Suspiria — Luca Guadagnino (2018)
Luca Guadagnino’s remake shines when it doesn’t preach and just lets us enjoy the eerie atmosphere, beautiful cinematography, intricate choreography and ethereal music score by Thom Yorke.
Luca Guadagnino once again proves his versatility, this time by remaking the 1977 giallo classic Suspiria about a coven of witches using a Berlin dance studio as a front for their operations. It’s hard to believe that this is a work by the same director as last year’s “Call Me By Your Name”, or even more so when compared to his other works such as “A Bigger Splash” and “I Am Love”.
Cinematography
Dario Argento’s Suspiria was a linchpin of the 70’s Italian giallo cinema movement, a movement more about the visual experience rather than story, involving murder mysteries interlaced with eroticism and graphic horror. What people loved about the original and the giallo subgenre in general was their stylish but simple storylines. They were B-movie stories with dazzling images that were meant to be enjoyed by the average cinemagoer — which is why Dario Argento’s Suspiria is remembered for its vibrant, unnatural, candy coloured cinematography and glossy textures.
Guadagnino’s film on the other hand opts for more matte textures and earthy colours.
Guadagnino’s choice of palette creates a more direct association to the setting in a rusty Cold War Berlin of the 70s. It also pays homage to the cinematography of German New Wave director Werner Rainer Fassbinder whose films use similar choices of colour and are set/filmed in 70s Germany. There is also a strong ressemblance to Polanski’s masterworks of suspense and paranoia from the 60/70s “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Tenant.
While the choice of colours is different to the original, there are still plenty of visual references to the original through jarring camera movements, zooms, and shots through reflective surfaces.
Finally a great visual artistic choice compared to the original was the insertion of creepy dream and memory montages which create a general atmosphere of queazy unease.
Choreography
In the original the dancing of the group played a very small part in the story other than to justify the setting in the dance school, in the remake however it is arguably one of the most essential pieces of the film.
A whole article can be written about how amazing Damien Jalet’s choreography is, but you have to see it to really understand. In the film, he choreographs three dances, The Dance of Olga, Volk, and The Black Sabbath. All of these play pivotal roles both in the narrative as well as to visually elevate the magnetic power of the witches coven and how it wavers from being both graceful and brutal.
Below is a snippet from Damien Jalet’s show at the Louvre, both the dance here as well as the costumes were influential on the sequences seen in the film.
Music
When it came to scoring the soundtrack, Guadagnino was stepping into some big shoes. The soundtrack of the original featuring the Roman progressive rock band Goblin and with an electronic theme filled with all sorts of cacophonic sounds, inspired a whole generation of future horror composers like John Carpenter with his Halloween score. However, when I heard that Guadagnino managed to convince Radiohead’s Thom Yorke to do it, I knew that we were in for a great surprise.
Thom Yorke crafts his own creepy theme tune which resonates if not more than the Goblin track when it is paired with the dance sequences.
However the song in the end titles is the one that really stays with you once you leave the cinema…
Writing
While the original was mostly focused on visuals and didn’t spend too much time trying to develop a deeper subtext to the story, Guadagnino and writer David Kajganich layer several themes in the remake, particularly around generational guilt in Germany, power dynamics in matriarchies, and motherhood.
The themes around power dynamics in matriarchies, the mother-daughter relationship as well as the feminist subtext fit well with the story around an all-girls dance school run by a coven of powerful witches. In Argento’s original, the dance school was unisex, and a lot of the conversations the girl’s would have would be about guys they have crushes on. In Guadagnino’s remake there are in total three male cast members (of which Tilda Swinton in heavy make-up and prosthetics plays the one with the most screen time). This allows the screentime to focus entirely on developing the subtleties of the relationships between the girls and the witches.
While the themes above really did enhance and make the story much better, a weakness was the attempt to introduce more political themes around generational guilt in Germany and the Baader-Meinhof Gang. These felt like further attempts to ground the story in the setting and time period, but did little to enhance the actual narrative.
Make-up
Finally a review of the film wouldn’t be complete without a kudos to the award winning make-up artist Mark Coulier (most famous for his work around Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films). He managed to transform Tilda Swinton into three different characters throughout the film — something I was actually completely oblivious to during the film, but which in retrospect is astounding.
Film buff rating: [B] / Casual viewer rating [B]
Where to watch: (Silverscreen) — Catch it in cinemas around London this week
