Power, Responsibility and Democracy: Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria in 2025
"It’s all a mess. The one out there. The one in here. The one that’s coming. Why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?”
- Susie Bannion (as played by Dakota Johnson)
It’s chilling to consider this line today, originally delivered to theaters in 2018 by Dakota Johnson, as Susie Bannion, in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of the venerated 1977 classic, Suspiria. Like the film itself, the line wasn’t recognized as having much meaning at the time of its release. Looking back from the vantage point of 2025, it’s timelessness is clear. This reinterpretation of a deeply loved film was greeted with mixed reaction. As with most remakes, Guadagnino’s Suspiria has been constantly compared to Dario Argento’s original. It does neither film any favors, as there may not be a better example of two filmmakers taking a basic premise, a few ideas, and creating two films that couldn’t be more different in style or intent. It also wasn’t helped by it’s relationship to the national politics of Germany in 1977, as it became clear a good portion of the American critical community and public are unfamiliar, and had no interest in learning further.
I’ve been fascinated with Guadagnino’s Suspiria since my first viewing, because I recognized it as a film about the vulnerabilities of democracy to the corruption of fascism, and the failure to meet the responsibilities of power within a democracy. It’s extremely rare for a film to tackle these ideas with this depth of thorough consideration. Part of its general reception, and even its reception among horror fans, is related to how rare it is for horror films to tackle this subject matter with this depth. The genre has tended to speak to sociopolitical matters in micro, where Suspria is speaking to the macro. It isn’t unfair, from the perspective of 2025, to say the disinterest in 20th century German history has been a missed opportunity that has had consequences. Here in the US, we like stories about Germany during World War II. Before the Third Reich, what lead to its establishment? After the Reich, the long term consequences to the nation and its people? Not so interested. Nazis make for excellent villains in American cinema. At least they did when the American public recognized that the person wearing a Swastika or giving a Nazi salute was, indeed, a piece of villainous shit. In the collective imagination of the majority in the United States, Germany is another other foreign power Americans were sent to fight at some point, and too much interest in those is weird. The Reich made for good villains because they were amongst the most horrifying regimes of the 20th century, which is quite a feat, considering the number of horrifying regimes that existed at some point during the century. The history of Germany other than that? It’s the purview of nerds and those most deeply dreaded of creatures in American culture, intellectuals and academics.
As different as it is from its predecessor, they have in common a relationship to the forms of storytelling which came before film. Argento’s Suspiria, is akin to a fairy tale, essentially. The young girl, in a place strange to her, encounters the witch and dispatches her. No shortage of fairy tales are cautionary tales, meant to communicate cultural norms about gender. Guadagnino’s Suspiria is something more akin to a fable, parable or folk tale. It’s a morality play, putting forward both a problem and a solution to the moral problems, put here in political terms. In this way, it isn’t only pagan in using a mythology which is pre-Christian in the narrative, it’s also using the forms of storytelling which existed prior to Christianity, and existed prior to the fairy tale, as its most basic framework. Both are things Christianity used in its inception. This though, is a fable taking place in the modern world, for an adult audience, who have moral responsibilities within it. That it establishes the mythology of the order behind the Tanz Academy as pre-Christian, isn’t just a pointless or empty detail, it’s important to the films central ideas, because of Christianity's relationship to power in the Western world, particularly its power to make meaning.
Guadagnino's Suspiria also exists at another interesting intersection. It’s unabashed about being a horror film, a genre long considered trash, a “low” or “common" art. The institutions given power to decide the value, the worth, the legitimacy of art and it’s genres have not, historically, considered horror “art” or more precisely, “high art,” a thing culturally significant, speaking to the human condition, illuminating political, philosophical or spiritual truths. It has never been considered in league with the art considered the best of the human endeavor that is the arts. Slowly, this is starting to change. Suspiria though, was released at an earlier stage of that change, and this is also part of the the critical and public reception. It embraces what has often made horror a maligned genre, openness to the fantastic and supernatural, willingness to present the grotesque, it’s transgressive freedom to engage with the concept of The Other, while also being a film deeply interested in political, philosophical and spiritual questions. I believe one of the reasons horror is an increasingly powerful force in culture and is succeeding economically, is that since the early 2000s, we’ve seen a generation of filmmakers, like Guadagnino, who don’t see these as mutually exclusive, but sees that they can be complimentary. They instead see many of the historical definitions of “legitimacy” in art as archaic at best, and at worst, used by grifters as a facade manipulating the self congratulatory nature of power. The existence of the term "Oscar bait" alludes to this. It says nothing of the quality of the work, but the intent to be recognized as legitimate, within a narrow set of standards. Someone who believed in those narrow standards of artistic legitimacy or the narrow standards of the genre of horror can be, couldn't make this film. It does not attempt to hide that it is a horror film, and yet it has the kind of artistic ambitions of the best of the arts.
All of this makes Suspiria one of the more incisive, powerful sociopolitical films of the early 21st century, even more pertinent seven years after its release. It's extremely rare for me to use the word important where any single piece of narrative art is concerned, but it is an important work within horror of the 21st century, and more broadly, because of the relevance of its themes, how thoroughly it explores them, and what it has to say about them.
There are some key elements to unraveling what screenwriter David Kajganich and director Luca Guadagnino are saying with Suspiria. The first is the concept of simulacrum, an image or representation meant to symbolize someone or something else. It’s not a coincidence that within the first few minutes of the film, we get a close up shot of Klemperer (Tilda Swinton) writing and underlining this as he speaks to Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz). It’s one of the very few times the film is so blunt in pointing to the importance of a detail, and it's placement so early in the film is purposeful. It also establishes Klemperer as a character who will highlight important concepts, and he's also given the lines in the film which most closely diagnose what is happening within it. But, Klemperer, like all of the other central characters, represent multiple things simultaneously. Mirrors are an ever present part of the films environment, symbolic representations are important to the narrative in a textual sense, and this simple device of showing us Klemperer underlining this single word is meant to prepare us for this.
It’s also important to understand that within the narrative, this Suspiria isn’t about witches or a coven, in the traditional sense. Witches, in that traditional context, are the result of Christianity's cultural power to define belief systems contrary to or in competition with it, as evil. This is also a matriarchal order, where the major religions including Christianity, are patriarchal, to the degree their gods are represented as men or male, and Suspiriorum is a woman.
What we see as the organization behind or running the dance company has more in common with a religious order in Greek literature than it does the traditional witches coven, purposely. The staff of this dance academy is comprised of the members a religious order, a religious sect, founded before Christianity. The matrons within it are closer to priestesses of or for Suspiriorum, than they are to the traditional understanding of witches. Suspiriorum is the god from whom their power flows, for whom they were “anointed,” as she says. It is only because of Christianity's power to make meaning we recognize or see them as witches. We do not recognize members of Christian hierarchies as witches, even when they have committed malevolent acts.
Gods who exist in pantheons generally have some specific area of interest. Suspiriorum’s interest is in this religious order that has been established in her name. It has gone astray, which is why she returns, and why she takes the measures she does. Her reasons for the existence of the order are directly at odds with the leadership and it’s supporters. It's not a coincidence Suspiriorum treats Blanc the way she does. She asks the young women who’ve been victims of the malevolent leadership of the order what their wishes, for a reason. The way we see Suspiriorum act, suggests a preference for both consent and compassion. She acts against those who've acted contrary to those values, within the order dedicated to her name.
Another important piece to understand is that the sense of chaos Suspiria is imbued with, isn’t a failure of narrative structure or the result of unfocused screenwriting and direction. It’s intentional. It is reticent to slow down or stop to point out important details, because the experience of history as it unfolds, including in a democratic nation that is in decline, coming into the grip of authoritarianism, is chaotic. History may later identify particular moments as having specific meaning or some kind of added weight in the development of later events, but these are more often than not from the benefit of hindsight. The experience of the film, as it unfolds, feels chaotic, and it’s difficult to understand what is meaningful as a signpost. The pieces of information we come to see as important or meaningful are recognized in hindsight, once it has given us its final revelations, like the experience of history itself. This is something we in the United States are learning first hand, and part of what makes Suspiria a text worth reconsidering today, especially.
Suspiria makes indirect and direct references to a number of different realms of power. It concerns the political, professional, creative, personal, economic, legal and medical. Given that it is a film so concerned with power, with a nearly all female cast of characters, it’s not shocking there have been so many questions about it’s attitudes about gender. The amount of copy written, audio recorded in podcasts, about whether or not it is feminist is difficult to take in, even with seven years intervening since its release. It is, in a very practical sense, about a group of characters, nearly all of whom are women, with different motivations, different perspectives and different relationships to power. It gives some of them greater agency than others. It advances the agency of some characters while presenting the loss of agency in others. What questions about whether or not it is feminist highlight, more than anything else, is that there is no consensus on what the requirements are for a film to be considered feminist. This lack of that consensus should be seen as a victory for feminism though, as it demonstrates the break from a specific model of femininity and womanhood being given the authority to make that decision, over the objections of others. As trite as it is to say, it is an instance where the conversation is what's important, not whether it comes to a consensus conclusion.
If there were one model, one way of performing femininity and womanhood which was still considered “correct,” the women representing that model would be the voices defining things like what is and isn’t feminist on film. Feminism has succeeded in dislodging what was a dominant ideal. If nothing else, its rare, not only in horror, but in film more generally, for so large a cast of characters to not only be almost entirely female, but to have characters who are women presented in this variety. If I’m completely honest, a lot of the conversation baffles me. On top of its complicated cast of characters, Suspiria presents a god in the form of a woman, who is simultaneously distributing justice and mercy, and who finds her power in a matriarchal order, after fleeing a deeply patriarchal order.
Related to its portrayal of women, in the context of film history itself, it is even more rare to see films in which all of the effective power is embodied by women with such a broad set of characteristics and traits. In the narrative of Suspiria, these women are the most powerful characters, and crucially, the power that matters to the narrative of the film itself. All of the forms of power represented by men are either ineffective or are treated as being barely worth consideration. That law enforcement is portrayed not only as utterly useless, but is portrayed as men, who have their penises laughed at by women, is not just for shock, comedy or entertainment. In this way, the conversation around Suspiria is interesting as a meditation on the nature of power, and crucially, whether one believes women are inherently less susceptible to corruption by power. It’s not a coincidence that it speaks to and subverts the traditional conceptions of the witch to do this, because the witch has been a representation of the fear of the power of women and the feminine throughout history, but has come into a period of reclamation as symbol of feminine power. It speaks to the traditional conception through the portrayal of communion with a supernatural power as the achievement of power, but also subverts it in not being a power derived from Satan (a character typically presented as male), and instead from Suspiriorum (universally presented in typically female terms in the film).
The central question, the question that rarely comes to the surface in discussions about whether Suspiria is or isn't a feminist film, is that question of whether or not one believes women are or would be susceptible to being corrupted by power. The degree to which women have been kept from power creates a chasm in the evidence of susceptibility to corruption. The long history of women being kept from power, means in turn, we have a long history of evidence to show exactly how susceptible to corruption men are. In this absence of evidence to speak to women's susceptibility, the answer is filled by belief. On the one hand, there is the belief that this is a universal human trait, that given access to power, women would be as susceptible to corruption. On the other, there is the belief that there is something innate to women, which would give them a degree of immunity to that corruption. This second belief, in immunity, presents a problem for feminism in the modern context as the fourth wave has argued vigorously against innate traits of gender. Additionally this community of women is democratic, instead of authoritarian, and not entirely, and inherently evil. Christian religions tend to organize themselves in rigidly authoritarian models, and have cast the idea of witches covens as having authoritarian hierarchies too. Usually, witches covens are presented as having the most powerful witch at their head, the rest as her minions or in covert schemes to subsume her power. This also speaks to the modern re-interpretation or reclamation of the witch as a symbol of the power of femininity and womanhood, presented in terms oppositional to similar power embodied by men. As the film is speaking to the responsibilities of power, it treats ability of power to corrupt as universal. Being women gives the matrons of the academy no innate immunity to being corrupted by power. It is crucial to recognize though, the figure that addresses that corruption, restores the balance of this democracy, is a woman. There aren't any men riding in to save the day here.
It’s also notable that Suspiria has no interest in the Christian conceptions of God or Satan. In the degree it addresses cosmology or creation mythology, we're told The Three Mothers, of which Suspiriorum is one, predate Christianity. It makes for an interesting entry in the history of horror and fantasy treating pre-Christian deities as real, as opposed to assuming a worldview in completely in concert with Christianity. This also suggests this religious order is the product of pre-Christian matriarchal cultures, existing now within the confines of patriarchal Western culture.
All of this, the comparisons to Argento’s original film, the questions about its portrayal of women, make for interesting conversations. It is interesting that since the film’s release in 2018, they have been the dominant perspectives in analyzing and discussing Suspiria, but it's commentary on democracy, and its vulnerability to corruption by fascism has been rare. One of the prominent criticisms is that it is using the German Autumn of 1977 as a kind of pretentious facade meant to distract from its lack of depth, instead of understanding it as one of the essential keys to the films intent. It's here the American public and critical community's lack of engagement with the history of the German Autumn is most clear. I also can’t help but wonder how much of this is related to it being released in 2018, in the midst of the first Trump presidency, itself arguably the result of the failures of democracy and the responsibilities of power within it, and a public and critical press unable to fully reckon with what that signified.
It is Markos (Tilda Swinton) selfish use of power, by way of treating the women in the academy as resources to be used to maintain it, without care for the consequences to those women or the order she's been chosen to lead, that is the source of all of the conflict within the film. Her irresponsible use of power endangers the academy, and the democracy of the religious order within it. Suspiriorum is decisive in her response, but also doesn't make simplistic judgments about this either. She does kills Markos, and most of those who voted her into power, but she spares Tanner (Angela Winkler).
Tanner is the only one of the matrons who voted for Markos that Suspiriorum doesn’t task Death with taking in the finale. She also spares Boutaher (Clementine Houdart), who voted for Blanc (Tilda Swinton), but who has been most responsible for carrying out Markos most ghastly orders against the women of the academy. It’s clear in the discussions betwen Tanner and Blanc, Tanner’s ultimate loyalty is to the democratic order of the academy. She may believe Markos is the best representative to achieve this, but that is not the same as believing Markos is Suspiriorum, which would make her inherently entitled to the position or that Markos leadership will further her individual power. She puts up no argument when Blanc says they have decided to stop using the title of “Mother” in reference to Markos as the embodiment of Suspiriorum. Boutaher, though she is repeatedly presented as the instrument of Markos misuse of power, is also acting in what she believes to be the rules of democratic order. Her choice for leadership is not Markos, but she follows the leader they have chosen. Suspiriorum visits her bloody justice on Markos, and those followers who either believed her to be the embodiment of Suspiriorum or in the selfish pursuit of the power Markos afforded them.
This mirrors the conflict happening in Berlin, echoed in the newscasts, and in Sara's (Mia Goth) explanation to Susie (Dakota Johnson) after the bombing down the street from the hotel where Sara is sent to retrieve Susie. The conflict, as the film posits it, is the result of the younger generation finding out former Nazis still have positions in German government. This means people in power who were loyal to the Reich, which also implicates people who may not have been loyal to the Reich. They did not see the installation of Nazi loyalists as rising to the level of importance to alert the public or to use what power they had to prevent/resist it. What does the Reich represent, if not the failure to understand the vulnerabilities of democracy, combined with the failure to meet the responsibilities of power within it, and the abuses resulting from those failures? Without these failures, there is no Reich. There is no Holocaust. Within the academy, in German government during the film, the failure to learn these lessons, allowing Nazis back into government and to re-elect Markos as their leader, are the source of conflict.
Patricia being involved in the movement challenging German government, resisting the decisions of the order within the academy, as well as Olga (Elena Fokina) speaking up to challenge the order within the academy, are both representative of the generational nature of the conflicts happening outside the academy. Patricia has discovered an old secret, as the result of being “chosen,” representing the fact that the movement outside the academy is made up mostly of university students, the people who are expected to be the future of the nation, tending to its institutions and structures. Her rejection, brought about by the realization of what the place of privilege she's been offered means, is symbolic of the conflict between the privilege the generation of “future leaders,” and the revelation the current leadership, older by necessity, allowed members of the Reich within government and social order they are meant to maintain. Olga’s outburst and accusations in the academy are representative of the outrage at the abuses of power against those who dissent, and the subsequent consequence the dissenters and their defenders pay. It is the cycle of punishment of dissenters, creating more dissenters. There are former Nazis within the German government, but it’s the people who find this objectionable who are being thrown in prison, and then the people who find that objectionable being thrown in prison too.
We, here in the US, are now a decade into people whose objections to the equivalent of Nazis being given power finding themselves in jail cells, at the business end of a baton or pepper spray, than the people who abuse power in the service of the kind of white supremacist, patriarchal, authoritarian beliefs Hitler cobbled together (borrowing liberally from the eugenicist racial caste system in the United States) to create the dogma of Nazi-ism.
Madam Blanc is a figure of divided loyalties throughout the film. She is representative of the vulnerability of democracy in multiple ways. She should be the oppositional force to the authoritarian instinct that the democratic order failed to choose, yet she is also upholding that order and serving it despite clear discomfort with what it is demanding. Blanc is the one who suggests the failure of the ritual meant to restore Markos is due to Patricia not being given the opportunity to give her full consent, and that the attempt to use Susie is misguided if Susie doesn’t give her consent. This is a reference to consent of the governed. In her conversations with Tanner, Blanc also shows some sense of guilt or responsibility for what has happened to Patricia and Olga, and clearly has some sense of the academy being a refuge for the women who are attending it. Throughout the film, she is at odds with Markos decisions to abuse her power for her selfish aims. It is Blanc’s inability to muster a challenge to the democratic order because of her history with Markos, in order to stop those abuses of power, along with her refusal to choose whether her loyalty is to the democratic order or the responsible use of power, that puts her in the position become a victim of Markos ambition. When Blanc rightly surmises something in the ritual of the finale is not what they intended, Markos being so close to achieving her ability to retain power indefinitely, nearly decapitates Blanc.
Suspiriorum serves as multiple symbols and ideas within the film. As the source of power within the religious order of the academy, she is a metaphor for the polity within a democracy, nominally the source of power for its elected officials. That Suspiriorum ends up coming from the members of the dance troupe is symbolic of the power of the people within a democracy, as well as the degree to which its most privileged are going to be the most empowered. Susie, like Patricia, finds herself in a privileged position, being chosen to be the lead dancer. Her background, having come from ultra religious Americana in the form of Mennonites, also gives her experience with isolated religious community, though the one she comes from is distinctly patriarchal, and the order hidden behind the academy, the one she finds her power in, is distinctly matriarchal.
She’s also positioned in a way similar to a traditional savior. Christianity wasn’t the first, though it is the most well known involving a savior being the human embodiment of a god. There is also a mirror of the Holy Trinity, in the Three Mothers, of which Suspiriorum is one. Again, it's not a coincidence that a good deal of the mythology surrounding paganism has it's own trinity, in the Maiden, Mother and Crone, which we find in Susie/Suspiriorum, Blanc and Markos. These are also representative of the way women have been portrayed in storytelling throughout Western history.
Part of what we’re witnessing through the run time of Suspiria is this human character, coming to understand who they are. There is a distinct difference in Susie, from the moment one of her dream sequences ends, dreams we later learn are being “sent” to her by Blanc as conduit for the dreams of the order, and we hear her exclaim, “I know who I am.” It’s subtle, within the film, a moment Guadagnino doesn’t call particular attention to, but from that point forward Susie becomes a different character. She is becoming Suspiriorum. Her tenor in her interactions with Blanc take on that of a peer or contemporary, instead of the wide eyed, shy student, and she miraculously acquires new skills, like telepathic conversation and speaking French.
It is following her exclamation of “I know who I am,” that Susie challenges Blanc about the placement of jumps within Volk, the dance they are preparing to perform. On first watch, it seems arrogant, presumptive, but when we later come to understand Susie is Suspiriorum, it takes on a different tone altogether, and makes clear why she is speaking to Blanc not as if Blanc is her mentor, but as collaborator.
We also get some crucial lines in the exchange between Susie and Blanc, when Blanc takes Susie to practice her jumps. It’s our first clue to what, “I know who I am” meant. It’s here, as Blanc refers to movement in dance, “It’s a serious of energetic shapes written in the air like words, like poems, like prayers,” Susie answers, “Like spells." Blanc, in talking about the jumps Susie earlier challenged her about, says they should be, “… like a bolt of lightning, a bolt of love,” a sentiment Susie calls beautiful, and to which Blanc then responds, “There are two things dance can never be again. Beautiful and cheerful.” We come to know later, Suspiriorum has a very different perspective, when in the climax the women of the company ecstatically, hypnotically spin around her, she says, “Yes. Dance. Dance. Keep dancing. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.” When Blanc says to Susie/Suspiriorum, “You have to decide, what is it you want to be for this company. Is it the head, the spine, the sex, the heart?” Susie responds, “The hands. I want to be this company’s hands.” Hands are associated with actions, building, breaking, soothing. They are the extension of the will, how it is brought into physical being. What we don’t know until later, is that in being Suspiriorum, it is her will she be bringing into being in the company, this order established in her name, not the will of the Markos and its corrupted leadership.
Interpolated with this scene is the other matrons around a table, discussing the plan to use Susie as the vessel for Markos, and the failure of attempting to use Patricia that ended in her death. This gives us the understanding that it isn’t just Blanc who has reservations, and it’s following the end of the scene between Blanc and Susie, we see Griffith commit suicide by stabbing herself in the neck with a knife. We’ve gotten subtle clues Griffith is unhappy with the state of things, but this is the culmination. It’s not coincidental this happens as Tanner is attempting to convince those who have reservations about the dangers the ritual presents to Susie. This is, in essence, the equivalent of a person self immolating in protest or committing a suicide bombing. Griffith does this, because she can no longer take what she has come to understand the company, the order she has dedicated herself to, has become. That she does so while Tanner is trying to convince the others they need to go forward, risking the life of another woman in the care of the company, is no coincidental. What Markos is doing is creating a schism of significant depth within the company, because she is treating the young women within it as resources, and not as people the power of this order could be used to care for.
It’s later we get Susie delivering the line, “It’s all a mess. The one out there. The one in here. The one that’s coming. Why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?” In the initial viewing, it seems odd, until we come to understand that she isn’t just Susie, the girl from an American Mennonite community, but that she is also Suspiriorum, because Suspiriorum is the ultimate power, and in this, screenwriter David Kajganich is using the character as savior in both the religious and democratic sense. As the symbol of the fount of power within a democracy, coming from the company which symbolizes the governed, as well as the savior in the religious sense, she is the one responsible for the existence of any power to be wielded, and the representation of what Kajganich and Guadagnino are positing as the responsible use of it. What’s to come, we find out, is a bloody purge of the elements in the company who have abused the young women within it for selfish ends. From the way this line is delivered, and that she refers to it as part of "the worst," it's not something she takes particular pleasure in considering, but sees it as a necessary step to remedy the blindness of the matrons.
It's also important that Markos is levying her claim to power on a belief we witness is false, that she is the embodiment of Suspiriorum, which is treated as a traditional belief within the culture of this order/sect, in the same way fascism manipulates and twists cultural beliefs and traditions. She and her supporters are preying on both the life and bodies of the young women who are the symbol of the populace in a democracy, for that power. At the end of the day, this is the same reason we recognize the Reich as one of human history’s greatest horrors.
Because of the way they were part of the abuse of power under the Markos rule, which mirrors the Reich’s abuses, we see Suspiriorum restoring the balance by doling out justice. It’s not a mistake that Tanner refers to Sara as being a “good representative of the company,” because she found love and a “home” in the company, and in that love that she has for her fellow students. It's this exact quality that inures her to Susie/Suspiriorum. Sara is invested in the fate of Patricia, who was initially seduced by what Markos and the company gave her, until she comes to understand how consequential the price is. It’s because of this Sara comes to develop fears about Susie, and then comes to be victim of Markos and her “party” within the company. Sara comes to her fate because she cares about Patricia and Susie, and she wants the hidden truth. It’s not a coincidence that even as she is technically wrong in calling them witches, Olga also comes to a horrifying end for challenging their narrative about what’s happened to Patricia. There is a price to be paid for caring too much about the victims of Markos use of power, and for trying to find the truth within a fascist regime. Both Sara and Olga pay it.
Kajganich and Guadagnino use Suspiriorum/Susie, as the symbol of the fount of power, to demonstrate what responsible power looks like. It’s the reason she calls forth the spirit of Death (not coincidentally played by the same actress who plays Susie’s mother, "Death to any other mother") to wipe Markos and her party from the democracy of the order. Suspiriorum is what they are positing would be a responsible god, as well as a responsible populace. Markos is a false prophet in religious terms, and a con artist and grifter in political terms. Blanc and Tanner have failed in their responsibilities, but their loyalty has been to the order within the academy, as a democracy. Tanner has chosen wrong, but is still clearly dedicated to the democratic order, and it’s rituals and norms. Blanc hasn’t chosen at all, literally abstaining in the period of the vote, while throughout the film attempting to serve “both sides,” to compromise with Markos ambition and but within this is still trying to find her way to protect the women of the company from that ambition. She is genuinely concerned about the actions of Markos party, the way it is using the women of the company, but her belief in the order of the company doesn’t allow her to summon the challenge to Markos that is required to protect the company either. Markos and her party, as false prophet and her acolytes, are symbolic of a political party and its corrupt adherents. They never have a chance against the power that is Supiriorum/Susie, as the embodiment of their god or as symbol of the body politic. Suspiriorum brings justice, and mercy. Justice in the form of exploding heads. Mercy in the form of asking the victimized women what they want, and in their victimization, the betrayal has been so complete, they choose to die, essentially becoming martyrs in both religious and political terms.
In making Susie/Suspiriorum both a god, and the symbol of the body politic restoring the balance, Kajganich and Guadagnino are basically saying, it doesn't matter whether it's an act of an angry god or the will of the people, the well being of democracy depends on fascists who seek power being purged.
It’s not a coincidence Suspiria uses the equivalent of a matriarchal religious order as its mirror to discuss the evils of fascism, it’s corruption of democracy and then to present it’s idea of a solution. Fascism is consistently a patriarchal force, and obsessed with subjugating women. All of the other forms of power outside the academy, in the patriarchal world, are presented as ineffective at best, in no small part because they are incapable of even beginning to understand. Klemperer, in trying to make sense of what Patricia said to him, as he relates it to Sara, describes Markos and her acolytes as a revolutionary movement within the academy, and this is true of fascism, but not specifically true within the narrative of the film. He has the symbolism correct, but he can't bring himself to believe there could be a supernatural power in a sect dedicated to Suspiriorum. He comes from a world where people worship a god that doesn't exist or at the least, doesn't interfere. Suspiriorum, being both god and the symbol of the power of the populace within a democracy, both bestows supernatural power on her followers, and intervenes when it is misused. It is, in a way, a comment on what a responsible god would do, in contrast to the monotheistic religions, whose gods don't intervened in human affairs, despite the power gained and wielded in their names.
Klemperer is the last major player we haven't discussed, and most of the discussion related to this character revolves around the fact that Tilda Swinton was cast in this role. Swinton plays three roles in the film. Blanc, Markos and Klemperer. Casting Swinton in all three of these roles creates a highlight on another trinity within the film. Klemperer is the key to it, as he is a Freudian psychologist, and this trinity is the id, the ego and the super-ego. This is important for a number of reasons. In this trinity, Klemperer represents the super ego, the aspect of the self Freud proposed was most routed in morality. This once again places Blanc in the role of mediator, as she represents the ego, which Freud proposed was the conscious mind, acting as mediator, but also in the most basic terms, as excuser and explainer. The id (represented by Markos) is desire, appetite, primal, and part of the function of the ego is to create justification for the actions which spring from the actions the id takes in its primal seeking of pleasure and fulfillment of need. The ego is also the rational mind, and as it relates to this creation of justification, the fount of rationalization. At the same time, as it functions as the rational mind, part of what it Freud theorized is that the ego tempers the id, especially when it comes into conflict with the super ego, that part of the self which is most founded in morality, social values and inducing guilt when these are violated. This is important because it is the key to understanding the film is looking at democracy, within the dance company, as a whole. It is an ensemble piece, but it is essentially the Tanz Academy, as a democratic entity, that is the "main character" or protagonist. The story isn't about any specific character, so much as it is about the Academy and it's democracy, and those characters places within it. Markos, Blanc and Klemperer are all forces within and surrounding it which effect it's health and well being.
Klemperer also symbolizes our many forms of cultural memory, and the inability to learn from it, the things from which collective guilt spring. One of the most interesting things about Klemperer is that nothing he says is strictly untrue. One of the crucial exchanges in the happens when he says to Sara, "You can give someone your delusion, Sara. That is religion." He pauses, and continues, "That is the Reich." He touches on the two pieces of the films exploration of power. It's not coincidence he is chosen to be the "witness" to this ritual, because that is what cultural memory is, and also because the super ego is the part of the self from which guilt derives. As with so much of the film, it's not simplistic black and white and straightforward either. Klemperer clearly has guilt related to the loss of his wife under the Reich. It's a major component in his life. He has, and hasn't, learned from the fact that he didn't flee Germany when his wife wanted to, and it is the source of his guilt related to her disappearance. This guilt is what drives him to start asking questions about what's happened to Patricia. He, and Susie, are the only ones treating Sara's concerns about Patricia's disappearance with any seriousness. In Susie, it's derived from the sense of sisterhood, she doesn't even know Sara suspects the matrons have done anything to Patricia. Klemperer treats the substance of Sara's concerns with more gravity, but both of them are initially wrong in their estimation of what's happened. Klemperer introduces Sara to the idea that it may be the matrons of the company itself who've done something to Sara, and she rejects him, wholly. At the same time, Klemperer doesn't believe Patricia when she says the company is a coven of witches. Patricia is both right and wrong, in that they are a collective of women deriving their power from supernatural means, but they're not witches in the conventional sense either.
There have been many references to Boutaher's line to Klemperer about not listening to his wife or Patricia. Again, this isn't simple or straightforward. She says, "When women tell you the truth, you don't pity them. You tell them they have delusions!" There is truth to it, but it's also being delivered by Boutaher, and she has already been implicated as the instrument of Markos will in the horrific ends Olga and Sara come to. Her dedication to the well being of women, in a general sense, is clearly suspect. Boutaher is also spared by Suspiriorum in the end. She didn't vote for Markos, but she has no compunction about carrying out Markos twisted will either. Boutaher is the equivalent of an appartchik, and Suspiria wisely uses her to demonstrate the danger the blindly loyal follower. Guilt is one of fascism's most potent weapons, and it doesn't have to be wielded by the fascist. It can be wielded by dedicate loyalist who doesn't realize or understand their democracy has or is on the verge of succumbing to fascism, something we've also seen plenty of in the US in the last decade.
One of the most interesting questions regarding Klemperer is whether or not Suspiriorum was being merciful in erasing his memory of "all the women who have been his undoing." It seems, again, this isn't simple. It could be construed as merciful. Klemperer will be able to live the rest of his days without the guilt of his failure. It is, in a way, freeing him from the role of witness he's played through so much of his life. That's not all it is either though, is it? It also means the one person who could make any trouble for the Academy is no longer a threat. It is power, enforcing a compromise between mercy and protection of the Academy.
The final shot we see of Tanner, sitting, staring off into the distance, clearly haunted by the events of the prior night, suggests there is now a new witness, a new receptacle for the cultural memory and guilt.
Does all of this sound familiar? It should.
Donald Trump won an election based in no small part on evangelical Christians belief he has been sent by their god to install a government and social order in keeping with their religious beliefs. Coincidentally, of course, it’s an order which empowers them in ways they desire, not least of which is their appetite for cruelty. He also convinced a certain portion of the population that a purported billionaire, from New York, was going to take up their interest in their culture war against the "coastal elites," aided in no small part by a press that continued to refer to him as a populist, despite his policies and years of clear disdain for working people. He’s also a lifelong con man and grifter, who sees no use for power that isn’t for personal gain, and has managed to surround himself with a group of people who are somehow, rather astonishingly, as selfish, self involved and without respect for democratic order or norms as he is. It’s been clear this isn’t a person who has any respect for the responsibilities of power. It’s also clear he and his supporters see cruelty as one the privileges of power, not unlike Markos in Suspiria. We're getting the first inklings of what's the going to mean for the people of the nation, though it probably won't be substantially different in tone or effect than it was the for the women in the Tanz Academy. Like Markos and the women in the Academy, the idea that Trump cares to protect men from his own bloody appetites is a falsehood his followers are soon going to have to contend with.
The parallels between Blanc and the current Democratic Party and the centrist "both sides" narrative should be clear as well. Blanc, in putting the rules of the democratic order ahead of acknowledging the selfish intent which is corrupting and infecting them to the point they are advancing evil, is participating in toppling the order she seeks to protect. For all her statements and small attempts to incur consent from Susie, her blindness in her loyalty, her inability to see Markos, her former mentor and contemporary as so self interested to be a threat, she's so far behind the curve as to be useless. Her standing within Tanz Academy puts her in the position to be a genuine opposition to Markos, but she can't be, because of what that would mean for the Academy. She can't bring herself to see Markos as a threat to its continued security and existence. As was true of Weimar Germany, Blanc becomes the victim of the fascists she couldn't recognize as the actual threat to the body she sought to preserve.
Klemperer, like our own cultural memory and guilt, was unable to see his way to doing anything effective in either helping or obtaining justice for his wife, for Patricia or Sara. When he says, "A delusion is lies that tell the truth," he's describing the delusion within the Academy, but also in many ways the film, and fiction. This also has weight in the accusation made against him by Boutaher, "When women tell you the truth, you don't pity them. You tell them they have delusions!" He believes there is truth in what's being said to him, but in both being a psychologist in the narrative, and being the symbol of cultural memory, he can't see which part is the truth. It would require him to be able to see a broader reality than he is capable of, and this is something we're seeing playing out, here in the US, now.
Consider again the line, “It’s all a mess. The one out there. The one in here. The one that’s coming. Why is everyone so ready to think the worst is over?” from the perspective that this film was released in 2018. We stand now, a few weeks into Donald Trump’s second term in office, and the degree to which Suspiria mirrors the failures of democracy to bring us to this point seem practically clairvoyant. Who among us can't identify with Klemperer now?
The question remains as to whether the spirit of Suspiriorum is among us to set things right, and to purge the fascist pretenders who seek to treat us like resources to be expended for the furtherance of their power. The mess we're in now makes a mess in the future unavoidable. Will it be the mess of ridding ourselves of this fascist menace or will it be the mess made of us by them.