Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

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mfunk9786
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#101 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Nov 01, 2018 1:47 pm

Stated for the record: I like the idea of remaking films, and don't have any particular sacred cow relationship with the original Suspiria though I think it's pretty darn good. This is just a terrible film in a vacuum

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dda1996a
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#102 Post by dda1996a » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:20 pm

I have only seen his prior three films and thought two were stinkers and one great, with the two somehow featuring Swinton (who is one of my favorite actresses) so I guess Swinton and Guadagnino make for a bad pair.

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domino harvey
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#103 Post by domino harvey » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:22 pm

Yeah, I've only seen A Bigger Splash and Call Me By Your Name and while I liked the latter quite a bit, the former seemed pointless and felt five hours long and never satisfactorily answered the most obvious question: why remake La piscine in the first place?

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#104 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:27 pm

Both this and A Bigger Splash have David Kajganich in common as screenwriter, perhaps he's the problem - Call Me By Your Name is obviously a beautifully written piece and limits how much Guadagnino can muck it up

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Big Ben
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#105 Post by Big Ben » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:34 pm

That bad huh? I confess I want to see it with a local audience now for...reasons. The original Suspiria is more of a style over substance film for me and I cannot fathom it working anyway other than that.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#106 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:35 pm

This is pretension over both

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#107 Post by connor » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:37 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:27 pm
Both this and A Bigger Splash have David Kajganich in common as screenwriter, perhaps he's the problem - Call Me By Your Name is obviously a beautifully written piece and limits how much Guadagnino can muck it up
He wrote that new series The Terror though which is fantastic.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#108 Post by dda1996a » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:47 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:22 pm
Yeah, I've only seen A Bigger Splash and Call Me By Your Name and while I liked the latter quite a bit, the former seemed pointless and felt five hours long and never satisfactorily answered the most obvious question: why remake La piscine in the first place?
I guess to add that awful political edge? (Havent seen the original, so correct me if I'm wrong).
In those two films the only thing I liked were the two sensual scenes, which I guess is why Call Me works well too, as it expands sensuality that's good and prevalent in Guadagnino.
Anyway, I find it odd that we actually did end up getting this and Green's remake of another horror classic at around the same time, and concensus is that they're both dissapointing

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knives
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#109 Post by knives » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:50 pm

mfunk9786 wrote:
Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:27 pm
Both this and A Bigger Splash have David Kajganich in common as screenwriter, perhaps he's the problem - Call Me By Your Name is obviously a beautifully written piece and limits how much Guadagnino can muck it up
Possibly as the earlier I Am Love is quite good if a little generically bougie.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#110 Post by KJones77 » Thu Nov 01, 2018 3:52 pm

Oh no so this is more A Bigger Splash than Call Me By Your Name?

I was excited for this one, but I loathed A Bigger Splash, turned me off from Guadagnino at the time for how vapid it was.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#111 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Nov 01, 2018 4:03 pm

I would watch A Bigger Splash 100 more times before revisiting this once, so I'm not exactly sure how to compare them

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#112 Post by domino harvey » Thu Nov 01, 2018 4:20 pm

A Bigger Splash already felt like I did watch it a hundred times when watching it once

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#113 Post by Morbii » Thu Nov 01, 2018 5:42 pm

It’s gotten more and more alluring to me now that everyone hates it.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#114 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:47 pm

Yeah, good luck with that!

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#115 Post by bakofalltrades » Fri Nov 02, 2018 2:11 pm

I've not had a great track record with Guadagnino's films. I enjoyed I Am Love, thought A Bigger Splash was terrible, and found Call Me By Your Name really underwhelming and somewhat false.

I loved Suspiria.

The mood and atmosphere of this film are right up my alley. That cold, damp, chilled-to-the-bone feeling that I also get when watching something like Don't Look Now. I love the eye-popping, candy-colored aesthetics of the original, but found myself equally intrigued by the way Guadagnino uses colors (greens and reds) to pierce through the drabness of his palette. To my mind, Guadagnino surrenders this film to darkness comparable to the way he allowed I Am Love to flourish in romance (and melodrama, maybe?).

The imagery of the new Suspiria was immensely satisfying to me, especially the compositions of the dance scenes and the manner in which violence is depicted. I felt truly unsettled by the violence. I can't recall a film in the past decade or two that has had a similar effect on me. An early scene made my stomach curdle in its relentlessness.

For me, the original's narrative is its weakest point. I think it's underdeveloped to the point of being a flaw, and never reaches the intriguing ambiguity that might satisfy in the leave-it-unexplained way. (I think very highly of the original overall—I'm definitely a fan. Just not because of its plot.) The new one at least provides a framework to hold onto, something that grounds these characters, while leaving plenty unexplained. It's not at all concerned with mapping out intricate plot points or explaining how things came about or function.
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I'm torn about the role of the doctor and the necessity of the greater historical/contextual parallels his storyline introduces, but I do ultimately see a payoff in the coming together and triangulation of the three characters played by Tilda. Not sure what I make of it, and I still wish the doctor character were female (because I find makeup like that distracting), but I see *something* there.
Just some early thoughts. Can't wait to revisit.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#116 Post by Fiery Angel » Fri Nov 02, 2018 2:14 pm

bakofalltrades wrote:
Fri Nov 02, 2018 2:11 pm
An early scene made my stomach curdle in its relentlessness.
Pull quote

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#117 Post by moreorless » Mon Nov 05, 2018 12:40 am

The obvious choice for remake to me always seemed like Peter Strickland but I spose that would have robbed us of something original from him with In Fabric.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#118 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Nov 05, 2018 6:28 am

I haven't seen this new one, but I feel that Cattet and Forzani already created about the best Suspiria evocation imaginable in the first section of Amer.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#119 Post by MichaelB » Mon Nov 05, 2018 12:15 pm

The opening sentence of Sight & Sound’s take:

Image


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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#120 Post by cdnchris » Mon Nov 05, 2018 12:28 pm

Weapons-grade, eh?

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domino harvey
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#121 Post by domino harvey » Mon Nov 05, 2018 12:30 pm

Never Mind the Plutonium, Here's the Suspiria

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#122 Post by brundlefly » Wed Nov 07, 2018 8:36 am

Loved at least 5/7ths of this, the rest still under consideration; it does everything a remake of a great movie should do, which is pick up the unused parts and run with those. It riffs and nods at the original’s story and characters but its interests and approaches are so different that it’s its own damned thing.

Just the concept, restaging ‘Suspiria’ in the tumultuous time and country in which it was originally made, is a clever, meaningful change. Argento’s film is pure sensation, a Black Forest-set Grimm fantasy; this one is cerebral and physical, context-rich and specific. One of Guadagnino’s strengths as a director has been inhabiting a location, and moving it to 1977 Berlin and rebuilding the wall (fine shorthand for deep ideological and generational divisions) gives it a harder look. Upthread, Lost Highway mentioned ‘Possession’ as a visual touchstone and that’s definitely in there, in the exteriors at least. Perhaps some German New Wave films were used as touchstones (Katharina Blum is in the cast) but I’m not that well-versed. There are a couple shots that burst into the more vibrant Argento palette, and I think those all come in dreams.

(There’s also an abstract light pattern used in this to denote a presence that’s similar to one I’ve recently seen used elsewhere – perhaps by Paul Schrader? – as a representation of The Soul or somesuch. I think I recall a director’s commentary attributing it to an established visual artist.)

The context makes explicit elements that were at most incidental in the original, but I don’t think the film overexplains in a spoon-fed way. (Even the initial title card is a slightly out-of-focus railway sign in the background.) I prefer when things are underexplained, especially in horror films. I could have used fewer news reports in the background, but I could say the same for ‘The Obscure Object of Desire.’ The plot and some of the witches’ motivations are more clearly defined, but like the original ‘Suspiria’ the plot here serves as a host body.

Also, though it has witches and various grotesqueries, and though it hauls in the Holocaust and terrorism, I don’t know it’s much of a horror movie. Its thrills are all in the filmmaking and it’s probably more confusing than unsettling. I don't know if it fits anywhere neatly, it's not neatly offered. So many thematic concerns are in play it’s easy to argue it winds up an unfocused mess. Is it tossing out elements as noise or atmosphere? Is it ambitious or over-considered or floundering? I will definitely see it again, but on first watch the ending is unsatisfying everywhere but on paper – a major failure. Less incoherent than incohesive. (For me, the opposite of ‘Call Me by Your Name,’ which was fine and precocious but didn’t earn its great, emotional final minutes.)

However muddled its meaning gets – it’s about generational disconnect and healing, and about the nature of talent and uses of performance and... well, if there’s a German word for it, it’s about Mutterhausenbaadermeinhoffcomplexenrotschuhesenamischensatanischfeminismsengroupthinkliberationtanzen – I love how it communicates. For me it’s the best Guadagnino film since ‘I Am Love,’ where every shot and every cut seemed exciting and alive. The way he and Walter Fasano cut that and this one doesn’t seem to abide by any rule except, “We want to show you this! Look at this! And now, this!” The enthusiasm of the presentation is convincing, for me, and gives the eye a series of interesting places to land. And dialogue delivery can shuffle effectively between wordless glances, physical action, and overlapping gaggle-ons that have to be attributed through subtitles. The movie is interested in dance and I loved the way it moved, even when it was obviously cutting around performances.

I agree Swinton’s make-up was distracting, though it did have the funhouse effect of making me wonder often how many characters she was playing (I thought at least four, probably overcounted.) Haven’t read into whose idea it was, but Guadagnino seems inclined to indulge his actors and Swinton especially; the main reason I enjoyed ‘A Bigger Splash’ was the dynamic between her and Fiennes, and it was apparently her idea to go mute to give him more room to go loud. The partnership has been great (I don’t know I’ve ever seen her as vulnerable as she was in ‘I Am Love’) and dreadful (‘The Protagonists’ is offensive in quality and content.) Her Blanc is perfect here. The Klemperer role may have been an indulgence, or a conceptual way to keep a sort of purity: It is largely an all-female film, the police officers a notable exception (and they’re openly ridiculed.) At least one male character from the original (Vendegast) has been gender-swapped. Feminist politics are part of the discussion. Did they require a male witness? I don’t know if there was a cogent explanation why the Klemperer character couldn’t be female.

Yes, the Yorke score was underwhelming, though I don’t know if this ‘Suspiria’ demanded anything as distinctive as the other one. I’m sure his bandmate could have contributed something better. I’d add that Johnson remains (I’d forgotten she was even in ‘A Bigger Splash’) a non-presence for me.

But most of this had me giddy. The time and place to which they moved the action demand a fractured and distracted path and that’s what’s delivered. Its art-about-art arm did service to both arts. Its concerns about history and transference, as a film piggybacking an older film, are both thematically appropriate and unfortunately relevant. It would be unfortunate to dismiss a new movie that’s excited about engaging with an overflow of ideas when the easy alternative would have been competent regurgitation.
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(I thought the obligatory remake callback – trotting out Jessica Harper as, essentially, an illusion – was a perfect thing for one film to do to/for/with another.)

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#123 Post by HitchcockLang » Wed Nov 07, 2018 9:29 am

My wife had never seen the original so we watched it at home and went the next night to see the remake. While it is certainly revolting and I don't disagree with many criticisms such as Tilda Swinton's dual role being an unnecessary distraction and such, but neither of us hated it.

We viewed it as an interesting product of a post-Trump world, urging the young to forcefully take control and letting the old guard die. This made the thematic ties between the coven and divided Berlin not problematic for us at all as we saw the entire film as an exercise in anti-fascism. I certainly prefer the original but I appreciate what Guadagnino was trying to (I think).

Conversely, we also did a double feature of George Cukor's A Star is Born and then went to see Bradley Cooper's take. That, I barely enjoyed at all and remarked to my wife that I would rather see more remakes like Suspiria and fewer like A Star is Born. I guess I can forgive a film's transgressions if it's at least interesting to reflect on.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#124 Post by nitin » Tue Dec 11, 2018 3:24 am

Saw it last night and it was definitely worth watching even though it was not successful enough for me to wholeheartedly recommend it. The length was not an issue for me, the pacing was fine I thought unless you were expecting more standard genre fare, and it does do what I wish more remakes do which is to keep the skeleton of the original but the rest of the body is its own. The general mood is also the sort that I like in my horror films (an ovrrarching feeling of dread and unease).

However, it is definitely nowhere near as smart or intellectual as it obviously wants to be, and although I did not personally find that aspect pushed to an overly distracting degree, I think a lot of others will feel that it well beyond. I also thought it failed to stick the landing, the soundtrack in particular was just a very distractingly poor choice in the moment but the entire sequence also alternated between some inspired visuals and some very generic cookie cutter ones.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#125 Post by Slaphappy » Mon Dec 17, 2018 8:53 am

Persona wrote:
Sat Sep 01, 2018 12:10 pm
Due to the nature of how polarizing it is and why, it is getting some comparisons to Aronofsky's mother!

If it can up the ante on the go-for-broke visceral insanity and genre effectiveness of mother! but ditch the VERY ham-fisted allegory stuff, I'm down.
I felt like I had mother! figured out before the titles started rolling, but I'm still pleasantly puzzled by Suspiria after seeing it yesterday. While kind of ham-fisted, I like how rambling it is and the themes are way less obvious. For me it was a stylistic mash-up of Zulawski's Possession and
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Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

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