Suspiria (2018)

Year 12, Day 298 - 10/24/20 - Movie #3,682

BEFORE: Tilda Swinton carries over from "Only Lovers Left Alive" to complete a horror triple-play (that's zombies, vampires and witches).  Once again, I had a choice to make - do I include the film "Okja", which is on Netflix, and also has Tilda Swinton in it?  It's not completely on-point, it's about a weird new animal, and I don't think that really qualifies as a monster, exactly.  Again, if I were short on the count maybe I'd try to squeeze that one in here and try to justify the inclusion of another "dark fantasy" film - but I'm not short on the count, I'm right on track.  Plus "Okja" links to "Parasite", which won the Best Picture Oscar last year, and it's the only film on my list that does that - so "Okja" could be my only link from that film back to normal Hollywood fare, so I'd better save it.  One option would be to start next year with "Parasite", then "Okja", then I've got options on where to go from there. 

THE PLOT:A darkness swirls at the center of a world-renowned dance company, one that will engulf the artistic director, an ambitious young dancer, and a grieving psychotherapist.  Some will succumb to the nightmare. Others will finally wake up.

AFTER: Well, the year of weird movies keeps on giving and giving, though the definition of "weird" during the month of October is a loose one, once I start dealing with vampires, zombies and witches.  Even if you put the supernatural aside, this is still a new high water-mark in the Department of Weird. The filmmaking style is very enigmatic, clearly European (same director as "Call Me by Your Name", it turns out) and there are a lot of flash-frames of various spooky and creepy things, some of which seem directly related to the plot here, and others, maybe not so much. 

The action here takes place behind the scenes at a modern-dance company, and by "modern" I mean the style of dance, not necessarily the year, because this is set in Berlin, 1977.  At first I wasn't sure about whether "modern" dance was a style back then, but I did a little research and I think the timeline is legit.  My first real exposure to modern dance came when I was working for my first real film production job, at a little studio with two directors (husband and wife, but separated at the time) and the wife had filmed a modern dance piece with Bill T. Jones.  This was around 1990, but reading up on that dancer's career, he started doing modern dance in the mid-1970's.  

While I'm thinking about working for that company, as a P.A. on several music videos, the first real long-form credit I ever got was for a documentary called "The Eyes Scream", which was about the long-time anonymous band The Residents, known for wearing giant eyeball heads on stage to conceal their identities.  What sort of musician struggles to become famous, while also at the same time, trying to remain anonymous?  That sounds a bit like Adam in yesterday's film "Only Lovers Left Alive".  But it was a good gimmick, and The Residents had like a 40-career and tons of records without anybody knowing their names.  Now I'm going back through their discography and I found a place to download their music for free, and even though I'm late for this party, better late than never.  Early on they covered some Beatles and Stones songs (playing them in a weird, creepy minor key, of course) and then later did the same for Elvis songs on their tribute album "The King & Eye".  And on their album "The Third Reich 'N' Roll", they created what may have been the first real mash-up medlies, before Stars on 45 did some in the disco style.

For years I was able to brag that I knew who two of the Residents were, I drove one of them back to his NYC apartment after the documentary shoot (we shot the bumpers with Penn & Teller, Penn acted as a spokesman for the band back before his magic career took off) and the next day I asked the director who that guy was, and if he was one of the Residents.  Not that this knowledge never did me much good, I'm not into blackmailing people, and a few years later some audiologists analyzed their records and interviews with their managers and determined that the two managers were probably, according to science, the two most prominent members of the band - and they'd been hiding in plain sight for decades, working for the aptly named Cryptic Corporation, the legal entity formed to manage the band and produce their albums.  One of those two founding members died in 2018, so I guess the cat's out of the bag now, but it seems the band is still planning to tour again next year.

You can view "The Eyes Scream" on YouTube for free now, and I re-watched it yesterday, it brought back a flood of memories from when I was 22 years old.  I also took the opportunity to update the film's credits on the IMDB, partially because my name was misspelled in the video's credits, so why not correct that, and also get another credit online for everyone who worked on the piece?  Just paying it forward.  If you do watch the film online, be aware there's a 10-minute segment from the band's unwatchable movie "Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?" - no one will fault you if you skip over that.  I really felt this was filler of the highest order, but at the time I was just a P.A., and had no pull to make editorial recommendations to a director.  This doc needed more Elvis covers and less Vileness Fats, whatever that is. 

I've spent 30 years now working for film production companies, 27 years at one of them as of this week - and when you've been around in one spot that much, you kind of know where the bodies are buried.  Metaphorically, of course.  I believe one day somebody will come to me and ask for my version of what's gone down behind the scenes at this animation company, for a future book or documentary or something.  Now, where the Cryptic Corporation is concerned, if you told me there were actual bodies buried during the course of their business, I might be inclined to believe it.  And that brings me back to the Markos Dance Academy, as seen in "Suspiria". 

In the first scene, we see Patricia confiding in her therapist, talking about the staff at the dance academy, and how they've taken everything from her, they've taken her eyes and her energy and her spirit and they're all a bunch of mad witches, and we're kind of left wondering if she's speaking in metaphor, or if something else is going on.  After the film then starts following Susie, a new American dancer from the Amish part of Ohio, the announcement is soon made that Patricia has left the company, which for the audience seems a bit at odds with what we saw in the first scene.  Meanwhile, the therapist, Dr. Klemperer, starts reading through Patricia's journal to see if there's anything credible to this witch nonsense, or if Patricia just maybe caved under the pressure.  This leads him to a lot of weird diagrams detailing the management structure of the academy, and others that detail very complex dances. 

Susie, the new student, is already familiar with some of Madame Blanc's more famous routines, and is also eager to please.  This, and her phenomenal audition, have put her on Madame Blanc's radar, so when another dancer, Olga, refuses to take over Patricia's lead dance role, because it's just too soon, and whatever happened to Patricia, anyway? - Susie is chosen to dance the lead.  This is where things start to become clear, because what do young witches do?  They dance in ritualistic fashion, that's what - so the weird arcane modern-dance movements start to make a little sense now, and after a little healing energy from Madame Blanc, the contortions of Susie's dance moves cause horrible things to happen to Olga, who's in another rehearsal room in the building.  

Time goes on, and as Susie advances in the company, another dancer, Sara, starts to voice her suspicions to Dr. Klemperer.  She finds a secret entrance to a back room where there are ritualistic porcelain figures, and evidence of horrible weapons.  Meanwhile, Madame Blanc creates a new routine for the Academy's upcoming recital, and there's some kind of power struggle in the management of the studio, where all the instructors need to vote to elect their leader, either Madame Blanc or Madame Markos, who we only see in strange portraits on the wall, for reasons that become clear later.  There's also a strange floating set of lights that comes to visit Susie at night and somehow levitates her up the walls, or something.  

Look, I get that this film wanted to go out of its way to be weird and "arty" in its own way, but it also takes itself WAY too seriously, and that's just not what I'm about this October.  This year I'm trying to find the films that mix in a fair amount of comedy, or at least ridiculousness, in-between the horror.  "The Cabin in the Woods", "Horns", "Zombieland: Double Tap" and "The Dead Don't Die" - they're all ridiculous films about totally ridiculous subjects.  Straight horror seems rather dull by comparison, and I even managed to goof on the "Twilight" films so I wouldn't have to take them seriously at all.  Was that ever even an option?  No, it wasn't.  But witches and their rituals represent serious stuff.  And if you came here looking for a bunch of naked witches doing ritual dances and/or simultaneous graphic disembowelments, I promise you won't be disappointed.  But then you'll need to ask yourself why you came here looking for that - those are not things that I seek out on a regular basis.  OK, the first thing maybe, but not the second one. 

There's also a cool magic trick involved here, and I don't want to say too much about it - just that if you're planning to watch this film, just go ahead and do it.  Don't Google it, don't look too hard at the IMDB cast list (like I am acccustomed to doing) because those things will give away the trick.  It's not one of those "Sixth Sense" plot things, more of a casting thing.  I had to figure it out halfway through, and then once you learn it, you can't un-learn it.  So try to go in cold, even if that means you'll have to go back after and re-watch a few scenes, it's still better that way.  But "Bravo" to a particular actress, and I'm honestly surprised this film didn't get an Oscar nomination for Best Make-up.  I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed the film, at 2 1/2 hours it's a bit too long, but I do love figuring out puzzles, I can't help it.

Also starring Dakota Johnson (last seen in "Bad Times at the El Royale"), Mia Goth (last seen in "Everest"), Angela Winkler, Ingrid Caven, Elena Fokina, Sylvie Testud, Renee Soutendijk, Christine LeBoutte, Malgosia Bela, Fabrizia Sacchi, Jessica Harper (last seen in "Stardust Memories"), Chloe Grace Moretz (last seen in "Laggies"), Jessica Batut, Alek Wek, Vincenza Modica, Vanda Capriolo (last seen in "Call Me by Your Name"), Brigitte Cuvelier, Gala Moody, Anne-Lise Brevers, Sara Sguotti, Halla Thordardottir, Olivia Ancona, Clementine Houdart, Doris Hick, Mikael Olsson, Fred Kelemen

RATING: 4 out of 10 news reports on the Lufthansa hijacking