Luca Guadagnino Isn’t Remaking ‘Suspiria’: ‘It’s An Homage to the Incredible Emotion I Felt When I Saw It’
Zack Sharf
Luca Guadagnino is currently in the thick of the Oscar race with his critically acclaimed romance “Call Me by Your Name,” and he’s set to remain in the headlines for the next year thanks to his upcoming “Suspiria” movie. The director finished production on the Amazon-backed film earlier this year, which means we should be seeing it in fall 2018 Whatever you do, stop calling it a remake.
The movie has already received backlash from fans who think it’s very unwise to touch Dario Argento‘s 1977 classic of the same name. But while the basic plot will stay the same (a young American ballerina begins training at a German dance academy and uncovers its dark secrets), Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” is not intended to be a remake after all. The director knows nothing can compare to Argento’s original, which is why he never sought out to do a remake in the first place.
“Every movie I make is a step inside my teenage dreams, and ‘Suspiria’ is the most remarkably precise teenage megalomaniac dream I could have had,” Guadagnino tells The Guardian in a new interview. “I saw the poster when I was 11 and then I saw the film when I was 14, and it hit me hard. I immediately started to dream about making my own version of it.”
“In a way it makes me smile when I hear people say, ‘How dare you remake Suspiria. Typical commerce-driven mentality,'” he continues. “I was just a boy who had seen a movie that made him what he became. So that’s how I am approaching it: a homage to the incredible, powerful emotion I felt when I saw it.”
To prove his point, Guadagnino points to the numerous adaptations of Shakespeare texts like “Hamlet,” noting how one text can spawn radically different interpretations instead of similar remakes.
“Do you stop watching ‘Tristan und Isolde‘s’ mise-en-scène because Patrice Chéreau’s was so incredible?,” Guadagnino asks. “No, there will be a new one that will be fantastic. How many ‘Hamlets’ have we experienced in our lifetimes that were fantastic? Human art is not about inventing originality, it’s about finding a new point of view.”
Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” is expected to debut sometime in 2018. The movie stars Chloe Grace Moretz, Dakota Johnson, and Tilda Swinton.
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
