Intermission: 'Possession' successfully weaves two tales together

Jim Wunderle works at Associated Video Producers and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.

If you like slam-bam action with bullets flying and bombs bursting while Arnold or Chuck sweeps in, hanging off a helicopter chances are Neil LaBute's literary (dual) period piece may not be for you.

There is a mystery to be solved, though, and the dialogue and catchy twin time-frame focus that the director employs makes "Possession" one of the year's smartest, most enjoyable and entertaining films.

Based on A.S. Byatt's 1990 novel, LaBute has streamlined the story for the movie screen, losing most of the book's long literary jibes that endeared Byatt's work to lovers of English literature. Not to worry, however, as the screenplay by LaBute, David Henry Hwang and Laura Jones maintains a high degree of the English approach to the matters of life, love, societal mores and the arts. There's a lot of understated humor here, too, as well as a rather genteel mystery that has the two modern main characters trying to uncover secrets concerning the two main characters from the film's other setting, the England of 1859.

Roland Mitchell (Aaron Eckhart) is an American literary scholar doing post-graduate work in England. While perusing an original volume of work by 19th century poet laureate Randolph Ash, Mitchell finds a letter, written in Ash's own hand, that might be an academic A-bomb.

Ash was know for his unfailing love for, and fidelity to, his wife, Ellen. This letter is a passionate epistle to someone other than Ash's spouse. After nosing around a bit, Mitchell postulates the "other" woman in question might be the poet Christabel LaMotte. This seems somewhat unlikely as LaMotte was cited as being a "recluse" at the time, and it was well known she was a lesbian and lived with a sensuous lover named Blanche Glover.

Mitchell enlists the help of a junior professor, a LaMotte expert, Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow).

At first, Bailey is incredulous about the whole affair, no pun intended. She's also a bit put off by Mitchell's oh-so-American manners (or lack thereof). But after doing a little digging on her own, she too becomes intrigued. We know from the beginning that no matter how much these two doth protest, there's an attraction between them that will surely come to fruition before the final credits role.

Digging through the archives, Mitchell and Maud find a time frame when both Ash and LaMotte took a holiday to Yorkshire. Using the poets' own writings as a roadmap, the academic sleuths begin retracing the journey in question. It's here that LaBute intertwines the flashbacks to 1895 with the modern day most successfully.

Ash is played by Jeremy Northam and LaMotte by Jennifer Ehle. We witness their first meeting, see their home lives, and eventually follow them on their tryst in the English countryside. While their affair is fiery indeed, we are treated not to the carnal exploits that tend to be the Hollywood norm, but the cerebral intimacy between two lovers in a pre-information-era world of arts and letters; a world in which words carried much weight. Witnessing two magnificent poets composing love letters, poems and metaphors about their passions and desires is fairly satisfying for those who still have an ear for the language of love.

While Mitchell and Bailey retrace the steps taken by Ash and LaMotte, LaBute cleverly weaves the action. The modern couple exits a room at an inn, the door swings back open and in walk Ash and LaMotte. Another scene features a shot of a modern automobile driving along the English countryside as an anachronistic steam train chugs along on an overpass. The action shifts seamlessly through the two time frames but never becomes an overt gimmick.

As our modern couple heads closer and closer to their inevitable finale, the poets become involved in a melodramatic lovers' tragedy of Victorian proportions.

In the third act, a few wrenches are thrown into the work being conducted by Maud and Roland. Some other academic types have gotten wind of what's going on and have information of their own: Information they plan to exploit in a most crass and commercial way. All it's going to take is a bit of grave robbing.

Things work out not necessarily nicely, but work out they do for all the parties involved, and in the end we are treated to a connection that links the past with the present.

Director LaBute is known for his scathing commentaries on modern love with such films as "In the Company of Men" and "Your Friends and Neighbors." He also dealt with obsessive attraction in the more accessible, but still dark, "Nurse Betty."

While the audience will be limited on this latest effort, those who enjoy "Possession" will sing its praises long and loud. Count me among them.