Directed by Neil LaBute

Novel by A.S. Byatt
Screeplay by David Henry Hwang and Neil LaBute

Gwyneth Paltrow .... Maud Bailey
Aaron Eckhart .... Roland Michell
Jeremy Northam .... Randolph Henry Ash
Jennifer Ehle .... Christabel LaMotte
Lena Headey .... Blanche Glover
Holly Aird .... Ellen Ash
Toby Stephens .... Fergus Wolfe
Trevor Eve .... Cropper
Tom Hickey .... Blackadder
Georgia Mackenzie .... Paola
Tom Hollander .... Euan
Graham Crowden .... Sir George
Anna Massey .... Lady Bailey
Craig Crosbie .... Hildebrand
Christopher Good .... Crabb-Robinson
Elodie Frenck .... Sabine
Victoria Bensted .... Woman in Hotel
Shelley Conn .... Candi

Produced by
Len Amato .... executive producer
David Barron .... executive producer
Barry Levinson .... producer
Stephen Pevner .... co-producer
Guy Tannahill .... line producer
Paula Weinstein .... producer

Original music by Gabriel Yared
Cinematography by Jean-Yves Escoffier
Film Editing by Claire Simpson

MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sexuality and some thematic elements.
Runtime: 102
For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM, and MPAA.ORG.
Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG

Possession: A Romance
by A. S. Byatt
"Literary critics make natural detectives," says Maud Bailey, heroine of a mystery where the clues lurk in university libraries, old letters, and dusty journals. Together with Roland Michell, a fellow academic and accidental sleuth, Maud discovers a love affair between the two Victorian writers the pair has dedicated their lives to studying: Randolph Ash, a literary great long assumed to be a devoted and faithful husband, and Christabel La Motte, a lesser-known "fairy poetess" and chaste spinster. At first, Roland and Maud's discovery threatens only to alter the direction of their research, but as they unearth the truth about the long-forgotten romance, their involvement becomes increasingly urgent and personal. Desperately concealing their purpose from competing researchers, they embark on a journey that pulls each of them from solitude and loneliness, challenges the most basic assumptions they hold about themselves, and uncovers their unique entitlement to the secret of Ash and La Motte's passion.

Winner of the 1990 Booker Prize--the U.K.'s highest literary award--Possession is a gripping and compulsively readable novel. A.S. Byatt exquisitely renders a setting rich in detail and texture. Her lush imagery weaves together the dual worlds that appear throughout the novel--the worlds of the mind and the senses, of male and female, of darkness and light, of truth and imagination--into an enchanted and unforgettable tale of love and intrigue. --Lisa Whipple

A.S. Byatt's Possession: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Contemporaries)
by Catherine Burgass
This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years – from ‘The Remains of the Day’ to ‘White Teeth’. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question.

Darrel has an incredible love and interest in the cinematic arts. His reviews usually include independent and significantly important film.

The movie that Possession reminded me of was Lone Star. Both involve two stories separated by generations. Many of the cinematic transitions between the times were done in much the same way. Both films were a search for a hidden truth. And both in some way helped a character better learn their real identity. However, where Lone Star is based on corruption and macho and visualized in Kris Kristofferson's rough-hewn features, Possession is about poets and romance and characterized by the soft radiance of Gwyneth Paltrow.

The basis of the film is a kind of detective story into the lives of two people now long dead. It is always a challenge to find the truth after the fact. There can be so much conjecture on a small piece of evidence. It can be easy to be carried away with the conjecture to absurd lengths. It certainly makes research look much more interesting than it really is. (You don't usually end up working with Gwyneth Paltrow or Aaron Eckhart. You also don't often find a lost love note sitting in an old dusty tome, either.)

What is it we search for in life? Fame? Love? A better position in our chosen field? Often what we begin striving for gives way to something unexpected. That is how both love stories in Possession come to be. Such is the romance genre.

When we get to the end of the film, we as viewers realize that we have seen even more of the story between Randolph and Christabel than Roland and Maud have discovered. They think they have found the truth, and they have come very close. But there is that little bit that remains hidden from them.

In our search for God, we also come across surprises along the way that open up new avenues of exploration and new ways of understanding God's relationship to the world. Often our discoveries of God are found in our search for something else. Sometimes we make conjectures on some small evidence and build upon it. We may even discover new insights that enlighten our lives. And yet, we also know that even as we find more and more of God's truth for us, that there will always be bits that remain hidden from us.

The thrill of Possession, and the thrill of our life with God, is finding the serendipitous blessings along the way, and the knowledge that there is always more to be found.

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