False Mothers and Transcendent Witches
Suspiria by Anni Jyn
Mater Lachrymarum. Mater Tenebrarum. Mater Suspiriorum: these are the Three Mothers. In the original 1977 film Suspiria, screenwriters Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi wove a dark lore around these figures: three powerful, evil witches known as the Mother of Tears, the Mother of Darkness, and the Mother of Sighs. The idea is in fact drawn from the work of 18th century essayist Thomas De Quincey, who suggested that just as there are three graces and three fates, there should also be three sorrows. These baleful mothers bring death wherever they go, yet they themselves have been alive for hundreds of years. This lore also forms the basis for Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 remake, though it is in many other ways a stark departure from the original film. The plot of the 1977 version follows the young, naïve American Suzie Bannion, who travels to Germany to study at a prestigious ballet academy. But when her fellow classmates start dying, she discovers that the school is in fact run by a coven of witches (headed by Mater Suspiriorum herself, Helena Markos). While the original feels as though it takes place outside of time with an almost fairy tale quality, the remake (or ‘reimagining’ as so many are fond of calling it) is deeply rooted in time and place: that is, 1977 post-war Berlin. The original is psychedelically colorful (one of the last films to be shot on Technicolor film stock) while the 2018 version is shot in oppressively grey, muted tones (Guadagnino has said that he wanted to emulate the eerie interiors of 20th century painter Balthus). But perhaps most intriguingly is the way in which the story’s conception of women has evolved over the decades, through the eyes of Guadagnino and screenwriter, David Kajganich. This remake delves into a rich history of feminine archetypes, exploring and subverting deeply rooted beliefs surrounding the seemingly opposing figures of the Witch and the Mother.
It is telling that this remake begins not with our lead, Suzie Bannion, but with a scene between a dancer at the school, Patricia (Chloe Grace Moretz) and her psychoanalyst, Dr. Josef Klemperer (Tilda Swinton as Lutz Ebersdorf—more on this later). In this scene, the camera jumps erratically from detail to detail: a book by Carl Jung, the eyes in a photo, Klemperer hastily scribbling the word “simulacrum.” The erratic details and jump cuts reflect Patricia’s scattered mental state, but they are also meant to inform the viewer that the film we are watching lives in the realm of archetype, of psychology, and of symbol. Throughout the film, Guadagnino takes great care to build layer upon layer of meaning, every sign meant to reflect and obscure in equal measure, and it is this obscurity which keeps the film firmly rooted in the horror genre. There are no jump scares, only uncanny images which distort and confuse, like the warped mirrors in the dance school. Continuing forward with the Jungian influence, the film places a great emphasis on dreams, as the witches send Susie and the other dancers their dreams at night. These dreams are disjointed, symbolic sequences which emulate the works of feminist artists such as Judy Chicago, Francesca Woodman, and Gina Pane. Powerful and often disturbing images that attempt to grapple with womanhood and the feminine unconscious.
Suspiria by Mario Pegas
Suspiria is in many ways a story about womanhood. The cast is almost entirely women, with the exception of two detectives, who upon arriving at the school are immediately hypnotized by the witches for their own amusement—not even worth murdering, they’d rather strip them half nude and laugh at their genitals. Dr. Klemperer, the only sympathetic male character, is played by Tilda Swinton, who in fact has three roles within the film (Klemperer, Madame Blanc, and Helena Markos— in another psychoanalytic easter egg—represent the Id, Ego and Superego). It is Guadagnino’s way of indicating, even subconsciously, that women and femininity are paramount within the space of this film. In its simplest form, both the original and the remake are stories about a young woman coming into her own, finding her way in the world, independent for the first time, and finding her voice as an artist. In the original, we are given a classic story of the “good” girl triumphing over the evil witches. Susie is young, beautiful, and virginal, while the witches are old, ugly, and murderous. But in the remake, we are presented with a much more complex portrayal of feminine identities that subverts the dichotomy of good and evil. Susie is still young, beautiful and virginal, in fact she even comes from a strict Mennonite community (the patriarchal nature of this type of strict Christian theology is doubtless not lost on the filmmakers). But as the film progresses, we are given clues that she was not the “good girl” her family expected. Her mother believed her to be evil and punished her severely. Susie has run away to Berlin, feeling that it is her destiny to be part of the Markos dance company. Under the tutelage of head choreographer Madame Blanc, Susie begins to come into her own as a dancer, but we are led to believe it is all in service of becoming a vessel for Helena Markos, the leader of the coven and supposed incarnation of Mater Suspiriorum, so that she may live on in Susie’s young body. It is not until the startling climax that it is revealed that Susie was always Mater Suspiriorum, and only now is she able to come into her full power. “Death to any other mother” she proclaims, as a haunting dark figure of Death stalks the room, killing any of the coven who were once loyal to Markos over Blanc, who had been a kind of surrogate mother figure to Susie. The slaughter plays out to the sweet sound of Thom Yorke’s lullaby “Unmade,” which creates an uneasy cognitive dissonance within the viewer. How are we meant to feel about the revealing of Susie as a powerful witch herself? Is this justice, or the birth of something even more sinister? Markos’ grotesquerie is destroyed as Susie becomes a beautiful ecstatic dark goddess, ripping her chest open in a yonic chasm as if giving birth to herself, in an almost parody of the image of the Virgin Mary baring her sacred heart for all to see. In the epilogue, Susie/Mater Suspiriorum grants Dr. Klemperer the knowledge of what happened to his missing wife, and then in the same breath takes away all his memories of her. Is this a kindness, or a cruelty? The moral ambiguity of Susie’s final form is never made clear. In order to answer this question, we must ask ourselves - what is a witch?
While the definition has expanded over the years to include many valid forms of spiritual practice, there is no denying that the archetype of the witch, historically, is an old and malevolent woman who has aligned herself with evil in order to be granted unearthly powers. They were seen as venal and dangerous to men in particular, even being believed in the Middle ages to steal men’s penises and keep them as pets (not dissimilar to the scene in which the witches taunt the detectives’ penises for their own amusement). The reclaiming of the witch figure in recent years, primarily by women but including people of all genders, acknowledges that this historical perception of witches was a way to demonize women who did not conform to patriarchal standards, wherein women were only valued as mothers and caregivers. Instead, witches were the only women who were able to obtain power outside of their relation to men, through their own skill and knowledge (for example, through herbalism or midwifery). “When the Reich just wanted women to shut off their minds and keep their uteruses open, there was Blanc” says dancer Sara (Mia Goth), admiringly, near the beginning of the film. These women, this dance company, have rejected traditional feminine roles in pursuit of power and knowledge, and were able to do so even in the face of the 20th century’s great evil: The Third Reich. Maintaining their power is of great concern to the coven in Suspiria; much of the film is preoccupied with the politics within the coven. One gets the sense that these women are not so much evil for the sake of itself as they are simply desirous of power. And in a world where women have so little of it, who can blame them? These are not witches who convene with the devil in the woods, but they know what it means to have power and what it takes to hold onto it, and they are willing to do whatever it takes. Suspiria is largely concerned with subverting our expectations when it comes to these feminine roles and archetypes. Even the witches’ weapon of choice appears to be a gleaming silver rib-bone, recalling the biblical notion that Eve was created from Adam’s rib. But the witches wield their ribs like scythes, as if to laugh at the notion that they were made subservient to man. (It is perhaps also worth noting that Eve’s predecessor Lilith, cast out for daring to think herself equal to Adam, is often associated with the birth of witchcraft). A final interpretive clue we are given comes in the very final shot of the film, as a woman walks by holding a copy of The Great Mother by Eric Neumann. In it, Neumann presents a wheel of mother goddess archetypes from around the world, which includes The Virgin Mary, Lilith, and witches. For him, witches represent negative change; they are agents of chaos, close to the mysteries of death.
This constant inversion of the “traditional” feminine is what gives the film its uncanny power and is perhaps also its horror. While a witch may be frightening, what could be more terrible than a mother who wishes to devour her children? This is the horror of Markos, beneath the dance floor, leaching off the energy of her young dance company. Or the fear of a mother’s rejection, such as Susie’s biological mother who punishes her terribly and ultimately believes her to be evil and sinful. Blanc too is a sort of mother figure to Susie, but one who manipulates her for her own ends. “Love and manipulation, they share houses very often” says Klemperer.
The entire genre of horror in fact does have a preoccupation with women, for better or worse. While horror has given us some incredible heroines, it is often at the cost of upholding antiquated gender norms. Much has been said about the ‘final girl’ trope in horror films, in which the virginal, resourceful heroine is the only one to make it to the end of the movie. It is a double-edged sword of power through representation, but at the cost of upholding misogynistic values. In a sense, Susie is the anti-final girl. She becomes the demon her mother warned of, yet is she not all the better for it? I would also be remiss not to mention that for a film so concerned with womanhood, it is written and directed by two men. You can almost feel that it is their fascination with the very concept of femininity driving the film forward. We see the dance company through the male gaze of its filmmakers, but not in a way that explicitly sexualizes the dancers. Rather, this gaze explores femaleness as Other – that unknowable chasm between experiences, a simultaneous attraction and repulsion. There is a lot of dialogue and imagery surrounding the idea of hollowness, of vessels, the sense of being an empty conduit – for art, for Helena Markos, for Mater Suspiriorum. “They’ll hollow me out and eat my cunt on a plate” says Patricia, before the witches have attempted to transfer Markos’ consciousness into Patricia’s body. There is a sense that what is fascinating to the filmmakers about motherhood is its inherent paradox: the source of all creativity, the generation of something, comes from the hollow space within. It is precisely a lack of something that gives women their power in this context. It is a primordial mystery, and Susie is its ancient power personified. She is the Mother of Sighs
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