Monday, March 25, 2019

"Suspiria" and "Bohemian Rhapsody"

I wasn't a big fan of the original "Suspiria," finding it too light on story and character to feel very substantial.  When I heard that Luca Guadagnino was going to remake it, I was hopeful that he would come up with something more to my tastes.  And boy, did he succeed.

Once again, an American dancer, Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson), comes to Berlin to join a prestigious dance company.  Under the guidance of her instructor, Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), she flourishes. However, other students have been experiencing strange ailments, and there have been several sudden departures and disappearances.  One missing girl, Patricia (Chloe Moretz), was seeing a psychiatrist, Dr. Josef Klemperer (Lutz Ebersdorf), who takes it upon himself to investigate Patricia's claims of the dance company being run by witches.

Where the 1977 was a brightly colored Technicolor phantasmagoria, the 2018 edition chooses a more subdued, autumnal palette.  The imagery, however, is no less shocking and gruesome. There's far more emphasis on the dancing this time, and it's actually used as the source of some very potent body horror.  Susie's dreams are full of provocative imagery, and the makeup department clearly had a lot of fun turning several of the lovely actresses into monstrous grotesques. And I so appreciate that Guadagnino and company took advantage of modern effects and laxer content restrictions to really show us the full, weird, macabre glory of the witches and their depravity.  The horror elements are all top notch.

The story is much more coherent and easier to follow, though there were clearly pains taken to preserve the hallucinatory, dreamlike nature of the original.  There are also new thematic elements in the mix, with the story set in 1977 during a period of social unrest, and a power struggle going on within the coven. The characters are stronger and more complex, particularly Susie, and the performances are likewise more enjoyable.  The only disappointment I had is the music. I'm usually a fan of Thom Yorke, but I didn't think his selections worked with many of the bloodier sequences. And, frankly, nobody is ever going to match up to the Goblins.

Speaking of great music from the '70s, "Bohemian Rhapsody," the Freddie Mercury biopic, is an unabashed good time, thanks largely to its soundtrack of famous Queen songs and the performance of Rami Malek as Mercury.  We follow the life and times of Queen from the band's formation in the early '70s to the iconic Live Aid performance in 1985, and Mercury's evolution from an Indian-Arab college student named Farrokh Bulsara, to international rock star.

This long-awaited film has survived years in development purgatory and the firing of the credited director, Bryan Singer.  It gets some things very right, like the casting of the band members, the ending recreation of nearly the entire Live Aid performance, and the acknowledgement of  Mercury's heritage and difficult sexual awakening. However, it's also already notorious for playing fast and loose with the timeline, being a bit too kind to surviving band members, and essentially making a lot of things up.  There's a whole section of the film where Mercury breaks up Queen to become a solo artist that simply did not happen. However, "Bohemian Rhapsody" doggedly sticks to its "Behind the Music" formula, and I have to admit that it's all terribly entertaining.

I give a lot of credit to Rami Malek, who only bears the vaguest resemblance to Mercury, and is saddled with a very unfortunate dental prosthetic in many scenes.  He does a fantastic job in the performance recreations in particular, getting across Freddie Mercury's famous stage presence and charisma. The more intimate details of his private life may be largely fabricated, but Malek is convincing enough to evoke some real pathos for Mercury when he hits his low points.  The rest of the cast doesn't get as much to do as they probably should, with so much of the spotlight going to Malek. However, I still can't get over what a dead ringer Gwilym Lee is for the young Brian May.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is at its best when the film focuses on the music - either the band performing or creating and recording iconic songs like the title track.  I wonder if Queen's recording of "Bohemian Rhapsody" by itself would have been enough to sustain an entire feature by itself. That part of the film certainly has the best moments of humor, cinematic creativity, and there's good use of the full ensemble.  As is, "Bohemian Rhapsody" is a good time at the theater, but this could have been considerably better.

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