“On the Silver Globe” (1977/1988)
A group of astronauts crashes on an Earth-like planet. Years pass and their descendants have populated a new non-technological society, complete with a semi-religious worship of the last surviving astronaut and a prophecy about another man to arrive from Earth. Another astronaut does arrive, centuries later, and is drawn into a complex conflict between two societies. Had “On the Silver Globe” been completed as planned, this meditative science fiction puzzle might have become Zulawski’s first landmark effort. But the 1977 shoot was scuttled by a newly-appointed official who ordered the materials destroyed after interpreting the film’s cultural battle as a battle between Polish citizens and government. Cast and crew preserved the film, however, and the movie, as complete as possible, premiered at Cannes in 1988 with Zulawski narrating the un-shot scenes. In its final form, “On the Silver Globe” is trying, thanks not only to its incomplete nature but to Zulawski’s oblique screenplay full of elliptical monologues. (The script is based on a novel by Zulawski’s great-uncle.) The thematic scope, which factors in political allegory and Zulawski’s fascination with doppelgängers, religion, and morality, would be challenging even if the film were complete. Its rewards are significant, however. Most of the first hour is found-footage (hardly a common conceit in 1977, or even 1988) and that daring stylistic experiment, combined with imagery that anticipates films such as “Dune,” makes the film more a vision than an antique. Even at its most unfathomable, “On the Silver Globe” features spectacular imagination and vivid, mesmerizing imagery. A bizarre and unforgettable crucifixion sequence is one of the film’s many sights that should draw it out of obscurity.
“Possession” (1981)
No single film represents Zulawski’s passions, technique and excesses better than “Possession.” This is his “Blue Velvet,” his “The Holy Mountain.” Shot through with strains of horror, science fiction and political thrillers, “Possession” is most meaningfully the story of the last vestiges of a dying relationship between Anna (Isabelle Adjani) and her spy husband Mark (Sam Neill). When Mark returns home from some mysterious espionage, Anna asks for a divorce, and their young son Bob (Michael Hogben) is caught in the middle. There’s a doppleganger (Adjani, playing Bob’s angelic garbed-in-white teacher), a free-spirit lover (Heinz Bennent, embracing his director’s ideas about unusual character movement), and, yeah, the monster, a particularly sexual beast created with the help of master Carlo Rambaldi and eventually echoed in David Cronenberg‘s “Naked Lunch.” Wide lenses in practical locations give “Possession” an uneasy sense of space. Despite ample room in the frame, Zulawski constantly pushes his actors together to enhance the push and pull of dependency and revulsion that acts on these people like dual magnetic polarities. The emotional horror of the breakup is complicated by deep religious imagery and a strain of political awareness that becomes more prominent as the film evolves into its final act. Throughout, Adjani is never less than wildly committed to both roles, and Neill lurches and howls through a performance that reduces what initially seems to be a capable man nearly to childhood. “Possession” is extreme in its displays of emotion, unbearably raw at times, and quite extraordinary.
“L’Amour Braque” (1985)
Pure, excessive, dizzying anarchy. A group of men, masked as Disney characters, rob a bank in an opening sequence that Christopher Nolan must have seen before making “The Dark Knight.” While en route to back to Marie (Sophie Marceau), the beauty adored by criminal Mickey (Francis Huster), the crew befriends befuddled Léon (Tchéky Karyo). That’s probably a mistake, as Léon and Marie hit it off in ways Mickey isn’t prepared to handle. With characters constantly in motion, often capering like sugar-high children while committing violently anti-social acts, “L’Amour Braque” is both a distillation and a parody of gangster movies. Imagine Zulawski making a Warner Bros. cartoon — one which turns horrifyingly dark. Scripted by Etienne Roda-Gil as a loose adaptation of Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot,” the film’s dialogue zig-zags through free-associated jokes and references, poetic observations, actual bits of plot, and eccentric notes of desire and retribution. It can seem like nonsense in the first go, and, yes, some of it is simply ridiculous. Zulawski’s mise-en-scène is so frenetic, the images captured by cinematographer Jean-François Robin so colorful and intense in their embrace of mid-’80s style, that the film plays well even without subtitles. (The director’s camera frequently follows and circles his characters. Here, it sometimes appears to struggle to keep up.) Yet the most effective moments are between Marceau and Karyo; when the film slows just a bit to give them some room, the patience required to delve through all the film’s peculiarities and violence pays off.
