Forumi Horizont (http://www.forumihorizont.com/index.php3)
- *Literary rainbow* (http://www.forumihorizont.com/forumdisplay.php3?forumid=324)
-- Possession (the movie) (http://www.forumihorizont.com/showthread.php3?threadid=5750)

Possession (the movie)

A young scholar, Roland Michell (Aaron Eckhart), accidentally discovers a letter tucked away in a book at the library. It is from a renowned nineteenth century poet, Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam) to his extramarital lover, Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). Michell, suspecting he is on to an important discovery, blithely steals the letter and then contacts a professor whose specialty is LaMotte, Maud Bailey (Gwyneth Paltrow). Together they begin an investigation into the relationship between these two nineteenth century poets, played out a bit like a mystery story, while flashbacks recreate the events that they are uncovering.
Ash and LaMotte's story is an intriguing one because it upsets the previously held images of these characters. Ash, poet laureate to Queen Victoria, was seen as a paragon of monogamous virtue; he celebrated his relationship with his wife in his poems. LaMotte, a hero to feminists, was an independent type who lived in a long-term lesbian relationship. Documentation of an affair between Ash and LaMotte would be an academic career-making breakthrough, shaking up the world of scholarly English literature and necessitating a revaluation and revision of earlier thinking about the work of both poets.
In the midst of all the detective work, Michell and Bailey, become emotionally involved with each other; their romance plays in parallel time (but not in nature) to that of the nineteenth century poets. Labute smoothly and creatively handles the transitions back and forth between periods. Tacked on, quite gratuitously in the film version at least, is a subplot of competing scholars following at Michell and Bailey's heels. The characters involved in the latter are never developed; they are stick figures whose behaviors (including grave robbing) stretch the credulity of the narrative.
It is the two love stories which are the substance of the film. The poets' relationship is cast in idealistic, hyper-romantic terms--poetry flowing, glances from a distance, a social and verbal foreplay of charm and intensity. That both parties are betraying their truly beloved partners adds to the exquisite construct of their romance. Love comes always accompanied by sacrifice and pain, but the fleeting shared moments are never regretted, whatever the fallout.
In direct contrast, as portrayed here the romance between the twentieth century academics seems rather pathetically contemporary, both of them holding back defensively in fear of commitment and in view of the hurts and disappointments they have experienced in past love affairs.

(and i was curious to know if the two poets had lived in victorian age or were simply fictious)