When covering songs, artists should try their best to both capture the spirit of the original while at the same time doing something new and unique with the material. This year, surviving ’90s band Weezer scored a hit by covering “Africa,” one of two Toto singles to rise up the charts a decade prior to Weezer’s own rise to fame. This new-old song, however, isn’t popular because it’s unique, however; it’s a carbon copy of the original, matching note for note, beat for beat, the Toto song – nearly the audible equivalent of a mirror image. Those who dig it relish in the cheesy irony of the tune, rather than any merits it has as an artistic update of an old song.
Cinematic remakes must follow the same rules—staying true to the original while also creating something new and unique—if they are to be successful. Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho never had a chance of topping Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal film simply because it brought nothing new to the table (off-screen sound effects of Norman Bates masturbating while watching Marian Crane shower notwithstanding). On the other hand, Rob Zombie’s Halloween marched to the beat of its own drum and gave the film’s boogeyman Michael Myers a serial killer’s backstory; the move took away much of the character’s subtle terror and, combined with the slasher staples of excessive gore and nudity, ended up feeling a bit run of the mill, but you can’t deny Zombie did something different with the stalwart horror franchise.
Writer David Kajganich and director Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Suspiria, Dario Argento’s masterpiece, makes all the right changes in all the right places, producing a decidedly 21st-century take on the material; it’s both a loving tribute to the original and a wildly unique meditation on our current socio-political climate.
Set in the original film’s release year, 1977, Suspiria tells the story of the Helena Markos Dance Company, an avant-garde academy in Berlin that is secretly controlled by a coven of witches—and, really, that’s just about all the original and the remake have in common. The biggest noticeable departure is the on-screen color palette. Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom wash the proceedings in muted earth tones, a drastic departure from Argento’s film, famous for its electric neon, almost psychedelic colors. This isn’t merely a stylistic choice: Argento’s Suspiria is mostly concerned with surrealism and sensory assault in the vein of the Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty—a noble approach when crafting narratives of terror—while Guadagnino uses bright colors only as thematic emphasis in a film primarily concerned with story and theme (although it is often disorienting, even bewildering, at times as well). The building that houses the dance company lacks the acid-laced Gothic broodiness of the original, instead appearing as a typical, semi-dilapidated Berlin construction, almost brutal in its plainness. But Guadagnino accomplishes much in this deceptively stark environment, including a scene set in a dance rehearsal area covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors that serves as one of the film’s few moments of extreme violence; the grotesque sequence deserves a spot in the body horror hall of fame. Similarly, the film’s bloody climax occurs in a fairly unassuming basement area, though there is a set of stairs that hints at the scene’s primeval grandiosity. 
This overall juxtaposition of extravagance and simplicity carries over into Thom Yorke’s soundtrack, which alternates between stark piano compositions and noisy, synthesized opuses. Despite hearing Yorke’s distinctive pipes throughout – a voice instantly reminiscent of the 1990s and beyond – the music feels right at home in this historical setting; it could have easily been composed by David Bowie during his experimental “Berlin period” (the late artist makes a cameo via a poster in one of the dance academy student’s dorm room).
Perhaps the finest aspect of Suspiria is its performances. Dakota Johnson shows the tremendous range of her talents as Susie Bannion, while Mia Goth as the academy’s unwitting “ambassador” Sara wonderfully guides us through the film’s middle section. The original film’s star, Jessica Harper, makes a brief but important cameo later in the film. But the true highlight here is Tilda Swinton, playing three different roles (more on this in the analysis section), bringing her spellbinding, unique acting approach to each character. Her work in this film reinforces Swinton’s status as an international treasure.
Reviews of Suspiria are already fairly mixed, proving it to already be one of the most divisive films of 2018 (which is definitely by design). As far as this writer is concerned, Guadagnino’s latest cinematic effort is a must see. It is easily one of the finest horror remakes ever made – one decidedly not reliant on gimmicks or ironic winking, as we saw with the aforementioned Psycho remake and, in the realm of music, the Weezer cover of “Africa.” But its ties to the previous Dario Argento film notwithstanding, Guadagnino’s Suspiria is a fine film by its own merits and one that will likely be remembered as distinctly pertinent to this conflict-fraught Trump era in which we’re currently living.
Suspiria is in theaters nationwide now.
RECOMMENDATION: Watch the move at full price.
PAIR WITH: Possession (1981), The VVitch (2015) and, of course, Suspiria (1977)
Read on for a spoiler-rich analysis of the film below
Primarily, Suspiria is about division, as its subtitle, “Six Acts and an Epilogue in a Divided Berlin,” indicates. The main narrative unfolds against the backdrop of the German Autumn, a period of civil during which the RAF (the Red Army Faction), a radical, violent Marxist group undertook a series of abductions in the hopes of freeing their still-living founders, Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader, from prison. This activity culminated in a sympathetic Palestinian group hijacking a Lufthansa airplane and demanding the release of Ensslin and Baader, a story that dominates the televisions and newspapers of Guadagnino’s film. (For a deeper dive into Germany’s political climate during 1977 as it relates to Suspiria, see this Vulture article by Nate Jones.) Also ever-present in the mise-en-scène: the Berlin Wall, perhaps the most potent and foreboding 20th-century symbols of discord, a literal barrier separating “us” and “them” (or “them” and “us,” depending on which side of the wall you live).
While all of this occurs outside the Helena Markos Dance Company—which sits right alongside the Berlin Wall—division colors the those living within the academy’s building as well. There is division among the instructors and faculty between those still loyal to the company’s founder, who is skulking around the premises somewhere, and those aligned behind the more progressive vision of Madame Blanc, creator of the company’s most famous production, Volk; there is division between the instructors and the students, who are (mostly) unaware of the academy’s roots in witchcraft; division between the students that do know their instructors’ secret, and those who do not; and their division between the company and the men beyond their walls, particularly those that hope to encroach upon and disrupt this supposed female utopia (the faction aligned behind Markos are unabashed misandrists).
The biggest male threat to the witches’ evil machinations (primarily, their plot to sacrifice Susie in order to empower and restore Markos) is the psychologist Dr. Josef Klemperer, who investigates the company when one of his patients, Markos student Patrica (Chloë Grace Moretz), disappears after regaling him with stories of a planned ritual sacrifice within the academy’s walls. Klemperer is played by Lutz Ebersdorf, an actor that doesn’t actually exist, but is rather a creation of actress Tilda Swinton, who also portrays Madame Blanc and Helena Markos. This casting of the same actress in three different roles represents Guadagnino’s penultimate depiction of division, that of the self. The director stated in an interview with Vulture that Swinton plays “all the three aspects of a human psyche—the id, the ego, and the superego.”
While Guadagnino insists the audience should sort out for themselves which character represents what aspect, it is clear the aspects are disharmonious with one another, both in the way Swinton’s characters clash, but also as demonstrated by the other characters’ actions, especially Susie, who is less our protagonist and more a key player in a large ensemble cast (comprised entirely of women, it should be noted). Hailing from a repressed Mennonite home in rural Ohio, she is a contradictory young woman, at turns quiet and shy, then bold and commanding. She seems at times the perfect, naive victim, an inexperienced fish out of water in a complicated land; while other times, she seems beguiling and even insidious.
It is this last aspect of Susie’s personality that, ultimately, wins out, with Guadagnino revealing that she has become the new human embodiment not of Helena Markos, as the coven intended, but of the coven’s superior leader, Mother Suspiriorum (the Mother of Sighs), either via reincarnation or possession, it isn’t clear which. Returning to her followers during the climactic sacrifice, Mother Suspiriorum executes Markos and all members of the faction that supported her ascension to power.
With this violent deus ex machina terminating the coven’s division, it seems at first balance has been restored within the dance academy’s ranks, opening the door for Madame Blanc’s more progressive views to take hold. And yet, the film ends with what Guadagnino describes as a “monstrous act”: Mother Suspiriorum erasing the memory of Dr. Klemperer, thereby removing all knowledge he possesses of the coven, as well as his ability to recall the horrors he witnessed both within the walls of the academy and without. As the director states, “Without memory, even the most painful of memories, we are nothing. We are not human. So the person who wipes off the memory is really a villain.”
The act seems especially monstrous when considering the characters played by Swinton are meant to represent the three aspects of the human psyche. Guadagnino is mum on the subject, but it seems likely Helena Markos represents the Id, Madame Blanc represents the superego, and Dr. Klemperer represents the Ego, i.e., the mediating aspect between the Id and the Superego, that which actualizes the demands of former and the needs of the latter. The Ego is effectively the reasonable negotiator between the two more extreme aspects, the hedonistic Id and the conscientious Superego; in this way, if Klemperer represents the Ego, wiping his memory is tantamount to removing the Ego’s ability to mediate and maintain balance, which, naturally, leads only to more division as the two extremes battle for supremacy. Furthermore, in this scenario, the Id, i.e., Helena Markos, has also been destroyed, leaving Madame Blanc and her benefactor Mother Suspiriorum in charge, and thus constantly and detrimentally striving for utter perfection and practically welcoming even further division among those you cannot meet their high expectations.
