A remake in the time of Trump
A cult classic is revamped and has plenty that resonates in Trump’s America, finds Jen Yamato.
The morning of the Los Angeles premiere of his latest film Suspiria, Call Me
by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino pondered recent events as he contemplated how audiences will receive his divisive art house horror film.
‘‘Your President Trump said, ‘I am a nationalist’, which makes me shiver a tingle of the uncanny,’’ said Guadagnino, momentarily sombre during a breakfast conversation about his witchy new work.
Set within an all-female dance company in Germany, where a young woman becomes ensnared in sinister supernatural machinations, Suspiria packs in body-crunching gore, evocative sensations and an enthralling Thom Yorke score.
Playing out within a divided Berlin as the cloud of Adolf Hitler’s legacy hangs over the violent clashes of the German Autumn, this remake of Dario Argento’s cult classic of the same name also has much more on its mind than meets the eye.
‘‘Nationalists [are not only] the ones that we discuss in Suspiria, but also and most importantly for America, there is a group of people that define themselves as nationalists – they’re white supremacists, they say they are ‘white nationalists’,’’ said the Italian film-maker.
‘‘And the semantics of the President of the United States are not erratic and casual; they’re thought out. Someone who doesn’t know the history of this country may think, ‘He only said that he defends his own nation’ but he is sending a different message,’’ he continued.
‘‘Maybe watching this movie, someone will think, ‘Let’s have a look back into where we come from’.
‘‘I’m saying that not in a sort of agitprop antagonisation of Mr Trump. I oppose his idea of the world, but I think he plays with history and manipulates what we know about ourselves.’’
He quoted the central observer of his Suspiria, the elderly psychoanalyst Dr Josef Klemperer: ‘‘We’re living in dangerous times.’’
Borrowing from the narrative bones of the 1977 Argento original that seared its phantasmagoric horrors into his consciousness as a child, Guadagnino’s Suspiria connected with audiences in a major way. Opening in one cinema each in New York and Los Angeles, it scored the best per-screen average of the year to date.
The adaptation unfolds inside a Berlin dance company, where young American ingenue Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) arrives eager to escape her strict Mennonite upbringing for the liberation of feminist German Expressionist dance.
She falls under the spell of company director Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), who is embroiled in internal schisms over the fate of the group , while Klemperer (played by ‘‘actor’’ Lutz Ebersdorf) begins poking around, nagged by the claims of a missing dancer (Chloe Grace Moretz) that the place is run by a nefarious coven of witches.
Where Guadagnino’s Suspiria goes from there, scripted by his A
Bigger Splash collaborator David Kajganich, involves more pointed provocations than those found in Argento’s original.
‘‘Dario’s movie was a sort of selfcontained box of fleshy delicacies, which was not in relationship with the moment it was made,’’ said Guadagnino. ‘‘It was too much of an opportunity for me and David to actually say, ‘It’s 1977 – deal with it, let’s make it the centre of the story’.’’
He turned to Suspiria star Johnson and cracked a conspiratorial smile. ‘‘I don’t take it lightly, the fact that we got away with murder.
‘‘A two-and-a-half hour movie that is truly its own thing, that utilises the codes of horror movies in an individual way,’’ he said.
Entering cinemas in a time of heightened political conflict in America and across the globe, are there lessons for viewers to glean from this socially conscious take?
‘‘This is a very complex question, and I’m shy to answer this. I would say every movie that is made is resonant through time, but speaks for the time in which it is made,’’ Guadagnino mused carefully.
‘‘I think that if someone watching the movie understands that we are the product of history, that we cannot deny history and if we don’t understand that what happens before us is part of what we can decide to be in the future, I think I will be happy.’’
Swinton considered the same question. ‘‘Those fascists – they really get those witches going,’’ she wrote via email.
‘‘If we recognise any similarities in our current societal climate, we might do well to understand in what specific ways the historical knee bones are connected to the thigh bones.
‘‘The cultural amnesia that has been in vogue in the West for so long is due a re-think. Reflecting on history holds vital keys – as it always has – for understanding how we might go forward.’’
‘‘Nationalism is a dangerous game in the current climate that only willfully ignorant and bombastic self-servers deal in,’’ she concluded. ‘‘Even [Joseph] Goebbels could have told us that.’’
–
Suspiria (R16) opens in cinemas on Thursday.