Remakes, by their very definition, have a lot of hard work ahead of them. They have to replicate the alchemy of a very specific property, and then reboot it in a way that keeps the original in mind and yet do something completely different. The purpose behind remakes varies from franchise to franchise, sometimes it is a purely financial consideration and other times it is a genuine attempt by a creative team to do something different with an existing property. Suspiria never needed to be remade for financial considerations based on its enormous success in 1977, and remaking an Italian horror classic always struck me as slightly strange but to be honest, the more I thought about it, it didn't seem to be a bad idea. Not because the original had some heinous flaws that needed correcting, but because a modern day Suspiria sounded like quite a fascinating prospect.
Allow me to briefly examine the original because the object of this article is more to look at the remake than the original, but allow me to say I love the 1977 Dario Argento classic. It's a delightful, grand-guignol fever dream that attacks with the force of a screaming hurricane. It is an assault on the senses and an utterly extraordinary experience, and add to that one of the most memorable, snarling film scores of all time and you have something utterly unique. It is, with no doubt, one of the greatest horror films ever made and nobody who claims to like horror can be without it in their collection. Which brings us to the tricky subject of what happens when you try to make lightning strike twice.
Now the news that Luca Guadagino was taking the helm made a lot of people very excited, particularly because of his pedigree with producing art films that did well with audiences too. There were a few worrying signs; the description by Guadagino of the film as 'delicate, almost childish' and the screenwriter of the new film admitting he found the original somewhat impractical seemed to show a certain misunderstanding of what made Suspiria work. That said, the artistic choices made aren't bad ones - the setting of the film in the 70s, the determination to couch it in that aesthetic actually works well in its favour and the more muted colour pallet certainly works - but I digress. The remake is enormously ambitious in its complexity, turning the dances into rituals, creating comparable political climates both inside and outside of the dancing school and bringing in a feminist aspect that (mostly) works well.
This is a very complicated way of my saying that the remake almost works - almost. I do wonder what Luca Guadagino's fans make of this film. It generally seems too horrific and violent for his fans, and not really scary enough for horror fans though it does contain some remarkably effective horror scenes (and those with a weaker stomach had better avoid like the plague). It's very well made but a strangely mixed bag, with a lot of fat that needs trimming. The original was a lean 96 minutes and a masterpiece of visual storytelling, whereas this one is a whole hour longer than that and periodically stops to explain the plot to its viewer. Again, I could never say this is a bad or lazy film - it has too much power and intelligence for it to be considered shoddy but it’s determination to distance itself from its source material does not always work in its favour.
The film is not a feminist reinvention as much as it is an attempt to reconcile what the original film did not; examining the role of women in society and their cultural outlets post-war, and it makes for interesting viewing. The problem is that politics were never a concern of the original, and that is what I enjoyed about it. In spite of the controversies regarding Dario Argento's work and the misogyny his work is accused of perpetrating, Suspiria is not one of the films that suffers from this issue. It actually has more women involved in its production than the modern Suspiria does, since Daria Niccolodi (Dario’s muse and then wife) was involved in crafting the story. Yes, it is dated in that it was made in the 1970s but it was a relentlessly effective piece of visual storytelling. Incoherent occasionally maybe, but I never said it was perfect. The new film suffers from a desperate need to be 'important' and feels as if it needs to distance itself from the original as much as possible. Its ambitions as an art film are remarkable but its commitment to this aspect does give the film a sense of relentless self importance that it seems reluctant to slough off when it comes time to deliver. That said when it delivers, by god the film delivers with bone breaking, head exploding panache - which is why it is so damned frustrating to go from one extraordinary horror scene to a group of women sitting around discussing at length what we have just seen. It lacks the tight choreography of a film designed to scare, with lots of indulgent touches that mean very little in the scheme of things. I could easily have trimmed twenty minutes off of the film and it would have had no real impact on the end, I can assure you. There is an entire sub-plot with the only male character of note (weirdly enough played by Tilda Swinton) wanting to find his wife and having the chance of finding her tantalisingly held out of his grasp, and only about a third of this entire plotline really has any impact on the finale. Dakota Johnson does well, but she disappears during the middle act for quite some time, making me wonder who exactly I was supposed to be following this entire time. The ending does try to explain this somehow, but it feels a bit pat considering the sheer complexity of what we have had thrown at us for nearly two hours plus.
In the cinema I saw it in, a resident art critic's review was posted on the wall - and described the original as 'iconic, but deeply flawed' which I think is a slightly overly complicated way of saying 'the plebians like it, but I don't like it'. This makes me wonder why Guadagino remade it with this crowd in mind. The original is hardly a feminist classic, but it wasn't made in the era in which such ideology was expected. It was a visual phantasmagoria with amazing sound design, and eye popping horror so extraordinary it lingers in the memory forever afterward. This does not tend to play well with the art crowd.
Another issue with the desire to make an art film is the slightly thorny subject of feminism. True, it has a female cast and the story is driven by the women, but it is hardly the defining characteristic of the film. That said, the reinterpretation of the witches coven does work. The original had them as a monolith, this one shows them as possessing dissent and alternating views, which actually sells what could have been a ludicrous ending as a fairly laudable one. At the end of the day however, there is a difference between someone determined to make a feminist art film and someone actually making one without needing to compromise on the kind of film they are making. You can only go on about the Baader Meinhof complex and terrorism for so long before I start praying for something to actually happen that moves the story along.
This is probably why Suspiria could have done with a female director. Not to cast aspersions on Guadagino's direction or ability, but the original does have plenty of female fans and I would have suggested one of them for the honours. If you want to make a film feminist, give it to a female director who understands horror but also knows she wouldn't want to ideologically take it back to the 1970s. As it stands, it feels a bit like Guadagino has tried to put a foot in the horror and art camps without making a film that totally appeals to both.
This gives the impression I don't like the film and this is nonsense; I really did like it. It isn't a patch on the original of course, and anyone who claims otherwise has clearly never seen the original but it is original, dark and mesmerising at times with some extraordinary visual flourishes and some show-stopping scenes.
Oh, and Thom Yorke's score is a meandering piano melange with a couple of good orchestral moments. Give me Goblin's shrieking insanity any day.
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