What MOVIE(s) have you been....seeing? watching?

The witches’ sabbath, HOLY SHIT. The use of avant-garde dance as their ritual/spellcasting is brilliant beyond words. Everything about that scene was just mindblowing- even up to the unexpected “cleanup” shots.

The politics of the film are interesting...I think they are mostly a red herring because they are really irrelevant, having more to do with positioning the story in 1977 (when the first film came out) than subtext. The thing is, the women in this film govern themselves. They have their own votes for leadership, their own power dynamic, and the fact that the Berlin Wall is literally at their doorstep has no bearing on their lives. All the Baader-Meinhoff/RAF stuff is going on in the fucked up patriarchal world outside. Yet the specter of fascism still haunts them, suggesting that the wounds caused by the Nazis ran deeper into the national character and Into the lives of ALL women.

But most interestingly of all is the final act of turning the whole movie upside down when we found out that Suzy is Mater Suspiriorum. Suddenly, the concept of what we assumed all film to be supernatural evil is flipped over as she has essentially come to liberate the coven from the abusive, corrupt, fascistic rule of Helena Markos- the false mother. The witches- and female power- aren’t evil, as patriarchal society has tried and still tries to make us believe. They’ve been lead to evil by an evil leader. Mater Suspiriorum is revealed to be merciful as well as vengeful, as Kremper bears witness to both her retribution and her compassion. And the women in this film sort all of this out on their own, with no men interfering in their matriarchal underground. They are beyond the law, beyond terrorist hijackings, beyond the wall, beyond the governance of men.

I found it unusually moving at the end when Suzy/Mater Suspiriorum fellas Kremper about his wife’s death at the concentration camp...because it is clear from her recollection of intricate details that -she was there-. It could be that she was an incarnation present there to be with women (thus one of Anke’s friends) or it could be that she was there simply in the spirit of feminine companionship and empathy between the friends she mentioned. I thought that was especially subtle, powerful, and again totally unexpected.

I’ve seen some readings of the film that suggest that it is somehow anti-feminist, but I think that is a gross misreading based largely on the assumption that witches=evil. I think this is one of the more feminist horror films ever made- and it’s rather surprising that is written and directed by men.

I think you'd have to be some kind of extremely dense asshole to view the film as anti-feminist. The only way in which it's anti-feminist is that women do die, and there is violence, cruel and extended violence, inflicted on women on camera. I don't want to downplay that because it's possible to make a film that is thematically feminist but is so brutal to its female characters that it's hard to see it as anything but misogynistic. I didn't think it crossed the line there and the thematic trappings were strong enough to get me past seeing a lot of women die painfully. To me, it's clearly about female autonomy from the patriarchy in the form of this coven. But what I enjoyed about the film is that it's not some form of bullshit perfect matriarchy that is all roses---the point of the film to me is that even matriarchy can be subverted by cruel and unjust leadership. That hierarchies are problematic, even in democratic circumstances, and do occur outside of the patriarchy.

The last bit of the film is incredibly intense for a truly long amount of time. Beyond it being totally wild visually, I thought the length of the onslaught and a sort of numbness that it engendered was part of the point.

The film also did a great job communicating the physicality of dance. It absolutely had you thinking of this coven of dancers as athletes, something that often films that have dance are painstakingly trying to not make you do.

I will be 100% honest here. Maybe I'm dense but I did not really see the thematic importance of Klemperer being makeup played by a woman.

I'm trying to think back to my reactions at the time. I may post more if I think of them.

YES the dancing. Wow. I really loved that they went for a more Martha Graham/Isadora Duncan kind of thing rather than ballet. That really physical, angular style worked with the occultism so well. But more importantly, it expresses female power, presence, and physicality.

I think the cruelty (THAT BONE!) was to sell the “woman’s inhumanity to woman” and to reinforce exactly what you are pitching- that this matriarchy is not perfect and still has to deal with human issues of power, succession, rebellion, and brutality.

I doubt Klemperer was written to be played by a woman...but it turned out to be an interesting metatextual element. He’s spared and earns Mater Suspiriorum’s compassion in part because he is physically a woman outside of the film.

Another aspect I REALLY like about the political element is how it contrasts the very public B-M stuff, terrorism, the RAF and all that with the private way the women deal with their political issues...think about how they go to the cafe and have these conversations completely telepathically...even in public, they aren’t bringing their grievances and strife to bear on others.