Suspiria (1977)
Director: Dario Argento
vs.
Suspiria (2018)
Director: Luca Guadagnino
How similar do remakes have to be to earn the same name as its predecessor? While this blog maintains that remakes are all right when there is a fresh take on an old material, are some movies so canonized and huge, no one should ever even try them? Is a horror film's purpose to be scary first and work loftier ideas into the script second, or could a throughly political film about Europe in the 1970's be scary? And how much playing with audiences' expectations is allowed?
Luca Guadagnino is certainly one of the most celebrated Italian directors working today, with a unique voice. But his films often feel to me to be mixed bags. there are brilliant ideas and visual touches, yet often the end result doesn't click together in a meaningful way. But there are plenty of people who admire Guadagnino and his brand of filmmaking. I may be on the minority.
Nevertheless, if Dario Argento's 1977 horror classic Suspiria had to be redone, I was glad it was at least by an auteur with such strong visual flourishes. And the resulting movie is at the very least an interesting one, even if one's mileage of the things Guadagnino has done may very. But let's start by talking about the original.
Often branded as a giallo movie, I think Suspiria was actually Dario Argento's major leap out of the giallo genre and the start of his true auteur status. It is a supernatural horror film but other than that, many of Argento's later films are harder to label and brand. The play between light and music and architecture (and a very flimsy excuse for a plot) are something that only one person in the world could have made. Other Italian directors could keep on churning straightforward murder mysteries.
An american student Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) arrives to Germany to go to a esteemed ballet academy. But as soon as the airport's sliding doors close behind her, she is actually in an expressionistic fairy tale world, where a coven of witches plots and the young blood of the young girls is used to revive the ancient evil of Mother Markos back to life. There are plenty of gory demises and unforgettable death images that seemingly are caused by hexes and dark magic. No better explanation is given.
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| The original's striking architecture was an influence on the remake's poster art and opening and end credits. |
But it's easy to criticize the film's plot's lack of coherence or the bad dialogue or silly dubbing. But they seem consequental, of no bigger reason for Argento's nightmare world. If there are bigger flaws in the movie, would one say they revolve around the fact that beyond the expressionism it doesn't seem to have much to say. Certainly not about the time and place it is set in, rather, Argento seems to want to take us to a timeless place untouched by the rational world.
Likewise, the film doesn't dwell too deep in its portrayal of either dance and ballet or the coming of age of a group of girls in a disconnected location far from home.The film has its basic teenage scenes of lessons and bullying and whispering during sleepovers, but mostly these are used to set up the next victim of the unstoppable murder spree rather than to say something about growing into a woman.
Since it would be futile to challenge Argento at his own game, Guadagnino wisely seeks to remedy these sidesteps that the previous movie didn't have concern for. Visually and aesthetically, his film is more similar to the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, all cold grey, brown and ugly pastels rather than bright RGB lights. The film switches the focus more on the witches, who are trying to choose a new leader, as well as preparing a spell to do with a dance routine. Dakota Johnson is playing Susie Bannion, the new girl, here, but Chloë Grace Moretz's Patricia is the girl which the film has the most emphasis.
Perhaps the major issue of Guadgnino's film is that it tries to bite more than it can chew. It deals with both blossoming and withering age's issues and traumas as well as Germany's post-war situation, the scars left of the Holocaust, European value system's flimsiness, women's rights, the power of art and the political workings of the witches' coven, all of which bloats the film to more than 2,5 hours long. The characters may be more well-rounded, but they don't feel as comfy to follow (or edgy to see their ultimate fates) since all their scenes are built around a message being delivered. All the time that should be spent on building tensions and delivering shocks, is rather used on building a kind of academic paper with highbrow arthouse filmmaking.
While its good that a film also embraces its weirdness, Guadagnino's experimentations does not always serve the film. Thom York's soundtrack just sounds like vintage Radiohead. Lead actor Tilda Swinton in a dual role works to be majorly distracting, since there is no good bridge between the two (main) characters of the film. The idea falls particularly flat in the climax when her Madame Blanc and Dr Josef Klempener share screen time, as well as a third character that utilizes even more overacting and prosthetic makeup.
The film doesn't feel threatening enough, or even playful enough to deliver on this kind of experiments. Likewise the take on the more body horror-like aspects of the story are a bit hit-or-miss, some striking, some a little half-baked. Though he has certainly seen Hellraiser, the horror side of the movie does not seem to interest Guadagnino as much. He's certainly no Andrzej Zulawski that has the ability to melt both the political and the personal aspects into a great spiral into madness.
While it has good ideas with which to drive these points forward with the story, it is inevitable these its plethora of various ideas will battle each other for the dominance of the movie. At the end it feels like very little conclusions on each is reached. Where the film works wonders is delivering on some dreamlike fast-changing images (one can see the influence of music video filmmaking between these two movies) and its dance school setting, perticularly in its climatic ballet scene that does feel a bit scary and like it could be actual dark magick in the making. In this case, it was smarter to ration the strongest and most colorful visual scenes sparingly.
So, in conclusion, we have to Suspirias that set out to do almost exactly different things, yet also both are horror movies set on a dance school. While Argento's film feels surprisingly effortless even though it keeps upping its visual stylization and shocks, Guadagnino seems to try too hard and looses the playfulness in trying to fit in too many ideas. In the end, I'm still glad we have both of these movies, and Guadagnino's film has plenty to enjoy to warrant multiple viewings as well. But, y'know, it's no classic.
Suspiria (1977) ★★★★ 1/2
Suspiria (2018) ★★★
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