Suspiria (2018)

Movie
Original title	Suspiria
Country of production	Italy , United States
original language	English
Publishing year	2018
length	152 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Luca Guadagnino
script	David Kajganich
production	Marco Morabito , Brad Fischer , Luca Guadagnino, David Kajganich, Silvia Venturini Fendi , Francesco Melzi d'Eril , William Sherak , Gabriele Moratti
music	Thom Yorke
camera	Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
cut	Walter Fasano
occupation
Dakota Johnson : Susie Bannion Tilda Swinton : Madame Blanc / Mother Helena Markos / Dr. Josef Klemperer (as Lutz Ebersdorf) Mia Goth : Sara Simms Angela Winkler : Miss Tanner Chloë Grace Moretz : Patricia Hingle Ingrid Caven : Miss Vendegast Elena Fokina : Olga Ivanova Sylvie Testud : Miss Griffith Renée Soutendijk : Miss Huller Fabrizia Sacchi : Pavla Małgosia Bela : Mrs. Bannion / Death Christine Leboutte : Miss Balfour Alek Wek : Miss Millius Jessica Harper : Anke Meier

Suspiria ( Latin for sigh ) is an Italian - American horror film directed by Luca Guadagnino . The film is a remake of Dario Argento's cult film Suspiria . The script, based on Argentos and Daria Nicolodis , was written by David Kajganich .

action

The film takes place in the divided Berlin of the 1970s during the German autumn , when the left-wing terrorist group RAF undertook the Schleyer kidnapping and the hijacking of the “Landshut” passenger plane in order to have captured terrorists free.

The dancer Patricia is looking for her psychiatrist Dr. Josef Klemperer and tells him about strange events at the Helena-Markos-Tanzakademie, where she studies. She feels observed, manipulated and insecure and reports confused thoughts about strange occurrences and witchcraft. Dr. Klemperer does not believe her and diagnoses severe delusions.

At the same time in Ohio, after the death of her mother, a devout Mennonite woman, the young Susie Bannion makes her way to Berlin to enroll in the dance academy and thus realize her greatest dream. During an audition, she proves to be very talented and immediately attracts the attention of her great role model Madame Blanc, ballet master and director of the school.

After her immediate admission and moving into the academy, she takes part in the rehearsals. Olga, a friend of the missing Patricia, collapses and insults the teachers and Madame Blanc as hypocrites. Olga leaves the rehearsals, packs her things and also wants to leave the academy. However, strange forces and voices lure them into a remote hall of mirrors. When she enters the room under a spell, it locks and Olga is trapped. During the rehearsal, Madame Blanc asks who wants to dance the lead role in the upcoming piece “People”, which was written during the National Socialist era, instead of Olga, and Susie answers. Blanc transmits her magic to her by touching her hands and ankles. While she is dancing, Olga becomes her puppet in the hall of mirrors. Susie's dance moves are transferred one-to-one to the unsuspecting Olga in the empty hall of mirrors, as a result of which she is thrown around and suffers twisted limbs and some bone bridges. While Susie experiences special sensations while dancing and inspires her mentor, Olga lies dying with innumerable broken bones, inhumanly deformed on the floor of the hall of mirrors. Later, some of the teachers and supervisors hauled your still living body away with the help of meat hooks, while they mocked Olga, who was so terribly battered and on the last legs, for her insubordination.

Dr. Klemperer realizes that Patricia has disappeared and begins to be interested in her stories. He reads her notebook, which contains many notes about the dance teachers, strange rituals and three figures named Mother Suspiriorum, Mother Tenebrarum and Mother Lachrymarum. He turns to the police and reports Patricia missing. Here he meets a police officer whom he met while searching for his wife Anke, who was missing in the war.

While the final preparations for the premiere of the play “Volk” are in progress, Sara discovers access to an escape from cellar vaults, where she finds the badly damaged Patricia, Olga and another dancer with missing limbs. When a dark being appears and pursues her, Sara takes flight. She breaks her leg through holes suddenly appearing in the floor of the dark corridors. The open break does not go untreated for long, however, as some witches find it and use their power to close the wound.

The premiere is in full swing when Sara appears in the middle of the play and, despite her broken leg, dances her role perfectly in a trance. Susie notices this and instead of dancing the practiced choreography, she improvises, which frees Sara from the trance. Sara falls and screams, whereupon the performance is interrupted. The audience, including Klemperer, leaves the hall.

Later that evening, Susie takes part in a meal with the senior women of the dance academy, while Klemperer meets his wife Anke, who was believed to be dead, in his dacha in East Berlin. She tells him that she escaped persecution by the Nazis and started a new life in Zurich after the war. She assumed he had died too. Both pass unnoticed a border crossing to West Berlin and get to the dance academy. When Anke suddenly disappears, Klemperer now realizes that he was lured into a trap, whereupon two witches drag him into the academy, screaming.

After dinner, Susie returns to the academy and climbs a flight of stairs where Madame Blanc and other senior citizens of the academy await her. Klemperer is also with them, who is to serve as a witness to the ritual that is now taking place. Madame Blanc introduces her to a grotesquely deformed old woman as the mother of Helena Markos. It is revealed to her that she will be accepted as a newcomer to the witch society and will serve as a new shell for Mother Markos. The dance levels are added. A wild dance ritual begins in which three dancers are gutted. Susie agrees to be taken over by Markos. Madame Blanc, who loves Susie, then tries to persuade mother Markos to break off the ritual because she is now feeling unwell. Markos then kills Blanc. Susie now reveals herself as mother Suspiriorum. A grotesque and supernatural-looking female witch figure appears, who kills Mother Markos and all of her subordinates, while Susie partially opens her body and reveals her true self. The ritual seems to be over.

The visibly weakened and confused Dr. Klemperer is sent home from dance school. The next day, lessons go on as usual and it seems to be calm. When Klemperer is sick in his bed, Susie appears at his place and tells him about the true fate of his wife. After separating from Klemperer, she was deported to Theresienstadt and killed. Since Susie cannot take the risk of being exposed by Klemperer, she takes away all memories from him.

The last shot takes place in the present and shows Klemperer's garden house with a carved heart and the first letters of Josef Klemperer and Anke Meier. A family with children turns out to be the new residents of the dacha.

production

In 2007 the Italian production company First Sun acquired the rights to a remake of Suspiria from Dario Argento together with Guadagnino . Originally Gordon Green provided as a director, Isabelle Huppert should play the leading role, and Green worked out a new draft of the script. This project was finally abandoned in 2013.

Tilda Swinton at the screening of the film at the Sitges Film Festival in October 2018

Before Guadagnino himself realized the film, he initially made three feature films. Guadagnino was therefore able to work with a well-rehearsed team in Suspiria . Apart from Tilda Swinton and Fabrizia Sacchi , each of whom it was the fifth film under his direction, and Dakota Johnson , he has already worked several times with the editor Walter Fasano and the Thai cameraman Sayombhu Mukdeeprom , who is also here with 35mm film and has not filmed with a digital camera. As in the three previous films, Ferdinando Cito Filomarino was the second unit director and assistant director . For Giulia Piersanti , who was responsible for the costumes, it was also the third collaboration with Guadagnino. Jessica Harper , who plays a supporting role here, starred as Suzie Bannion in Argento's film. For David Kajganich it was the second script for Guadagnino.

Shrouded in mystery, Lutz Ebersdorf / Dr. Jozef Klemperer, for whom a vita - possibly inspired by the biography of the Viennese actionist Hermann Nitsch - was launched in the run-up to the film , is also played by Tilda Swinton, which Guadagnino and Swinton vigorously denied until it was published.

The music for the film comes from Thom Yorke , singer and lyricist for the rock group Radiohead , with the participation of the London Contemporary Orchestra under Robert Ames , who also plays the solo viola in the film. Thom Yorke received the Sound Track Star Award in Venice for his song A suspirium . It was also the third film with Guardagnino for Robin Urdang, who received a Guild of Music Supervisors Award for Call Me by Your Name . The dance scenes were rehearsed by the renowned Belgian choreographer Damien Jalet . Jalet had already choreographed a ballet "Les Médusés" based on Argento's film, which was shown in February 2013 at the Louvre .

The shooting location for the dance academy was the prestigious Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori in Varese , which had been vacant since 1968 . The structure of the hotel, built in 1908 by Giuseppe Sommaruga in Liberty style , is in a state of general neglect, but has largely been preserved in terms of the interior and stairwell. Other locations in Varese were underground vaults under the Giardini Estensi. Filming in Varese lasted from December 2016 to January 2017 and then continued in Berlin. The shooting in Berlin was March 10, 2017.

The budget for the film was $ 20 million.

publication

The film premiered on September 1, 2018 at the Venice Film Festival . The US premiere took place as a limited release on October 28, 2018 in two cinemas in New York and Los Angeles, with grossing $ 179,806. The German premiere was on October 31 ( Halloween ) in 40 German cities. Amazon Studios took over the distribution .

On October 26, 2018, XL Recordings released the album “Thom Yorke. Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film) “, (2 discs).

Awards

Guadagnino received the Robert Altman Award at the Independent Spirit Awards 2019 .

criticism

The Guardian headline describes the film as "a terrific remake of Dario Argento's masterpiece," but Mark Kermode only awards three stars out of five and says scissors would not have harmed the film, not because of the horror scenes, but because of the Lengths. All in all, the film seems strangely sullen, pulled down by the gravity of a strangely exaggerated assessment of its own importance, like a dancer who voluntarily - or out of inability - does not just jump in the air and fly.

In her detailed analysis, Beatrice Behn from Kino-Zeit deals with the three major themes in Guadagnino's film: political systems, female characters and their - system-immanent - positioning and art, especially dance, as aesthetic art, but also as body cinema. All three are connected by power. In the dance academy, according to her interpretation, “[...] two power systems meet: the clearly masculine power of National Socialism and the clearly feminine power of witches. They are antagonistic to each other. ”The analysis and metaphors of film could fill entire books. “Guadagnino and his screenwriter David Kajganich have not only highlighted topics that are inherent in the original in a subtle way, but they fill in the mythological and horror genre typical cracks. It is a small-scale folding work that has been done here, which has become a wonderful mixture of homage to the original and at the same time its very own thing ”.

Frédéric Jaeger interprets the film more as a reinterpretation than a strict remake: “David Kajganich didn't just adapt Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi's script, rewrite it or update it here and there. The Suspiria from 2018 has a rather broad relationship with the Suspiria from 1977. [...] Suspiria 2018 is a dramatically developed material that is many times more ambivalent and emotionally more complicated than the original, especially in the belief in the contradicting facets of his arsenal of characters. The two and a half hour running time offers plenty of opportunities to develop violence, fear and also some seduction. But none of this feels definite and complete. It is the wit and the promise of Guadagnino's variations. "

Katja Nicodemus reported for Die Zeit from the Venice Film Festival : “The plot of Suspiria is a crude mix of witch rituals, dance lessons, bloody physicality and allusions to the suppression of the Nazi era. But Guadagnino succeeds in gray Berlin veiled seventies an atmosphere specifically German eeriness to generate flanked by great actresses-hexene [...]. "She summarizes their observations to Suspiria and costume drama The Favorite Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos as a" prelude to the endgames of the present ”together:“ One could understand the cinema genres, interpreted in such a surprising way, as experimental arrangements in which there are always new reactions. As camera expeditions that illuminate further corridors and deeper abysses in the blackness of the human soul. "

At Rotten Tomatoes , the film received a positive rating at 64% of the total of 264 reviews.

Trivia

Jessica Harper, who took on the role of Anke Meier, played the main role of Suzy Banyon in the 1977 film adaptation.

Web links

Commons : Suspiria (2018 film)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Suspiria in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Dario Argento's Suspiria: Darkness, Tears, and Sighs Walker, Crosscuts, accessed April 6, 2020
• Horror as a magnifying glass of society . Anke Leweke in conversation with Gesa Ufer. Deutschlandfunk culture
• Radiohead's Thom Yorke to Score 'Suspiria' remake . Variety.com
• Venice first look: Suspiria makes heavy weather of Argento's beloved horror
• Suspiria Detailed film review by Gaby Sikorski, programmkino.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Suspiria Kino.de, November 15, 2018, accessed on November 20, 2018
2. ↑ Festival di Cannes: Guadagnino produce il remake di 'Suspiria' E-duesse.it, accessed on September 19, 2018
3. ↑ David Gordon Green Reflects on the “Very Expensive” Remake of 'Suspiria' He Almost Made , accessed September 20, 2018.
4. ^ Suspiria, Shot in Berlin, accessed on September 18, 2018
5. ↑ Patrick Shanley: Who Is Lutz Ebersdorf? A 'Suspiria' Mystery Deepens Hollywood Reporter , August 24, 2018, accessed September 26, 2018
6. ↑ Tom Grater: 'Suspiria' lands in Venice, Tilda Swinton suggests Lutz Ebersdorf Oscar campaign Screen Daily, September 1, 2018, accessed on September 19, 2018
7. ↑ Is Tilda Swinton not-so-secretly playing old man in Suspiria? The Telegraph, August 31, 2018, accessed September 19, 2018
8. ↑ 'Go for it!' Call Me By Your Name music supervisor Robin Urdang on her movie and TV career so far www.mandy.com, news, accessed on September 20, 2018
9. ↑ Peter Debruge: Luca Guadagnino on 'Suspiria': 'I Have Always Loved the Cinema of Extremes' variety.com, 2018, accessed on September 25, 2018
10. ↑ Les médusés - a choreographic journey by Damien Jalet in Le Louvre - Paris , accessed on September 18, 2018
11. ↑ Tutti attori per Suspiria SM News, September 3, 2016, accessed on September 18, 2018
12. ↑ Carlotta Marelli: Tutte le location di Suspiria, aspettando il remake di Luca Guadagnino ElleDecor, accessed on September 18, 2018
13. ↑ Suspiria-, anche i rifugi antiarei sei del film Verese News, December 2016, accessed on September 18, 2018
14. ↑ Zack Sharf: Luca Guadagnino is Done Filming 'Suspiria' Remake, Working on Post-Production For Possible 2017 Release IndieWire, March 6, 2016, accessed September 18, 2018
15. ↑ Katie Riefe: Newswire. Here's everything we know so far about Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria remake AV / News, August 30, 2018, accessed on September 20, 2018
16. ↑ Rebecca Rubin, 'Suspiria' Plans Big Expansion After a Roaring Start Variety, October 28, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018
17. ↑ Suspiria – Remake achieves best US copy cut of the year, previews in Germany Blairwitch.de, accessed on November 2, 2018
18. ^ Thom Yorke Suspiria - Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film
19. ^ Robert Altman Award per Suspiria, cinmatografo.it accessed on December 11, 2018
20. ^ Mark Kermode: Suspiria review - dancing on the grave of a horror classic. In: The Guardian , November 18, 2018. Retrieved November 21, 2018.
21. ^ Beatrice Behn: Suspiria (20i8). A film review. In: cinema time . Retrieved November 21, 2018.
22. ^ Frédéric Jaeger: Suspiria | Criticism. In: www.critic.de. Accessed December 1, 2018 . 
23. ↑ Katja Nicodemus: Venice Film Festival: Yes, it goes even deeper. In: Zeit Online. Accessed December 1, 2018 . 
24. ↑ Suspiria 2018 at Rotten Tomatoes .