Argento’s original ” Suspiria” (1977) is a full on assault of sound and image. Within seconds of Jessica Harper, as Suzy Bannion, exiting the calm climate of a German airport and walking out into a torrential downpour, we know we are in for a beating.
The sound, an ultra creepy, dark rock opera by Italian band Goblin, pounds in our ears while Argento makes Suzy’s cab ride to the dance academy looking like a journey into the mouth of hell. His use of colour and wonderfully expressive camera work by Luciano Tovoli (“Bread and Chocolate”, “The Passenger”) are flat out stunning.
Argento uses water to suggest the violence awaiting Suzy once she’s “safely” inside the Tanz Dance Academy. First the rain – coming down hard in sheets of red, green and blue. Then there is a masterful bit of camerawork where Argento and Tovoli set up in a high position on the right side of a street. The cab carrying Suzy turns left and drives away and out of view. Argento and Tovoli keep panning right until they hit the surging water from a reservoir. A cut closer and an accompanying jolt of sound follow. Then the same cut, cut closer method on a sewer grate as water rushes in.
Argento, a master of mood, leaves conventional filmmaking in the dust while creating a world that seems itself to be conspiring against Suzy – or maybe warning her? To top it all off, Argento and Tovoli set up deep in a wooded area. At first it’s dark, with the tall trees only barely visible. Then we see a small speck of light coming from the headlight of Suzy’s cab begin to assert itself in the distance. That speck suddenly bursts through the trees – elongating and fattening – just as we hear the word “witch” on the soundtrack. The accumulated effect of this simple cab ride to Tanz is one of dread and the sense of being at the centre of an ancient force too powerful to contain.
Now, Luca Guadagnino’s no fool. He knows he’s not going to out-Argento Argento – wise man. So, he goes his own way. He opens with a shot of Berlin, Germany 1977 during the “German Autumn” – essentially a 60s student movement gone violent as a terrorist organization called the RAF (aka Red Army Faction, aka The Baader-Meinhof Group) unleashes their second wave of attacks on the city.
Though hotly debated, some believe, and the lawyer of the members of the first wave of RAF attacks once confirmed, that at least in part, the RAF was a, “…rebellion against a generation that had tolerated millions of crimes in the Nazi era
Whether he believes this explanation or not, Guadagnino uses the second wave RAF attacks as a parallel to the goings on in the Tanz Dance Academy.
First, though, we are quickly introduced to Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz). She shows up all manic and babbling at the office of her shrink Dr. Klemperer (Tilda Swinton in an amazing camouflage of a performance). Patricia is convinced Tanz is run by a coven of witches who have tried to prepare her for something no doubt sick and sinister. Naturally, Dr. K thinks she’s lost it. Mind you, he never lets her know that, but his previous notes on Patricia reveal what he truly believes, “Her delusion has deepened into panic. She feels her constructed mythology is confirmed.”
Of course, we know that he is wrong because this is a horror film. Shrinks, ubiquitous useful idiots in horror films for decades, (“The Exorcist” – 1973 – comes to mind) occupy the role of “rational impotency” and serve to inadvertently guarantee that the inevitable invasion of supernatural figures will win at least three quarters of their battles if not all of them.
Guadagnino, though, as we soon will see, manages to use the ‘impotent shrink’ riff in a much more substantive way. He positions Dr. K’s refusal to believe Patricia as example #1 of the many times he has failed to protect endangered women – both patients and, in one case, a woman near and dear to his heart.
Cleverly, and a bit deviously, Guadagnino and script writer David Kajganich, also use Dr. K’s heroic shortcomings as justification for the existence of the witches coven and for women going rogue in general. Afterall, it’s no coincidence that Patricia has left Tanz to join the RAF in what she sees as an attempt to root out Nazis in the West German government.
In Guadagnino’s “Suspiria”, those ex-Nazis in government are no different than the witches at the Tanz Dance Academy. Patricia was trying to fight both at the same time – poor thing. She hoped to enlist Dr. K as an ally in one of those fights. But, Dr. K is the member of a generation who failed to stop the Nazis from taking over Germany – the principal reason she’s fighting that battle. In reaching out to Dr. K, though, Patricia is offering him a second chance at snuffing out evil. Sadly, as the movie opens, he is well on his way to blowing it.
Leaving Dr. K’s office in a rush, Patricia has a few final German words for him, “If they find me here, they won’t hesitate. They’ll hollow me out and eat my cunt on a plate.”
Argento hits us with dark images and an unsettling rock soundtrack while Guadagnino lets Moretz, eyes mostly covered by her messy, oily hair, bounce around Dr. K’s office babbling about witches, boys, girls named Olga, Sarah and older women serving her pussy up for supper. Both approaches do the job of bringing us not so gently into a world of paranoia and dread.
Enter Suzy Bannion (Dakota Johnson). She has travelled all the way over from her rural home in Idaho to come to the prestigious Tanz Dance Academy in Berlin. Strangely, she catches the administrators and teachers by surprise – unlike other dancers, she has yet to audition. No problem, Suzy quickly establishes herself as the new star – room and board paid for and a new budding friendship developing with Sara (Mia Goth), a dancer mentioned by Patricia during her opening scene freakout in Dr. K’s office.
In the first few days that follow, Suzy’s star quickly rises under the close eye of head dance instructor Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton, again). Her star also rises as a potential perfect fit for whatever secret ceremony the scheming coven of witches are busily preparing. Things seem to be going swimmingly when one rehearsal is suddenly interrupted by another dancer named Olga (Elena Fokina). She appears, much as Patricia did at Dr. K’s office, looking lost and out of it, babbling incoherently about awful happenings. Quickly escorted out of the room, the rehearsal continues without her.
What follows is probably the film’s best scene. Mixing beauty and grace with the grotesque and bloody, Guadagnino pulls off a dazzling and disturbing display of movement both possible and impossible.
Dance is unknowingly weaponized and the results half resemble the grimmest of voodoo doll manipulations and a game of Twister that got way way out of hand. For a brief moment, “Suspiria” becomes something more than just a conventional horror movie. It rises above and beyond. Carefully restrained up until then, this early moment of cinema sorcery hits hard and fast and leaves an impact that stretches out over the next few scenes that follow.
This new take on an old favourite does just about everything right. Guadagnino builds tension and releases it with a deft touch. He gets under our skin and somehow, despite a bloated running time and only a few crumbs of a plot, sustains a sinister vibe throughout. He casts to perfection – I, especially, loved Verhoeven veteran Renee Soutendijk as one of the witches, Miss Huller. Though, truly, all the older women playing witches in the film do a terrific job of adding a touch of menace to every scene they’re in.
Then, like putting a rabbit back into a hat, Guadagnino makes the magic disappear. How can a climax be so bloody, yet, at the same time, so bloodless? Maybe it’s the no stick revelation that is about as impactful as a single snowflake on an elephant’s ass. Maybe it’s the cheesy, CGI work that turns the back of heads into erupting volcanoes of blood? Or, maybe, just maybe, it’s the cheap looking strobing applied to the images – a concession to the MPAA? – or the general crowded and confused mess of the thing. All of the above?
Building anticipation for an event, while not a cinch, is much easier to do than delivering that very same event. We see this in our everyday lives – birthday parties, weddings, elections. In storytelling terms, what you eventually deliver has to be both surprising and expected. Expected in the sense that it is compatible with all that preceded it. You can’t spend 100 minutes of movie time building up a confrontation between Bob and Jack and then deliver a confrontation between Fred and John. Well, that’s not entirely true, you can play with the audience’s expectations and many filmmakers do that with varying degrees of success. But, it all has to make sense and hit home for audiences.
This new “Suspiria” does deliver a surprise and a climax that we somewhat vaguely expected. So, in that way, it kinda, sorta succeeds. Problem is, the one surprise piece of information revealed in the chaotic climax is based on a somewhat abstract concept. No spoilers, here, don’t worry, just a little note about how tricky this business of anticipation-delivery is for even very talented filmmakers like Guadagnino.
As a three-quarters of the way successful movie about the rise of feminine power from the ashes of failure left behind by bumbling, know-it-all men such as Dr. K, Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” is a gripping and, even, occasionally, dazzling arty-horror film. That it somewhat blows it in the final stretch doesn’t fully cancel out an otherwise worthy achievement.
