223 - Suspiria

    An American girl goes to a foreign dance academy.  People start dying, and strange stuff happens as she gradually investigates things.
    I’ve avoided a lot of the giallo movies.  I haven’t cared much for Argento in general.  Last year, I watched Tenebre, which I think I liked a little more than I expected.  I’ve also found that he directed the Masters of Horror episode Jenifer, which I liked quite a bit.
    Suspiria enjoys a very positive reputation, and a pretty influential status.  I think I can understand this sort of thing, since it does make an impression, but honestly, I find it exhausting and weak.
    The movie focuses on two specific aspects: color and sound.  The script, the acting, the effects… all of it is unremarkable.  The editing is interesting, but it’s remarkably difficult to follow.  The design of everything is tilted toward making interesting colors.  Tinted windows are exploited to throw bright colors on things.  Red is all over the place, then blue, then occasionally, a green is used.  This focus actually works against the believability of the movie.
    There’s a sequence where a girl is fleeing a killer.  She makes it through a small window, putting a room between her and her stalker.  She sees an open door on the other side of the room.  She drops down, falling onto a whole mess of barbed wire.  The room is lit well enough that the audience can see all of the wire clearly.  If we had seen from her perspective, and the wire was entirely in shadow, I could believe it.  As the scene plays out, I can’t help but wonder why she decided to jump into the wire.
    The sound is really strange.  Music appears and pounds loud - really loud - and then stops.  This happens several times.  I don’t mind the idea of this, since the music is tied to the editing, and there’s some kind of internal logic to it.  The problem is that the volume difference is so incredibly huge, it’s hard to feel anything but annoyed.
    I had heard something… when Star Wars was originally released in Italy, audiences loved Vader’s breathing.  As a result, the Italian mix pulled the breathing way up.  This is all I could think of.  These audiences would rather hear the music than the dialogue.
    The story itself is kind of minimal.  It isn’t written especially well.  There aren’t many surprises to be had.
    I don’t actually think this is a great movie.  But I do think some of the imagery and the coloring, and the framing of the shots are fairly influential.  I think I just wanted a stronger, more coherent story.