(This review alludes to certain details regarding the ending of Suspiria2018. If you haven’t yet seen the film, consider this your SPOILER alert.)
Suspiria: A Vulgar Display of Power?
After pondering it for three months, I think I understand the excess-driven climax of Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria. It involves a character amassing the full force of her potential into what the possessed Regan in The Exorcist would describe as “[a] vulgar display of power.” The fact that another character lies naked in a prone position for the duration of this Cronenberg-by-way-of-Ken Russell sequence underlines the inclinations toward exhibitionism and spectacle on the power-wielder’s behalf.Like the undulating bodies in this secret chamber, the viewer has also come for spectacle and catharsis.
In this loaded update of Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi’s 1977 original, the critique of the cult of personality that would dare to protest (or defend) a work of art finds synchronicity with the coven of witches that pass all judgments on life and death.
If the 1977 film is like a vibrant, horrific painting committed to celluloid (complete with a logic that’s up to the viewer to determine and embrace), Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich’s approach is that of a dense, thoroughly researched novel – you can return to it countless times and make new connections with each pass-through.
Outside of maintaining the same general plot, a handful of familiar characters, and some stylistic nods to that specific era of Italian cinema (note the deliberately awkward camera zooms when Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) first enters the dance academy), the film and its motives are largely removed from those of its predecessor.
That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of impish nods throughout – in fact, Suspiria 2018 is reverent in its tribute to Argento, even if its epic run time carries the implication of self-indulgence.
The Argento Aesthetic
Renowned for the stylistic achievements of his early career, Argento has nonetheless been criticized for his inattention to narrative, favoring audiovisual bombast over substance. As a result, his films sometimes lack an emotional core. His Suspiria is exemplary in providing a full sensory experience, looking to suspenseful set pieces, methodical camera work, and specific color schemes to guide along a dreamlike narrative. In the end, though, the plot amounts to that Susie (Jessica Harper) escaping her captors more by chance than any particular skill set. Like the slashers of the ‘80s, she’s the Final Girl because the film decrees it. Her “outsider looking in” status amounts to naught in a school populated by the Other.
Suspiria 2018 doesn’t try to replicate Argento’s color palette (including his bright-red, Hammer-horror blood), which is to be lauded – frankly, nothing would have been worse than a slavish remake that went for the same aesthetic beats. Instead, Guadagnino inverts the visual tone to dreary greys and muddy earth tones that obscure the image to the point of sometimes-literal darkness. When this rendition’s Sara (a hiss-whispering Mia Goth) discovers a secret corridor, the lack of definition granted the macabre tableaux not only conveys dankness, but an accompanying fear and dread.
Grief, Loss, and Delusion
The framing device of Suspiria 2018 is ambitious, hinging on the complexities of human emotions (namely, grief suffered through loss) while taking its notions “mothers” – in the grandiose, omniscient, world-creating sense – quite literally.
We begin with a flashback of Susie’s dying mother, which jumps quickly to panicked, rain-soaked dance student Patricia (Chlöe Grace Moretz) ranting about “witches” and “secret passageways” to her elderly psychiatrist, Dr. Josef Klemperer (Tilda Swinton, in one of several roles). Unsurprisingly, the psychiatrist subscribes to textbook notions of delusion, and he attributes the ranting to the psychoses that bewitch the human brain, not to mention the hidden neural paths that go unnoticed until consciously awakened. It is only when Josef faces what he doesn’t want to believe – actualizations of the internal conflicts he has spent decades suppressing – that he gains closure (and when the moment arrives, it’s a powerful gut-punch that shows just how compelling horror – as a reaction and a genre – can be). He’s forced to make his own journey, submitting to the coven’s spell to see the demons of his past through.
A Tale of Two Susies
In a manner not dissimilar to Argento’s version, the role of men in Suspiria 2018 exists in an even more reduced capacity. Males were margin-dwellers in the 1977 film: the silent child; the attractive student; the blind pianist; and the butler with the fright-mask orthodontics. These characters were symbiotically joined to the watchful female eye of the school’s administrative staff. In the new version, there are two policemen (Mikael Olsson and Fred Keleman) who are given a perfunctory introduction, teasing a procedural subplot that never emerges, before becoming literal cock-teases for the coven’s amusement. They establish their impotence when they first appear, but who is to say the coven hasn’t had them under their influence for a long, long time?
Suspiria 2018 also creates a dichotomy between the two Susies: while Harper was a pawn in the witches’ game, looking for an exit out of a waking nightmare, Johnson arrives on the scene as a quietly assured character, impressing Madame Blanc (Swinton) with her physical prowess while harboring secrets of her rural religious origins. A one-on-one session between Susie and Blanc in a mirrored room is bold in its notions of empowerment – Blanc’s insistence that Susie jump ever higher serving as a signifier of resistance against society’s oppressive attitudes toward women. Susie isn’t content to simply touch the glass ceiling – she wants to shatter through, leaving the shards far behind her.
Evolution is a key theme, from Susie finally breaking free of her Mennonite upbringing, to the shift in the coven hierarchy as a result of her assertive demeanor. In the 1977 film, Harper and Stefania Casini (Sara) were outcasts, while still possessing the social savvy to assimilate to the academy’s clique-like composition. In Suspiria 2018, the school is rife with older female characters who aren’t necessarily identified by name, but serve insidious functions in order to keep the institution’s facade intact (in an echo of later Argento, one character – depicted as an empath – uses her tears to manipulate one unfortunate student).
By the end, it’s obvious that Susie, whose life has been leading up to the conflagration of climatic events, was destined to lay waste to the old guard – with its outdated mentalities and magic – and create the foundation for something frightening, new, and unknown.Similarly, Suspiria 2018 epitomizes the potential of the remake as something that welcomes the past as much as it embraces the future, all while serving as a non-competitive companion to its predecessor.
4 out of 5 stars
The Plot Sickens: Don’t miss Jonny Numb’s spoiler-free review of Thelma!
Crash Analysis Support Team
Jonny Numb
Jonny Numb (aka Jonathan Weidler) never learned how to swim, so he could care less if you close the beaches. He co-hosts THE LAST KNOCK podcast with Billy Crash, and can be found drowning in Twitter and Letterboxd @JonnyNumb.
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(Suspiria movie still from Amazon Studios.)