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The premiere of "Suspiria" at the Venice International Film Festival in September ended with conjectures – not so much about the movie as 82-year-old actor Lutz Ebersdorf, who had a major role was a no-show for the festive opportunity. Nor did he leave any traces on Google or IMBd, and at least to some viewers he looked less like an older man and more like a heavily made-up Tilda Swinton. For weeks, Swinton and the producers denied it, until the actor finally fessed up to the New York Times. Even some of the cast and crew do not know that they are only a woman, she said. The question of why she did it, like a lot of questions, that does not get a sufficient answer and leaves the audience to cope on its own.
After garnering, praises and prizes, "Luca Guadagnino moved from one to another. He got to know his own interpretation of "Suspiria," the clbadic 1977 horror movie by Dario Argento that became a cult movie. For the director, the transition from "Call Me By Your Name" is not all that sharp – he says.
He admires the original "Suspiria," but not blindly. Guadagnino emphasized that the homage, if such it is, is for the "powerful emotion" that Argento's film stirred in him. Which is to say that this is not a remake; David Kajganich and the director. David Kajganich and the director. Indeed, so is the adaptation that the new version is an hour longer than the original.
This time, too, the year is 1977. But for Argento that was the non-reflexive present, while for Guadagnino it's a historical period. The new "Suspiria" is a period picture that references the Baader-Meinhof Group and the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In general, there is a clear aspiration to reconstruct the mood of the German Autumn and to adorn the film with it, like superficial decoration. In contrast to the original, which dealt with a ballet academy, Guadagnino goes for modern dance. The whole troupe has been moved to Berlin instead of Argento's pastoral Freiburg.
"Suspiria" begins as a predecessor, when a young American woman, Susie (Dakota Johnson), arrives in Germany to join a dance company, just another dancer, Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz) disappears mysteriously. Susie, who grew up in a religious home in Ohio and was inculcated with the principles of Mennonite pacifism, impresses the company's artistic director, Mrs. White (Swinton) and overnight becomes its star. It soon emerges that White and all her colleagues are actually witches. The dance provides an effective cover for the witchcraft and rituals, and the dancers are a useful source for the perpetration of malicious deeds. At the same time, an elderly psychiatrist (also played by Swinton in male disguise) joins the persecution to find out what happened to his patient, the missing Patricia.
It's interesting to compare the two movies, though for the most part of this leads to a dead end. Guadagnino's vision is completely different from Argento's – the inspiration he draws from the 1977 work is badociative and as such, vague. Argento focused on the colors and blood to create the appropriate atmosphere for a coven of witches. Narrative took second place to atmosphere, and horror was secondary to gore. Guadagnino totally deconstructs the previous version and takes over only the elements that interest him, which are mere building blocks for a new structure. The screenwriter more details of the expansion of Argento's film by a full hour by adding the character of the psychiatrist -whose wife was murdered by the Nazis – filling out Susie's story, developing Patricia's character and elaborating on the politics of the period.
New territory
The most significant change, in terms of spirit and color, is the transposition of the setting to Berlin against the background of the events of 1977. The director here makes it plain that Argento is only the starting point for an independent exhibition. The glistening of the dancers' dorms in Argento's film has been supplanted by a melancholy grayness, both inside and outside the dance company's deteriorating building. The production designer, Inbal Weinberg ("Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri") is chiefly responsible for the atmospheric shift. It works well inside the disturbing building, where the rooms are pale and the eclectic metahistorical. Like the witches, it is both inside and outside time. When the story ventures out into the world Berlin, the attempt to reflect 1977, with all graffiti and rife with significance, and the Berlin Wall seems to be at every street corner.
The main thrust away from Argento's path to new territory occurs amidst movement. Argento located in a ballet company, but rarely showed the young women actually dancing. Guadagnino, in contrast, saw the potential latent in the physicality that connects dance and black magic. A young body juxtaposed to ancient witchcraft. Action versus action. At the very beginning of the film, Susie dances for the Madame, while the editing reveals, appallingly, that her movements are part of a spell that was cast on another dancer, Olga, who is in a different room. Every movement by Susie impinges on Olga and shatters her organs. The dizzying transition between Susie and Olga, between creative work and human dismemberment, makes for a fascinating, impressive scene – but not for those with a weak stomach.
For Guadagnino, the dance troupe is more than useful for a movie that deals with women only: The music, unexpectedly, is by Thom Yorke of Radiohead, and the choreographer is Damien Jalet, from Belgium. The scenes of great interest and tension take place on the stage or in the field of aggression. Despite the occupation with the female body, there is little noticeable baduality. Even the body of the protagonist, Susie, is depicted as a tool of work, and she herself is naive and immature.
Without the comic spirit, the film is about the witches, the new film tries to deepen the horror with the help of a semblance of depth. Misogynist elements that are identified with the myth of the witch throughout history were organic to Argento's film, but 41 years have gone by since then, and the effort to cope with this element is apparent.
The screenplay offers a fuller mythology that the accusations of witchcraft are an easy way to get rid of women. But in the house of the dance company there are only women, both good and bad. The only male character is the Jewish psychiatrist, played by a woman, and the only reason he is there to wit … Patricia's stories about witches as "hallucinations." Guadagnino tries to connect this to the psychiatrist's failure to grasp the Nazi threat in time, but this is done awkwardly, not to say cynically and operatively. Guadagnino's hands is the history of women and Jews. References to a long history of misogyny and anti-Semitism are scattered throughout the world on ice cream. Because it looks good.
Even more than its forerunner, the 2018 version of "Suspiria" creates a horrifying atmosphere, but very little horror. Fine scenes showing a precise integration of camera work, choreography and general music, and there are some scary moments. Viewers who go to the film of the day, who are not really at home, and who do not want to see each other.
Guadagnino scatters a few ideas and an abundance of shards of ideas, and forces the viewer to cope with the flow. Because it is more than just a fright, the collection of beautiful images – of which there is plenty – relating to the tension between dance and violence is intended to be disquiet more than fear. That sense of foreboding, along with quite a few questions, will leave you in the movie theater.
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