{"id":5367,"date":"2019-06-16T20:15:55","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T00:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/?p=5367"},"modified":"2022-10-25T17:20:15","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T21:20:15","slug":"suspiria-movie-review-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/suspiria-movie-review-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018) has less color than the original, but more of everything else"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I appreciate that Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria<\/em> is not attempting to copy Dario Argento’s horror classic, per se, but the association immediately pitches a number of disappointments to get over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, its avoidance of the original’s vivid, lurid color is so aggressive as to be a punk rock statement. The creative choice sets up a dramatic late-film widening of the color spectrum, but perhaps the early desaturation goes too far. Even in a scene where two characters are talking during the daytime, it’s so dark you can barely see their faces. Before you say “you should have seen it on the big screen”, I would counter that this and the also infamously dim Game of Thrones<\/em> episode “The Long Night” were produced for small screens by Amazon and HBO respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mia
“Ah, Lacan”… mirror stage. Mia Goth in Suspiria (2018)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Second, it’s curious that the plot of movie made in 2018, about female artists and witches, would revolve around a male character. But again, this is a deliberate creative choice, and without spoilers, I would invite you to pay close attention to first-time actor Lutz Ebersdorf’s performance as the psychotherapist Dr. Josef Klemperer. Still, I felt the movie was trying to have it both ways: putting a feminist spin on witchcraft tropes, while still portraying them as either frequently nude beautiful young women or as shrieking cackling harpies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may have less color than the original, but it has more of almost everything else: it’s more political, more gory, more fragmented, and more like a copy of Cahiers du cinema<\/em> come to life. If it’s not enough for a character to sigh “Ahhhh… Lacan”, the film is positively scattered with Lacanian mirrors, so much so that I continuously marveled at how the camera was hidden or erased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I appreciate that Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria is not attempting to copy Dario Argento’s horror classic, per se, but the association immediately pitches a number of disappointments to get over. First, its avoidance of the original’s vivid, lurid color is so aggressive as to be a punk rock statement. The creative choice sets up a dramatic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1,2],"tags":[1700,1905,1904,269,1901,1902,1903,141],"class_list":["post-5367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-3-stars","category-default","category-movies","tag-1700","tag-amazon","tag-dakota-johnson","tag-dario-argento","tag-luca-guadagnino","tag-mia-goth","tag-suspiria","tag-tilda-swinton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/suspiria-2018.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa9lhB-1oz","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1605,"url":"https:\/\/chadossman.com\/blog\/the-george-a-romero-zombie-cycle-part-2-dawn-of-the-dead\/","url_meta":{"origin":5367,"position":0},"title":"The George A. 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