I can't believe Tilda Swinton basically played an evil Pina Bausch, an 80-year old psychologist German man, and a decaying pile of greed in the same movie and none of you bring her up for the awards. I mean every word. Three characters, all fully realized. And nothing.
The Suspiria erasure feels like an inevitable backlash against Call Me By Your Name being particularly revered and I'm not here for it because both of those films are legit masterpieces. The critical reaction to the latter reminds me of the original critical reactions to Kubrick.
The level of sheer technical mastery in Suspiria on EVERY GODDAMN LEVEL is awe-inspiring. That Guadagnino & co. went into making something they likely well knew would scream TRASH at so many people so fully deserves, if nothing else, total respect.
Many of the people who wrote about Suspiria negatively or ignored it are going to be writing hot takes about how it's maybe time to "reevaluate it" as a goddamn masterpiece 5-10 years from now. Which is damn darkly funny considering the movie is so much about cycles!
How brave did the actors have to be to pull this off? Particularly Swinton and Johnson? Did you see the layers in how they treat each other? How many more similarly tender, terrifying, complicated relationships between two women have you seen on the big screen this year?
What about Johnson's dancing? What about the way Swinton inhabits a body of a dancer who experienced WW2 and never stopped believing in the power of dance, but had the understanding of its power inevitably altered by it?
My ongoing understanding of American relationship to cinema is that anything that gets too close -- realistically or metaphorically -- to the current suppurating wounds of American psyche will inevitably receive avoidance, ignorance, mockery, and other deflection techniques.
And goddamn Suspiria is RAW about it!
Susie Bannion: [to Madame Blanc, communicated telepathically] It's all a mess. The one out there...
Susie Bannion [spoken]: The one in here... the one that's coming. Why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?
Susie Bannion: [to Madame Blanc, communicated telepathically] It's all a mess. The one out there...
Susie Bannion [spoken]: The one in here... the one that's coming. Why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?
The film traces a direct link between WW2, the state & guerrilla terrorism in the 1970s, and the current, steadily tightening trapdoor we're all feeling. It looks us in the face, and dares us to recognize it before too late. How is that not art? How is that not worth celebrating?
A film that talks about the toxicity that can be borne not just of the terrors but also of survivorhood and refuses to be simplistic while also offering possibilities and some answers and even kindness? In 2018? And it's not in the conversation because?
Hey @suspiriamovie much love you're doing great sweetie
