Just when it looked like there was no salvaging 2018, a competent director came in to save the day with a good script, one trippy vision and a whole lot of exploding heads. This time, it is director Luca Guadagnino (“Call Me By Your Name”), and the film is “Suspiria,” a remake of a 1977 film directed by Dario Argento. The film centers around a young woman joining a dance academy run by a coven of witches. The remake was in development hell for quite awhile, as it was first announced in 2008 after being acquired from the original film’s writers.
Guadagnino offered the project to director David Gordon Green (“Halloween,” 2018), but it was cancelled due to financing conflicts. In September 2015, Guadagnino confirmed he was directing but stated it would be more of an homage than a direct remake. Writer David Kajganich (“A Bigger Splash”) set the film during the German Autumn of 1977 to explore themes of generational guilt in Germany during the Cold War, while Guadagnino made the decision to use a bleak color pallet as opposed to a vivid, blood-red pallet used in the original.
Besides the color pallet, this film has some of the most disturbing imagery of the year. Never before has pure torture been put to screen through the mode of dance, and it creates some of the most visceral scenes imaginable. Guadagnino has a very distinct style that he has always had on full display, but it is his application of typically foreign filmmaking techniques put to use that really help make this film something special.
Whereas the lead in the original was played by Jessica Harper, who also has a quick cameo in the reboot, the lead this time around is portrayed by Dakota Johnson (“Bad Times at the El Royale”), everyone’s favorite “50 Shades of Grey” star. Despite her limited range she has demonstrated thus far, her blank, emotionless face somehow mixes and melds perfectly with the film’s bleak atmosphere. Guadagnino has a unique talent of taking actors and actresses who do not really have that much range and exposing their deepest vulnerabilities to allow them to enhance the material. It is a gift that not many directors have. Johnson in this film is certainly no revelation, but her understanding of the source material allows her to truly develop as the film moves on toward its climax, and it also helps that a majority of the performance is translated through dance, at which she shines.
The standout and true star of the film, however, is Tilda Swinton (“Isle of Dogs”), who has always had a reputation for taking strange, almost alien-like roles in the past. Her unchanging look over the years has led to many dumb internet theories as to how she is an alien herself. Within this film, though, she may just prove those theories right, as she plays a whopping three very dynamically different supporting roles with complete ease as Madame Blanc, the current head of the Academy; Mother Markos, the withered decrepit hag who currently rules over the coven of witches; and Dr. Josef Klemperer, an aging male psychiatrist who finds out about the coven and investigates from the outside. The fact that Swinton is completely unrecognizable for the latter two parts, in part due to the incredible makeup, is insane to say the least, as she gives all three characters such distinct personalities.
At the end of the day, this is about as atypical a film as one could ask for. It is so strange with such an otherworldly feel to it that traditional audiences will most likely go away hating it, and the two-and-a-half hour runtime will certainly not help that one bit either. As a film experience, this is about as cinematic as one could ask for, as it is one of the few films that generates a completely new world within the real one, and there are a precious few films that can do that. Mixing elements of the old with a little bit of his very distinct style of new, Guadagnino has given audiences something the year of 2018 as a whole has failed to deliver: a wholly unique, original, engaging and interesting film.
Image from Amazon Studios via YouTube
