Possession

Possession is an intellectual romance reminiscent of a Victorian novel in atmosphere such as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Admittedly I've had a weakness for Jane Eyre since the first time I read it as a teenager. Every rendition of Jane Eyre as a movie has come under my scrutiny.

That gives you an idea how I see the film, Possession. This is a well-crafted movie, and now I must read the novel. Adapted from a novel of the same title by the novelist, A.S. Byatt, the book won the Booker Prize in 1990. Any romantic would be caught in the web of this story. I was captivated.

Also, in support of Possession, I admit I don't generally like time travel plots. But Director Neil LaBute, who as far as I know has never directed a romance, did a superb job. This is an unusual romance for today's world. I was glued to it from the beginning, partly because I love the English countryside and some of the city of London, and partly because the main characters of the present time, Maud Baily (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) are attractive to watch.

The couple of the past, Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) and Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle) are captivating as star-crossed lovers who seem to step out of a painting you see in art books of the Victorian times of old England. Visually I was hooked.

The two couples' stories are intertwined as LaBute introduces the past and the present. In the present, beautiful and ice-like British Maud Bailey eventually shows her warm side to the present time character, Roland Mitchell, a handsome American. They meet in London; their common ground being an insatiable hunger to find out more about Ash. Ash was the poet laureate of Queen Victoria, and the British Museum in London celebrates the Centennial in his honour. Maud and Roland, employed and educated as historians, discover the supposedly happily married Ash had an affair. His lover was Christel, who was in a lesbian affair with man hater, Blanche Glover (Lena Heady). This could shake down the scholars' records of Randolph Henry Ash. It's a catastrophe.

The present day couple, Maud and Randolph, at first antagonistic towards each other and cautiously wary of a relationship, are fascinated by their shared discovery of Ash's secret.

Contrary to the present, the couple in the past, Randolph and Christabel, over insurmountable odds which result in tragedy, manage to have an affair. They write love letters to each other throughout the story. These letters are discovered by Maud and Roland. It's the love letters that carry Maud and Roland on a quest to find out the fate of the star crossed lovers of yesterday. And it's these letters that help decide the fate of today's couple, Maud and Roland.

To me, the story is about love being timeless. A lesson for our modern society.

Now, I'll get off the soap box, and wring the tears out of my popcorn.