Some Thoughts On Suspiria (2018)

Now finally having seen it, I am a bit confused by the lukewarm critical reception Luca Guadagnino’s “remake” (really, it’s a film that uses some motives and character names and does its very own thing with them) of one of Dario Argento’s masterpieces got. Sure, the “this isn’t real horror” brigade, I can understand, even if I disagree, but the other critical main tenor about this being “self-indulgent” and difficult to understand? Nope. Although the film’s two and a half hour running time isn’t for the faint of heart. And for the kind of viewer that can’t cope with films eschewing irony and winking self-consciousness, a film taking itself and what it is doing quite as seriously as this one does even though a lot of what it is doing is inherently strange will not be the thing they’ll be able to appreciate. So, now that I think about it, I indeed do understand the reception, I just don’t share it.

The thing is, this view of Suspiria feels so alien a reaction to the absolutely riveting, aesthetically thoughtful and intelligent, and thematically rich film I’ve seen, I find myself shaking my head a little. This isn’t really an attempt of a deep dive into the film at hand at all, for I believe this one’s really better off seen without too many preconceptions and a willingness to go where it leads.

So, let me just gush a little about some things I loved about the film. There is, for one, Dakota Johnson’s intense, physical performance at the film’s human core that finds ways to express states of mind and personality and intensity through body language even in a film as heavily stylized and aestheticized as this one; she also keeps up with Tilda Swinton in wonderful form, without ever letting any strain show. Speaking of Swinton, in one of the film’s seemingly more eccentric decisions, she is playing – one under heavy make-up – both parts of the film’s inimical witch cult leaders, as well as pseudonymously that of grieving old psychiatrist Klemperer. I say seemingly because on the film’s metaphorical and occult level, a single actress portraying the three poles of the film’s thematic discussion concerning guilt, innocence, the kind of dances you can dance after Auschwitz (to paraphrase Adorno now surely rotating in his grave), and change and the manner in which to achieve it, is actually a brilliant decision.

Also rather brilliant is Guadagnino’s handling of the film’s setting in Berlin, 1977, which at first seems like a gimmick but quickly turns out to be deeply important for the concerns I just mentioned. Guadagnino quite correctly understands divided Berlin and West Germany in this stage of RAF terrorism as still lying under the shadow of Nazism, the political state of the times still a consequence of World War II. In fact, the division in the film’s coven and what is happening in the Berlin surrounding it are very much coming from the same place, still working through the same things, which to me is a huge part of the film’s point.

All of this and quite a few things more concerning female awakening in sexual, political and spiritual ways the film expresses through an often brilliant visual language that, when taking place outside of the dance academy has a wonderful grip on how to present a time and place in telling detail without overindulging in said detail, and when taking place inside uses crosscuts, gliding camera work and moments of sudden surrealism to create a nightmare mirror of the outside world. It is, and I suspect very much on purpose, a bit of an as above, so below approach to speaking of the world, though I leave it to any given viewer to decide what here is above and what below.


And if that sounds like the sort of thing that will float your boat, you owe it to yourself to run, not walk, and watch Suspiria.