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It’s not often that I leave a movie wishing that they told me less.
Especially in this sort of historical mystery movie—usually things aren’t
resolved enough. But Possession felt too—well, explained. Nothing
was left to the imagination—not one clue was inaccessible or left unguessed.
It worked out—I hate to say it—too perfectly.
It would have all been okay if it had been a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Sherlock
Holmes has that magical preternatural ability to sleuth out every clue—and
you love him for it.
But neither of this movie’s heroes are Sherlock Holmes by any stretch
of the imagination. They are an American researcher specializing in Victorian
poetry (Aaron Eckhart) and a British professor (Gwyneth Paltrow)—who seem to be not so much
good at their particular brand of literary sleuthing as fortunate. Fortunate to stumble upon many clues leading to an entire
story about a hundred-and-fifty-year-old love affair between two poets. While
they’re finding things out together, they’re falling for each other
as well.
The really frustrating part of this movie is that the scenes that don’t
follow the modern-day sleuthing tell you absolutely everything about
the historical affair—even what the pair doesn’t find. And then what they do find seems too easily gained. There
are rivals trying to get to the same information, but somehow the attempts don’t
seem terribly threatening.
There are good points to the movie—for instance, the characters are interesting,
and the British landscapes are marvelous. But the plot didn’t quite pull
through—or I should say it carried too far through. I would have liked
to have a few more twists left to my imagination.
