Bob goes to school.

-It wasn't difficult. We have a minor problem here.

-Yes?

-The detective who was in charge of tracing your wife

didn't come home last night.

-So? -He wasn't at home this morning,

and he hasn't reported to the office.

Before we start to get worried...

When was he going to check it? Yesterday or today?

-I don't know.

-Please don't misunderstand me.

That detective could've gotten drunk

and spent the night with whores,

although that's not much likely.

He could have died of a heart attack.

If our detective doesn't show up by noon,

I'll have to notify the police.

The police will start digging into your problem.

That's how it is.

You and I can claim professional secrecy,

but you have to give me the address the detective gave you.

-Sebastien Strasse 87, floor 1.

-Have you been to that address yourself or telephoned?

-No. -Very sensible of you.

But may I ask why not?

I had the impression that you were

tremendously interested in finding your wife.

-Yes, I was.

I suppose I still am.

But that was out of pure, blind ambition.

And you know something?

I don't feel like there's anything

much ambitious left in me.

-I see.

So I don't even have to ask you as a personal favor

not to come to the office until I contact you.

-Why?

-Precisely because of the delicacy of your feelings,

you might be able to understand that...

my interest in the case comes from the fact that I...

...live with that detective.

I'll be calling.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Scrubbing floor]

I have to talk to you.

-That's what I guessed.

[Water splashes]

-Have you ever seen this man?

-Do I have to answer you?

-Well, you have to answer to someone eventually.

-That's too easy.

But it's you...

Or the police, right?

-Right.

-Why?

-You're scaring me.

-Am I not scared?

-Oh, yes.

I see.

Darkness is easeful.

And the temptation to let go...

...promises so much comfort after the pain.

-He's in there.

[Blood drips]

[Organs squelching]

-My God!

-He is very tired.

He made love to me all night.

-Emanuelle.

-He is still unfinished, you know?

-Emanuelle!

[Gun fires]

[Man groaning]

[Anna gasps]

[Man groans]

[Gun fires three times]

[Static crackles]

-Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the second detective,

the one who goes homicidal, once he sees his partner

dead on the floor, gets beaten senseless with a can of milk,

you know, before she grabs a gun and finishes him off.

I talked a lot about Isabelle Adjani

when we showed Werner Herzog's "Nosferatu the Vampyre."

And if you'll recall,

Herzog complained that she took up a lot of his time

because she had to be constantly reassured

that she was beautiful.

On this picture, she took up a lot of time

because Zulawski was asking her

to go places emotionally that she didn't care to go.

She was still not quite 25 years old when this movie

was made, and I think she was having trouble

deciding what she wanted to do with her life

because she was winning all the acting awards,

she was an A-list celebrity in Europe,

but it was not registering with her.

It was actually this movie that caused people to say,

"Oh, wait, she's not just a model.

She's not just being hired for her looks.

She can actually act."

And she got the Cesar Award for this performance.

But more importantly, she got Best Actress

at the Cannes Film Festival.

But when she saw "Possession" for the first time,

she wanted to kill herself.

She thought she looked ugly. She thought she looked foolish.

And some say she actually did try to kill herself.

It was only after the film received international acclaim

that she started to think about doing more roles,

and by that time, she was being offered roles again.

But she also said she would never let another director

do to her what Zulawski did,

meaning he forced her into dark, emotional places

that she says still affect her today.

Sam Neill, as Mark, said something similar about

this film, but he didn't blame Zulawski

for trying to get what he wanted any way he could get it.

Neill is Irish, but he had grown up in New Zealand.

Boarding school kid. Theater nerd.

Probably never would have left the comfortable life

he had in New Zealand.

He worked for the National Film Commission,

directing, editing, writing.

Were it not for the Australian movie "My Brilliant Career"

in 1979.

Sam Neill plays that handsome suitor

who keeps getting rejected by Judy Davis.

Anyway, that movie was seen around the world --

festivals, art houses, and Zulawski was one of the guys

who noticed Sam Neill.

As we all know, he would go on to be a mainstream

Hollywood actor in the movies like

"Dead Calm" and "The Hunt for Red October",

and, of course, he's best known for being

in every "Jurassic Park" movie as the paleontologist Dr. Grant.

The horror audience would know him for

"Omen III: The Final Conflict",

which came -- it actually it

came out the same year as "Possession."

And also two John Carpenter movies,

"Memoirs of an Invisible Man" and "In the Mouth of Madness."

Also "Event Horizon."

Oh and the "Merlin" miniseries. He has made a lot of horror.

What made "Possession" hard is that Zulawski movies

are always about the female,

but Zulawski needs a male character

to witness what the female is doing,

so Neill had to make himself into the weakest man

in the world, totally enthralled to Anna's power.

And he had to be believable from moment to moment as he went

to the bottom and then he rose

back up to get to the point where no matter how horrible

Anna is, he accepts it and he enables it.

He's sort of the battered spouse in the relationship.

It's like the detective always says on the crime show,

"He's the spouse who loses his identity

and is swallowed up by the other person."

Okay.

We are coming up on the most famous sequence in the movie.

[Sighs] It was filmed at 5:00 a.m.

in the Berlin subway, which was cold and empty,

and Zulawski knew they could only shoot this one time.

And not for any technical reason.

For an emotional reason.

And Isabelle Adjani knew they could only shoot at one time,

and Zulawski made the decision

not to give her any direction at all.

Actually, he said three words to her,

which I'm not going to tell you in advance.

I'll tell you those at the next break.

But if you're going to study scenes where a film tries to do

what you normally only try to do in a novel,

that is to describe someone's inner being,

this is about as close as anybody has ever come,

because the place the monster lives is always inside us,

isn't it?

Roll the film.

You know, Sam Neill --

Sam Neill was also in that weird beard movie

"The Piano."

Remember that movie?

It was one of those movies that everybody acclaims.

It wins all the awards, and five years later,

nobody remembers it or talks about it anymore.

Anyway, Sam Neill was the horror element in "The Piano."

Remember he hacks off Holly Hunter's finger

with an ax?

Remember that?

[Laughs]

That'll teach you to play the piano for Harvey Keitel.

You know?

-[Laughter] -Strange movie.

Not as strange as this movie.

[Laughter]

[Static crackles]

[Paper crumples]

[Anna speaks in French]

-Tighten your stomach.

[Anna speaks in French]

Up! Your knee!

Your foot.

Look at your hand.

Tighter stomach.

Your back, up your leg.

Up your knee.

Up your knee.

Look at your hands.

Tighten your stomach.

Your back.

Your foot.

[Dancer breathing heavily]

Do it.

Hold it.

Hold it.

-[Dancer whimpers] -Up.

Your knee.

Hold it. Hold it.

[Dancer gasping]

Your shoulders down.

Hold it.

Hold.

Hold it.

Hold it. Hold it.

Hold it.

[Dancer screams]

Your back.

More. More.

That's very good!

Very, very good.

Very good.

That's very good.

Good girl.

[Dancer screams]

[Door slams]

From now on, she'll know how much right to sing

and sheer will she's got in her to say,

"I can do as well.

I can be better. I'm the best."

Only in this case can she become a success.

Nobody told me that.

That's why I'm with you.

Because you say "I" for me.

Because you say "I" for me.

[Projector whirs]

[Chair creaks]

Yes, I'm thinking about him, but I recognize the self

who has just done something horrible

like the sister I've casually met on the street.

"Hello, sister."

It's like those two sisters of faith of chance.

It's like those two sisters of faith and chance.

Well, my faith can exclude chance, but chance...

Oh, sh...

Well, it's like those two sisters of faith and chance.

My faith can't exclude chance, but my chance can explain faith.

My faith didn't allow me to wait for chance,

and chance didn't give me enough faith.

Well...

And then I read that private life is a stage,

only I'm playing in many parts

that are smaller than me, and yet I still play them.

I suffer, I believe, I am.

But at the same time I know

there's a third possibility, you know,

like cancer or madness,

but cancer and madness contort reality.

The possibility I'm talking about pierces reality.

Well, I'm unable to say it.

Maybe, maybe it's impossible to say,

maybe I'm too stupid.

You're looking at me as if you...

You're looking at me as if to tell me

that I need you to fill me up, as if I'm an empty space.

Well, I love you, too, but what makes me go on

is to know he'll return and that I'll make him suffer

and I'll hurt him and I'm betraying him,

but this brings me small rewards.

Yet, I can't exist by myself

because I'm afraid of myself,

because I'm the maker of my own evil.

Because...

Because I'm...

Goodness is only some kind of reflection upon evil.

That's all it is.

Ah!

[Sighs]

-What are you doing?

-I'm sorting out his things to take to the laundry.

[Objects clattering]

-I could do it myself.

-But it's my job.

I'm better at it.

-Maybe you could do it when Bob is at home.

[Sink runs]

It's getting...

so difficult for you, isn't it?

You're not as...

You're not as strong or as sure of yourself

as you thought you were, so you keep coming back.

You must be...

You must be...

torn apart.

I can...

I can think more clearly now.

I guess...

I guess when you're there...

you want to be home, and when you're home,

you want to be there.

If what you have there is so strong for you.

If it's what you never had, stick to it, keep it.

[Anna yelps]

It's very quiet here when you're out.

-It was very quiet when you weren't here.

-Come over here.

Let's just see if we can sit together peacefully still.

-[Gasping]

-Is it the same there?

[Anna screams]

Can you tell me now?

-I messed everything up.

Even Bob.

I've been a cheat, a liar,

completely alone, wounded.

And you think I'm immoral shit.

I think so, too, but not for the same reasons.

♪♪

I feel nothing for no one!

It's as if the two sisters

were too exhausted to fight any more.

You know these women wrestling in an arena of mud

with their hands locked at each other's throats,

each waiting to see who will die first.

And both staring at me.

[Anna whimpers]

[Anna repeatedly whimpers]

[Church bells ringing]

[Train chugs]

[Anna laughs hysterically]

[Anna screams]

[Screaming violently]

[Anna howling]

[Anna screams]

[Screaming]

[Anna screams, gasping]

[Screaming]

♪♪

♪♪

[Shrieking]

[Screams]

What I miscarried there was Sister Faith.

And what was left is Sister Chance.

So I had to take care of my faith to protect it.

-And that's what you're doing there?

-Yes.

-You look unclear.

You've hardened.

For the first time, you look...

...vulgar to me.

You know, I remember when I was a kid.

Have you ever seen a dying dog?

You know, one of those old dogs

that comes to die under the porch of the house?

At the last moment, it yelps in terror,

as if it's seen something real.

I want you to take off the ring

and the wristwatch I gave you last time I came home.

[Anna pants]

-Don't forget to give him his yogurt.

-No.

[Plate shatters]

-I have to go.

-If I threw myself at your feet and yelped,

would you still walk over me?

-Yes.

[Static crackles]

-How many levels of reality did we have

in that 15 minutes of film?

We have the film within the film

in which Anna teaches ballet in French,

revealing herself to be a cruel coach of children.

Kind that believes the tougher you are,

the better they'll turn out.

Then she talks about herself. Then she talks about Mark.

Then she speaks straight to the audience.

But the whole thing is inside a film directed by Heinrich.

So we're watching Mark,

watching it through the eyes of Heinrich.

Plus, we have to wonder why Heinrich sent the film to Mark

in the first place.

And then we get to the scene where she's unable

to control her own body as she attempts to be domestic.

You know, when she's going around the house

trying to straighten things up.

And then she finally confesses, "I feel nothing for no one."

And meanwhile, Mark is trying to figure out

what's going on in her head, but he does it by speaking

out loud to himself in the bathroom mirror.

And then we have her attempting to speak to Jesus,

but she just whimpers underneath that spooky

Christ on the cross statue.

And then we have the scene in the subway

where she basically runs through every emotion

in the history of human beings,

bounces off the walls, goes crazy,

has a miscarriage and gives birth.

Because it's all in flashback.

It's in the middle of a speech about chance and faith.

Chance and Faith in capital letters.

And the result of it is that Mark does a very odd thing.

He asks her to return their wedding ring and his watch,

which seems out of character for him,

especially when he begs her in a humiliating way

to not leave right before she leaves.

So, okay, anybody who's ever been in a volatile relationship

or gone through a difficult break up

should be able to identify with these scenes

because they make no sense.

It's pure emotional logic.

There's not a hint of intellectual logic.

With one exception.

And this is something that bothers me,

and I've never understood it.

Right in the middle of this great sequence

which kind of dissects the brain.

Whenever love is threatened, you know,

right in the middle of it,

she makes a philosophical speech.

I wanted to scream.

I mean, the movie goes for 80 minutes

without explaining anything in words.

We're just getting the meaning from body language, from action.

Now we're going to philosophy class.

You know, I'm going to read this out loud

because since since Zulawski and Tuten put it in the script,

I have to assume they really cared about it.

So here's what she says.

Anna says, "It's like there's two sisters,

Faith and Chance.

My faith can't exclude chance,

but my chance can't explain faith."

"My faith didn't allow me to wait for chance

and chance didn't give me enough faith.

And then I read that private life is only a stage,

only I'm playing in many parts that are smaller than me.

And yet I still play them. I suffer. I believe I am.

And yet, at the same time,

I know there is a third possibility

like cancer or madness.

But cancer or madness contorts reality.

The possibility that I am talking about pierces reality.

I can't exist by myself because I'm afraid of myself

because I'm the maker of my own evil."

So, uh...

Fuck you.

I mean, after the scene in the subway, you know,

she says, "What I miscarried there was Sister Faith

and what was left is Sister Chance."

And I guess this is the key to the movie because, as usual,

if you think I'm an idiot who doesn't understand the movie,

e-mail me and engage me on this, but the the subway scene,

which is truly one of the most amazing pieces of writing,

directing, acting that I've ever seen,

that scene is sort of ruined

by this philosophical speech that comes in.

So let's move on. Tell me what I'm missing.

Argue with me.

But I wanted to tell you the three words

that Zulawski gave to Isabelle Adjani

before they said "action" on that subway scene.

He knew that if he tried to direct the internal part of it,

he would ruin it, so he said,

"What I want you to do is fuck the air."

And that's what she did. So roll the film.

The other reason I don't like art house speeches in a movie

is that every academic critic from Warsaw to Beijing

is going to take those speeches and quote them

and re-quote them and publish them and analyze

the fuck out of them in order to tell us

what the film really means, you know?

You know what the film really means?

Whatever you take away from it after you watch it, you know?

I can't stand people who say,

"Well, the reason you don't like the film

is you don't understand the film.

Let me explain."

Oh, thank you, Mr. Intellectual. Now, I love the film.

You know, movies use the right brain only.

Left brain go home. You know what I mean?

And you don't have to like a film or dislike a film.

It's not a binary thing.

You can just experience a film without putting a thumbs up

or a thumbs down on it.

It's not a competition,

but don't speechify to me in a movie.

I'm speechifying right now about not speechifying,

but I think you know what I mean, right?

Okay. End of rant.

Monday morning, there's going to be a memo from Shudder.

"Don't rant in the later part of the movie.

You know, that is really hard on people at

1:00 or 2:00 in the morning."

You know, "Otherwise. Great job, Joe Bob."

You know, whenever you get that phrase.

"Otherwise, great job," you know, you fucked up.

[Laughter]

[Static crackles]

-Hello. This is Anna's husband speaking.

-Anna's not here.

I don't have the slightest idea what's happening to her.

-Do you love your son? -Sir!

-Tell him that I love him, too.

I love everybody and everything. I accept everything.

I have become wise and profound and good.

-Do you want to talk to him?

We are just having coffee.

-No, I don't want to talk to him.

I don't want your coffee to get cold either,

I certainly love your coffee.

Just tell Heinrich that Anna's address is

Sebastien Strasse 87, 1st floor.

-Five, six, seven, sky!

Eight, seven, six, five, four, three...

-Madam teacher, my apologies for being late.

-No, it's all right.

Anyway, we were waiting for you.

Thank you.

And goodbye, Bob.

-What is it?

-My name.

[Motorbike speeds by]

-I respected your wish to be alone.

I thought you needed the time, but now it's time enough.

Besides, what are you doing here anyway?

Don't resist me.

You know I'm stronger than you.

I'm the only one in your life who has rights on you

because I don't claim any.

I brought it from India.

You know, this is what the French poet

Michaud was writing about.

I kept it for you.

With this, love opens to absolutely unknown horizons.

-Absolutely unknown.

-Anna.

We are made to swim in the center of the stream.

Not to wait on the dry banks.

-Yes.

Exactly.

-I showed you the door to God,

and this door is always open.

Come.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Dripping]

This is a joke.

[Creature breathes]

What is it?

[Creature breathes]

♪♪

[Heinrich grunts]

Anna!

Anna!

-These must be old.

They are beginning to smell.

-This can't be true.

-I've got to keep this place clean and well.

-Oh, my God!

-Are you going to help me?

Heinrich.

You are no different from anyone else.

We are all the same but in different words.

With different bodies, different versions,

like insects.

Meat!

[Heinrich gasps]

[Heinrich pants]

[Knife thuds]

-[Phone rings] -[Mark imitates engine]

-Calling all ambulances and fire engines

to the scene of the crash.

And two trucks.

[Bob hums]

Where?

[Doorbell buzzes]

Can you answer the door, Bob?

Now, listen, Heinrich.

Just stay where you are.

-I paid a fortune for the cab.

-At the bar at the corner?

Bleed for a while.

I'll be there as soon as I can.

-My son took the car, an automatic one.

-Can you look after Bob 'til I get back?

-What is it?

-It's Mommy calling me.

♪♪

♪♪

[Fly buzzes]

[Mark nervously laughs]

[Mark gasping, panting]

[Mark howling]

[Mark pants]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Fly buzzes]

[Mark hums]

[Arcade game tune]

-No, not out here.

Go to the toilet.

-Need a Tampax?

-How can you joke while I'm so hurt?

There are corpses in there,

at least two bodies.

I thought she was pulling my leg,

but no, there's blood.

She cuts them.

A monster, a joke, but it was alive.

-You're drunk, Heinrich.

-She cuts us to pieces, Mark.

-Maybe she just didn't want to see you.

-Don't joke. I'm not joking.

-Alright, you're not joking. So what do you want?

-Don't you understand? She's killing people.

-I understand she's killing people,

so why do you call me and not the police?

-She is sick, Mark. Doesn't that mean anything to you?

There are dead bodies there!

-I don't believe you.

Maybe you're stoned on some shit you suck on.

Some mushroom you gobble?

Perhaps you did it to yourself.

Maybe you're learning how to suffer.

Now, that would be an achievement.

-I feel for people.

-You talk for people.

You take their wives.

-I take what I want!

And I'm at peace with myself.

Nobody saw me come in. Nobody.

I called you because we have to do something to help her.

-Why? -It isn't normal.

It wasn't even human.

It was...

-Divine?

Perhaps you met God a moment ago

and you didn't even realize it.

Now, you believe in God, don't you?

Certainly.

In that great incomprehensible God

whom you reach through fucking, or dope.

Am I right?

-Look, Mark, that woman is crazy.

We have to do something.

-We?

I'm not going to do anything.

-I can't leave it this way.

It's Anna. It's murder.

You're not a man, Mark. You're a woman.

All right, if you don't intend to do anything

and want to keep me silent, you will have to pay.

You have money, I know it.

You have to get me out of here,

and send me on a long trip to restore my harmony!

I deserve it! If you had only seen what I saw!

[Heinrich vomiting, heaving]

[Arcade tune music]

[Sink runs]

[Door slams]

[Toilet flushes]

[Heinrich coughing]

[Mark heaving]

-Heinrich, help me out of here, I'm sick!

-I'm the one who is wounded, not you!

-Please!

[Toilet flushes]

[Mark coughs]

[Gas hisses]

[Mark hums]

[Explosion, glass breaking]

[Woman cackling]

-God's light avenge them,

giving it out clean and getting it back dirty.

[Woman cackles]

[Motorbike engine revs]

[Static crackles]

-Okay, in honor of Sam Neill's part of the movie

where he apparently goes crazy in an effort

to match Isabelle Adjani's level of crazy,

I have here a bottle of Two Paddocks Wine,

direct from the Sam Neill Vineyards in

Gibbston, New Zealand, part of the Otago region.

We've all been there, right? Otago.

Actually none of us have ever been there,

but that's the part of New Zealand

where tourists never go,

the southernmost part of the South Island,

where Sam has been churning out the Pinot Noir

since 1993, the year he made "Jurassic Park."

Because, yes, Sam is one of those wine guys

like Francis Coppola, but it gets better.

The next vineyard over from two paddocks

is called Sleeping Dogs

because it's owned by Roger Donaldson,

the director of Sam Neill's first movie,

"Sleeping Dogs", from 1977.

And "Sleeping Dogs" was the first film that had been made in

New Zealand in 17 years.

So it's pretty important in the history

of New Zealand film.

It's actually the first 35 millimeter film

of any kind produced entirely within the borders

of New Zealand.

And it was what launched Sam Neill's career.

"Sleeping Dogs" was also Warren Oates,

the late, great Warren Oates was starred in it.

So, Darcy, Pinot Noir or Chardonnay?

-I'll take the white one.

-All right, we'll do a toast right now to

your favorite part of the movie.

-Yeah.

It's true.

If that movie was only 10 minutes long,

but it still had the scene in it,

I would be totally satisfied.

-You're not big on the divorce/fighting part.

-Oh, no. I get total PTSD from watching those scenes.

-Really? -Mm-hmm.

-Because, I mean, they're over the top.

But you go, "Yeah, that totally happened to me.

I can identify with that."

-No, I mean, those scenes really happened to me.

-Like physically? -Oh, yeah.

-Like physical fighting? -Mm-hmm.

-Oh, then you deserve some Sleeping Dog Chardonnay...

-Yes, I do. -...from Otago,

the region of New Zealand settled by the Scots in 1848.

-You always have to mention the Scots.

-Yes, I do. The Scots are everywhere.

People just don't realize it. They don't drink wine, though.

I'm surprised Otago is known for its wine

because everywhere else the Scots went, they made whiskey.

-Yes, I have seen your redneck show.

-All right. Anyway, to Sam Neill,

who is totally selling this part as a guy who's so in love that

when he says, "I'll do anything,"

he will do anything.

Arson, murder, and now he's got a stolen motorcycle.

So back to the movie.

You think we have any actual viewers in Otago,

in case we get all this wrong?

-Well, we do have fans in New Zealand,

just not as many as we used to.

-Not as many as we used to. Why?

-Remember when you wrote that review of the Elijah Wood movie?

-"Come to Daddy"? -Yeah.

Well, the the director was a really big fan of yours,

and he was super hurt that you didn't like it.

-Really? -Mm-hmm.

-I would say that was a mixed review.

I wouldn't say it was a pan.

-If you say so.

Everyone loves him in New Zealand.

-Wow. Really?

Everyone loves Ant Timpson in New Zealand?

-Yes. -How do they watch

the show over there?

What time is it in New Zealand?

-I think it's already Saturday night over there.

-"Come to Daddy" was not a terrible movie.

-Are you trying to walk back your review?

-No.

I mean, I remember it had some

nice David Lynch rip off moments.

-Oh, yeah, that is really helping build

our New Zealand fan base.

And you didn't like "Housebound" when we showed that one either.

-The Kiwis, they make well crafted horror movies.

That aren't always that scary

because they're a little too intellectual.

-You're not helping. -I love "The Babadook."

-That's Australian, but thanks. You can stop now.

-"Deathgasm." I like that.

-Okay, I'll take it. -Even though it's derivative.

And they make wonderful wine.

-Cheers. -After a long day of

acting and directing.

Well crafted but derivative.

-Stop.

[Laughter]

[Static crackles]

[Footsteps stomping]

[Margit gurgles]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Sink runs]

-Do you believe in God?

-In God?

-It's in me.

♪♪

♪♪

Take me.

Take me.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-Did Margit see it? -Yes.

-That's why you killed her.

-She tried to take it away from me.

-Is this faith that helpless?

-It needs to be protected.

-Like a child. -Yes.

-You know, for me,

God is still under the porch, where the dog died.

And on the branch of the eucalyptus tree,

where I'd lie for hours, and watch how the clouds changed

the color of the grass below.

-I need money. I had to leave there.

Oh, I've cleaned all the mess.

I washed the floor, I made the bed.

I didn't know where to go. It became so unsafe there.

People can't stop trying to take it away from me.

-Okay.

Now leave me the car.

Take Margit's keys and go to her place

and wait there.

Can you drive a motorbike?

-Heinrich taught me. -It's outside.

Now, I'll take care of Bob and everything.

I'll go to the bank on Monday and take the money out.

-If Bob wakes up, tell him...

-I will.

-It's only me.

Go to sleep.

-I have to go.

Please close the door.

-Because it's here with you?

-Yes.

[Zipper unzips]

[Plastic tarp stretching]

[Trunk slams]

[Dogs barking]

[Phone rings]

-I'm sorry to disturb you -- -Yes?

-You understand that it is very late,

and Heinrich hasn't called me yet.

He calls me every night so I won't worry

about when he comes home.

-Maybe...

Maybe he just forgot your number.

-No, you don't understand.

Mothers always feel it when their sons are in trouble.

-Are you worried...

Are you worried that he's not there having sex with my wife?

-They should come here.

I've put clean sheets on the bed, and they could have dinner.

-Are you quite sure you know who you are talking to?

-I am. -Oh.

-I went there. -Where?

-I was worried, you understand.

There isn't any apartment there under the address you gave me.

There's only a smoking hole

that the police won't allow anybody to come near.

So I went to a bar at the corner

to call home, to find out if Heinrich had returned.

-Yes?

-And Heinrich was there.

Nobody could identify him.

-Yes?

-I recognized his body, of course.

-Did you identify it for the police?

-No, it was only Heinrich's body.

But his soul was not there.

-Perhaps he and his soul had parted company before.

-You don't know what you're talking about.

-No, you're quite right.

I don't have any idea what I'm talking about.

-He must have seemed to you better

and more beautiful than you.

When Anna met him, she immediately worshiped his soul.

And you sent him there.

-Now, listen to me.

I recognize Heinrich's superiority in every way.

I was proud that Anna accepted him.

Now Anna has gone missing, and I'm here

all alone, you understand, with our little son.

Now, I must find her. Maybe it's her fault.

I'll find her, and I'll force her to tell me

what she's done with Heinrich's soul.

And then I'll come to you and tell you.

[Tires screech on pavement]

-Won't you come up? -I'm in a rush.

-Is it your wife? -Yeah.

-Will you promise me something?

-Yes?

-Whatever it is?

-I promise.

[Anna moans]

[Anna cries out]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-Almost.

Almost.

Almost.

Almost.

♪♪

♪♪

Almost.

-Yes.

-Almost.

Almost.

[Static crackles]

-Oh, my God. So good.

-Are you turned on by that?

-I mean, who wouldn't be?

-Well, when we finally see what makes Anna happy,

we're looking at the work of special effects guru

Carlo Rambaldi, the same guy who did E.T.

But Zulawski was very dissatisfied with his work.

He said, "I never got the monster I wanted."

Because Zulawski wanted the whole movie

to revolve around that monster.

So very early in the planning for the film,

he hired this Polish painter named Jan Lebenstein

to depict the monster at different stages of growth.

And Lebenstein was an excellent choice

because he described his own painting as

"Metaphors for emotional drama," and Zulawski's idea

was that every time the monster killed somebody,

it would absorb and display the traits of that person.

But Lebenstein was a painter.

He was not going to be able to build what he drew.

So after seeing "Alien", Zulawski contacted H.R. Giger

and asked him if he could build the monster,

and Giger sent him to his friend Carlo Rambaldi.

I guess Giger didn't have time, or he didn't want to do it.

Or it's too little money. Sent him to Carlo Rambaldi.

Carlo Rambaldi had worked on more than 200 films

at Cinecitta Studios in Rome, but now he lived in Hollywood,

even though he never learned to speak English.

And Zulawski hired him to construct the four stages

of the monster's development.

So Rambaldi arrives in Berlin,

and he has these fabrications made of pink latex,

very primitive movement, no electronics.

And their conversation went basically like this.

"Okay, Andrzej, here's my prototype for the monster."

And Andrzej goes, "What do you mean?

You should have four monsters.

And they should not be prototypes.

They should be monsters."

And he says, "Don't worry, I'll work on the creature

while you're getting the shots."

And he says, "What do you mean?"

And he says, "Well, you know, I remember it took us six weeks

to get the one right shot for the ending of

'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'

And so I assumed I would have --"

And he goes, "Are you crazy?!

This is a low budget movie!

We're shooting all this in 48 hours!"

And Rambaldi goes, "That's impossible."

And he goes, "Carlo, you're Italian.

You've lived in California too long.

Think like an Italian!

You have two days to make this happen.

You will not be sleeping at all during these two days."

And Rambaldi goes, "Okay."

And so he concentrates. on making the one creature

that we just saw.

It took four guys to operate that creature, and they

had to compromise on the other three stages of development.

But also, Zulawski lost three days of shooting,

and he lost two crucial scenes

because of Rambaldi doing that, and he never forgave him.

Years later, he would tell that story about

how it took six weeks to do a shot

for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Anyway...

-More monster sex would have been awesome.

-Zulawski wanted a lot more monster sex.

What's interesting, though, is the professional critics

who talk about this movie, they don't agree on what

Anna's love for the monster means.

-I know what it means.

-You know what Anna's love means?

-I think so. -Okay, go for it.

-It's sex that's unpredictable and forbidden.

-That's true.

But I think it's also something about, you know,

we don't ever quite know the person that we love 100%.

And there's always this deeper level that they have to hide.

And so the test becomes if they eventually show you

that deeper level, do you run away, or do you stay?

And Mark decides to stay.

Heinrich wants to kill the monster.

Mark wants to protect the monster, which is key to

the ending of the movie, which is coming up now.

Once again, Zulawski is going to dial it up to 11

for the conclusion of "Possession."

So roll it.

And, you know, I should probably mention

before we do that, the other cast members.

Margit, who just had her throat slit by Anna,

that's Margit Carstensen.

Very famous in Germany, mostly for her theater work.

But outside Germany, she's recognized as a star in

several films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

in the '70s.

Like "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant."

She was the star of that.

"Martha" and "Fear of Fear" and "Chinese Roulette."

Several others.

And then Heinrich.

That's a virtuoso performance. Heinrich.

That's Heinz Bennent.

Also German.

Worked a lot with Ingmar Bergman.

Was a permanent fixture at

the Bavarian State Theater in Munich.

And this will not surprise anybody watching this movie.

He actually served in the Luftwaffe

during World War II.

And then the character of Helen,

the sweet teacher at Bob's school with a crush on Mark,

that's, of course, Isabelle Adjani,

again doubling as her doppelganger.

And there are actually two doppelgangers in this movie,

but you will not realize the second one until the very end.

And now, before we go back to the movie,

I would like to make a few remarks

about the history of the Bavarian State Theater

and the Deutsches SchauSpielHaus in Hamburg, which is

where Margit Carstensen got her start.

And the Theater am Goetheplatz in Bremen,

where Carstensen met Fassbinder.

-Are you kidding me right now? -Yes.

I was just trying to make you nervous.

-Oh, my God. You succeeded.

-Although Bremen is interesting.

-Please don't. Please don't.

-Bremen is where all the German Americans come from.

-I don't think they all came from one place.

-Well, no, but that's where they all got on the boat.

-Nice.

-It must have been great to live in Europe at that time.

You have a bad year or something, and somebody says,

"I agree, It sucks here right now.

There's a boat over there. It goes to New York.

What the hell? Let's go."

Because the Germans glommed on to that before anybody else did.

They were here in, like, the 1700s, you know,

in Georgia.

That's where they went.

They went to Georgia when they first came here.

Ebenezer, Georgia.

-Is that all? -Yes.

-On the banks of the Savannah River.

-Joe Bob!

[Laughter]

[Static crackles]

-Heinrich's dead.

Isn't he?

-Yes.

-Have you found Anna?

-Yes.

-You come like the angel of death.

The one who kills.

-I had thought about killing him.

-And now?

-Now I don't know.

-Did you see anything that made you change your mind?

-I don't know what I saw, but Heinrich saw it, too.

-And you came to tell me that you don't know

where Heinrich's soul is.

-Yes.

-I can see it in your face.

It would be good to think that the soul

lives separately from the body.

That the soul lives forever and the body only for a time.

But it isn't so.

-I don't know anymore. -I do.

I have to be on my son's side.

Even if he has made you unhappy.

I know all there is to know about him.

That I love him.

-Yes.

-I was wondering which is worse.

Take away someone's wife, hurt a child...

or to kill.

He also had a wife and a child.

I used to like her.

I liked your Anna, too.

I had to like both of them, since they loved him.

The world is only what it is.

Murderers fair the best in it.

You don't have to worry about me.

I don't want to be here

if Heinrich is not around anymore.

♪♪

[Window creaks]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

-That dog didn't die of old age.

What about you, Mark?

Our man won't confide or deal with your successor,

he wants you.

In fact, Mark, there is no successor.

We can take care of drowning dogs,

but please help us take care of the drowning world.

Don't you think it's uneconomical

to waste yourself on dogs?

Even dogs you love?

-I met a man who loved everything.

And he died in a flood of shit.

-We know. That's just details.

-When I was a boy,

I had a dog, and his name was Louis.

When he crawled under the porch to die,

I stayed there with him.

-So what?

-I wanted to see what it was

that made him crawl under there.

-Nobody's a boy any more.

Must we prove it?

[Motorbike engine revs]

-This is the address of Zimmerman's home.

-Back up, then full speed, and crash into the police car.

-My pleasure, sir.

[Cars crashing]

-Out of the car!

Out of the car!

[Guns firing]

[Man gasps]

[Engine revs]

[Car crashes]

[Tires screeching]

[Cars exploding]

[Motorbike speeds]

[Mark yells]

[Bike skids]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Mark gasps]

[Church bells ringing]

[Tires skidding]

[Car doors slamming]

[Footsteps approaching]

-Anna?

Run away!

Go!

Go!

How could you find me?

-How could I not?

[Footsteps approaching]

♪♪

♪♪

I wanted to show it to you.

It is finished now.

-[Grunts]

-Oh, yes.

[Anna chuckles]

[Mark grunts]

[Guns firing]

[Mark and Anna gasping]

[Anna groans]

[Gun fires]

♪♪

-So hard to live with it.

Eh, brother?

♪♪

♪♪

Is there a way out?

Will you help me?

-Yes.

-Take it.

Shoot them.

[Gun fires]

How do you want to finish it?

♪♪

♪♪

[Doorbell rings]

-Would you open it please?

Why not, Bob?

It could be your father.

-Don't open.

-Well, I want to.

-Don't open. -But I want to.

-Don't open. Don't open.

Don't open! Don't open!

Please don't open!

Don't open it. Don't open.

Don't open it.

Don't open. Don't open.

Don't open.

Don't open.

Don't open. Don't open.

Don't open.

Don't open. Don't open.

Don't open.

Don't open. Don't open. Don't open. Don't open.

Don't open.

♪♪

[Siren wails]

[Planes flying overhead]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Bombs exploding outside]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Bombs exploding]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[Static crackles]

-Berlin appears to be falling into chaos

as the doppelganger of Mark

turns out to be the perfection of the monster.

The lovers are reunited in death

when Mark becomes the monster.

How cool is that?

And it's as though the deaths of these two perfect lovers

bring on nuclear apocalypse or something, you know?

Both parents are replaced with clones.

The kid is dead,

and World War III is starting, right?

-I wouldn't be certain of any of that,

but there is definitely chaos all around them.

-Is the kid dead? Was that a suicide?

-I mean, I think so, but I'm not sure about anything.

-Well, Sam Neill was just getting started

when this movie was made.

He's had 200 more roles since this movie.

I think the latest blockbuster he was in was "Thor: Ragnarok."

Isabelle Adjani, though, this was her breakthrough.

She would shatter just about every record

for French actresses.

She would win five Cesar Awards, the French Oscar.

But "Possession" was the first Cesar Award she won.

She would be nominated for the Oscar twice,

something that rarely happens for foreign actresses.

One other performer I haven't mentioned yet,

Heinrich's mother, who has the nice suicide scene

there at the end, that's Johanna Hofer,

legendary German actress.

Her career goes back to the silent era.

She starred with Max Reinhardt in Berlin theater.

She and her husband fled Germany to escape Nazi persecution

in the '30s, and they ended up in Hollywood,

where she had a few supporting roles.

And then she returned to Germany in 1948.

Did a lot of television.

Always preferred the theater.

She was with us to the age of 92.

She passed away in 1988.

So rarely has there been a movie that's so celebrated in Europe

and so neglected in the U.S.

"Possession", it premiered in competition

at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981,

just barely missed winning the Golden Palm.

The winner was another Polish film,

"Man of Iron", by Andrzej Wajda.

Andrzej Wajda was the Steven Spielberg

of Polish film.

He was the most famous director of all time in Poland.

Zulawski had actually been Wajda's assistant in the '60s.

So "Possession" did not win the Golden Palm.

But Isabelle Adjani did win Best Actress.

And really this film is what made her a superstar

for the rest of her career.

So there's all this acclaim,

but the French producers cannot, for the life of them,

get the film released in the U.S.

despite making the film in English

because they wanted to get it released in the U.S.

Finally, two and a half years later,

they get it released by drastically cutting it.

They add some additional dialogue.

They give it a new score, "Omen" type score.

They add some optical post-production effects.

They basically ruin the movie,

and they did a limited theatrical release under

the title "The Night The Screaming Stops",

and nobody was much interested in it.

Audiences and critics both said that they weren't sure

what was going on in the movie, which is not surprising

because 43 minutes were missing from the original cut.

So some of the scenes were out of order.

I mean, this was a horrible cut.

So the real movie was never seen in an American theater

until last year.

They screened it at Metrograph in Brooklyn.

That was the North American theatrical release,

six years after Zulawski is dead.

And things were even worse in the UK.

The cut version of "Possession" in the UK

ended up on the Video Nasties list,

so it was outright banned for many years.

The first time people saw some version of the complete movie

was 2009, when it was released on DVD.

And the first time anybody saw the uncut version in the U.S.

was at Fantastic Fest in Austin, September of 2021.

Okay, Darcy, render the verdict.

-Okay, I am actually not really sure how I feel about this one

because I can't sum it up with my usual

"It's fun" because it's very much not fun,

at least not until the very end.

There's so much screaming and fighting.

And like I said before, it gave me like past relationship PTSD.

But I do love the monster sex,

and there should have been way more of that.

And Isabelle Adjani is amazing.

-Okay, well, let's talk about this one just

a little bit more because "Possession" is definitely

not one of our normal menu items around here.

-It goes from "Kramer vs Kramer" to "Society", you know?

It seems like four or five different movies.

Each one increasingly insane.

And they photographed Berlin like a totally dead place,

but it's full of crazy people having nervous breakdowns.

-The movie itself is like having a nervous breakdown.

-True. That is absolutely right.

Some of the scenes are so exaggerated

that they could end up being silly

if you don't do them exactly right,

but they become terrifying instead.

And then there's all that talk about faith and chance

and God and good and evil.

-Gross. -Yeah, I agree.

I mean, there were a few critics who said that the two leads

were overacting. -I don't think so.

-I don't either. Not even Heinrich.

Not even the sex master and druggie

who lives with his mom, and not even Isabelle Adjani,

who loses her mind on camera.

-That was so good.

-Zulawski said that was, quote, "The only time

it's not my film, it's an actress giving something

that could never be described." -Definitely.

-I should mention part of the credit

for revival of interest in "Possession"

should go to Anthology Film Archives in New York.

Because starting in the year 2000,

they played it on every Valentine's Day.

-Actually, a lot of people wrote in to us

saying it would be perfect for Valentine's Day.

-And a whole bunch of it was based on

Zulawski's private life.

The actress who starred in his first two movies,

"The Third Part of the Night" and "The Devil",

he married that actress, and they had a son together.

But remember, Zulawski had to go to France.

He had to go to France to make a movie

after he was banned from employment in Poland.

He wasn't even allowed to work as a taxi driver in Poland.

And when he returned from France, he had that moment

in the movie where he goes to his apartment,

and he opens the door, and his son is covered in filth,

and his wife is off doing her thing.

And that was something that he never got over.

And I think that's why the movie is so dark.

-What do you make of the Berlin Wall references?

-I don't know.

I mean, serious critics like to play around with that.

I think it's just gloomy and depressing.

I mean, he said it could be in Detroit, too.

So, I mean, they built that huge wall in Germany

to keep people from leaving.

What?

They would shoot you if you tried to leave the country?

And they wondered why we thought communist countries were crazy.

You know?

-It was the only movie he ever made in English.

I guess that's because of the way it was handled.

-Yeah. He agreed to make the movie in English.

He thought he would sort of break into the American.

He didn't like Americans in the film business.

He didn't like the American film industry

and the way it worked, because Dino De Laurentiis

tried to use him when he -- remember he was running

that film studio in Wilmington, North Carolina.

He was Dino's first choice to direct "The Dead Zone",

but the job eventually went to David Cronenberg,

who did a great job on it.

He wrote a script for Dino, but then he had better

opportunities in France.

So he went back to Europe,

and he was frequently asked to make pitches in America.

But he despised the word "pitches"

and the whole idea of pitching your movie.

And he said, "If you can say what your movie is about

in a few minutes, you shouldn't bother making the movie."

-I can see how that wouldn't fly in Hollywood.

-And then there was the fact that some actors

were afraid of him because Isabelle Adjani claimed

that he drove her to attempt suicide.

-I believe it. -And she said it was, quote,

"psychological pornography."

And she said, quote,

"You don't have the right to do that with the camera."

You don't have the right to

expose somebody's soul like that.

And actually, Zulawski would almost agree with her because

he said acting was a ritual emotional sacrifice.

That's what he called it.

Every time you do it, you pay a price.

So it's not like he didn't know about the psychological damage,

but he considered that part of

what he was paying for when he hires you.

A lot of critics said the people in his movies are hysterical.

And he hated that.

In fact, he kind of put a damper on his own comeback.

He delayed it at least 10 years, because Film Forum in New York

had a very successful run of Zulawski films

in December of 2011,

and that led to the Polish Cultural Institute

sponsoring a Zulawski retrospective in March 2012

They had it at two places, at Cinefamily on the West Coast.

You know that place, right?

-I used to go there a lot. Yeah.

-And the Brooklyn Academy of Music on the East Coast.

Only the Brooklyn Academy of Music

titled the show "Hysterical Excess."

And Zulawski hated that title so much that he refused

to appear at the retrospective.

His exact quote was, "The clinical term hysteria

is very hurtful to me."

But anyway, he was never the kind of guy who would be

making another film just to be working.

He was also a very successful novelist.

He had about 20 published novels.

Are you into Polish novels?

Do you read a lot of Polish novels?

-I mean, doesn't everyone?

[Laughter]

-Actually, you should check out a Polish

nonfiction book called

"Bardzo Spokojna Okolica: Zbrodnia w Teksasie."

-I definitely will.

[Laughter]

-You're not even gonna ask me what that is.

-Because I know you're gonna tell me.

-Alright, well, the translation of that is

"A Very Quiet Neighborhood: True Crime Case in Texas."

-Very catchy title.

-I know, right?

Remember that true crime book that I wrote all those years ago

with my buddy Jim Atkinson?

-They read that in Poland?

-Do you know how many languages

that book has been translated into?

That true crime book.

-Is this a trick question?

-Jeden In Polish that's the word for "one."

One language. Polish.

They love me in Poland.

The title in English is "Evidence of Love,"

but they wanted something snappy, so now it's

"A Very Quiet Neighborhood: The Crime Case in Texas."

So I'm gonna put that on my business card.

"Loved in Poland."

-Aw, you are loved everywhere. And I've got mail!

-Really? -Yeah.

-Anything from Warsaw? -No.

It's from Cameron Lucey of Holly Springs, North Carolina.

-You are determined to make this

Carolina Jubilee night, aren't you?

We were just there, weren't we?

We were just in North Carolina.

-We were in Clayton.

-Clayton, Holly Springs. This is from Holly Springs.

These are -- you know what these are?

Satellite cities for Raleigh-Durham.

Don't call 'em suburbs! Satellite cities.

You don't say suburbs anymore.

They have their own orbits.

I'm not sure why people don't wanna be associated with

Raleigh and Durham, but anyway, I've done the Redneck show there

three times now, and I can assure you they get it.

Not every audience gets it, but they get it.

"Hi, Darcy."

See, they don't even write to me anymore. They write to you.

"Hi, Darcy. I have a question for Joe Bob

and a request.

I saw this super old website post online talking about

"Godstuff", and it mentions a project you were working on.

What can you tell us about 'The Joe Bob Story'?"

Well, first of all, "Godstuff" was the segment I did

on "The Daily Show", and I guess this was an old article

about that.

And quotes the article.

"Joe Bob is presently putting the finishing touches on his

screenplay 'The Joe Bob Story,' which has been described as

a country/western 'This Is Spinal Tap.'

The film is scheduled to begin production in the fall."

Okay, yeah, should I answer that part first

or should I read the second part?

-Answer that part because I'm curious.

-So yeah, I did write a script called "The Joe Bob Story,"

the William Morris Agency set it up,

it was gonna be produced with money they raised out of

their Nashville office, and then, like most things

in showbiz, it fell through.

And to tell you the truth, I don't remember why exactly

it fell through.

It was just one of those things where they stop returning

your phone calls.

We had a cast lined up.

Oh, I remember now!

It was Cary Woods.

It was the same guy who produced "Scream,"

but at the time, his biggest movie was "Rudy."

And he produced a lot of cool indie films,

like "Kids." Remember that film?

And "Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead,"

And "Beautiful Girls," and "Swingers," "Gummo."

At some point, he disappeared.

I don't know what happened to Cary.

But I do remember I went to this big Hollywood party,

and it's very difficult to get me to go to

a big Hollywood party.

I'm not a big Hollywood party person.

But he wanted me to go to this party because he was trying to

talk Ashley Judd into being the female lead in

"The Joe Bob Story," and so I had this convo with

Ashley in which she complained a lot about the nudity

in the film, indicating she had read the script.

And so that was it.

They don't ever call you up and say,

"This project is dead."

They just say, "We're gonna put this on the back burner

for now, Joe Bob."

So "Putting this on the back burner for now" means

"Your project is dead."

So anyway, I had many other things going on, and I moved on,

but a lot of people who read the script, I mean,

a lot of character actors and a lot of

Nashville people, they would get in touch with me

because I guess the script was getting passed around.

And they would say they wanted to play one of the parts

or do the music.

One of the giant music companies did this whole presentation

about how they could do the music with all their

country/western artists.

And but thank you, Cameron.

I never would have thought of that if you hadn't

asked me about it.

People are always fascinated by your failed projects, right?

Okay, the rest of the letter.

"Would Joe Bob or yourself be up --"

It's still writing to you.

"Would Joe Bob or yourself be up for doing an MTV Cribs

style video?"

No.

-At least read the rest of it.

-"If not a house tour maybe Joe Bob could show off

his bolo collection or a bookcase and talk about

some interesting stuff he owns.

And yourself, a horror collection tour!

Just an idea!"

-I'd be down for it. -I'm not.

-Why not?

-I'm just not a fan of any kind of reality TV.

I don't like to do small talk.

-Isn't that exactly what we do?

-Well, yes, but it's small talk about movies,

not so much about ourselves.

-Well, I think you should reconsider.

Cameron, that's not an absolute no.

Let me try to reason with the boss man.

-Cameron, that is an absolute no.

-Don't be stubborn.

I'm Joe Bob Briggs, and I am not responsible for anything

Darcy promises, reminding you that you should never

drink and drive because you might hit a bump

and spill your beer.

And the drive-in will never die.

80-year-old couple, shopping in an antique store.

Man picks up a lamp, and he rubs it, and a genie appears.

And the genie says, "I've been in this lamp for

4,000 years so you can have a wish for anything you want."

And the 80-year-old man says,

"Make my wife 50 years younger than me."

The genie waves his hand, poof!

The man is 130 years old.

[Laughter]

No? -It was good.

Martial artist is showing off in a bar.

A nerd walks in, and the martial artist

tosses him on the ground and he says,

"That was a judo throw that I got from Japan."

Well, the nerd tries to get up, but the martial artist kicks him

in the head and says,

"That was a savate kick that I got from France."

The nerd manages to stand up, the martial artist elbows him

in the ribs and knocks him back down and says,

"That was a Muay Thai elbow that I got from Thailand."

The nerd struggles to his feet, he heads for the back room

of the bar, the martial artist guy follows him.

And after a while, there's a big thud in the back room,

and the nerd emerges from the room.

And the bartender asks him what happened.

And the nerd says, "When he gets back up off the floor,

tell him that was a Louisville Slugger

I got from Dick's Sporting Goods.

[Laughter]

-Yay, good one!

-♪ We are drive-in mutants

-♪ Drive-in mutants

-♪ We are not like other people ♪

♪ We are sick -♪ Sick

-♪ We are disgusting -♪ Disgusting

-♪ We believe in, we believe in ♪

-♪ Blood

♪ And breasts

♪ And beasts

-♪ Yeah, we believe in

-♪ Blood

♪ And breasts

♪ And beasts

-♪ If life had a vomit meter

♪ We'd be off the scale -♪ Off the scale

-♪ As long as one drive-in remains on the planet Earth ♪

♪ We will party like jungle animals ♪

♪ We will boogie till we puke

-♪ Boogie till we puke

-♪ The drive-in will never die

♪ We will boogie till we puke

-♪ Boogie till we puke

-♪ The drive-in will never die

-♪ We believe in

♪ Blood

♪ And breasts

♪ And beasts

-♪ We believe in

-♪ Blood

♪ And breasts