My Suspiria Theories

1. Death & Susie/Mater Suspiriorum were old friends before Susie died by an unknown incident that must have occurred between the Three Mothers in Guadagnino's new mythology. My guess is that this event happened with Markos in Luca's vision of the prequel, and whatever Markos did had incapacitated Mater Suspiriorum so badly that she had to die: but the incarnation of Death possibly reincarnated itself into Susie's Mennonite mother and Death forgot who they were. They still reincarnated Mater Suspiriorum back from Death as Susie Bannion. And Susie always had an inevitable pull to Berlin since she was a child, so it was Susie's destiny to go to the Tanz Academy. And her mother is always shown in a sick bed the entire movie leading up to her eventual Death. It is heavily implied in the script in a deletes scene during a phone conversation between Susie and her twin sister Naomi (she is a scrapped character who originally was going to have a bigger part, but she is only shown in the opening credits as the blonde woman at the Mennonite farm who Dakota Johnson also played.) In this phone call, Naomi reveals that Mrs. Bannion quite possibly only became deathly sick as soon as Susie left for Berlin. Naomi also reveals that Susie stole money from the Mennonite church to have the proper funds for her journey to Berlin and to be able to live there indefinitely. Also: I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT I DIDN'T CONNECT THIS SOONER! BECAUSE WHEN SUSIE KILLS HER MOTHER AS MARKOS INSTRUCTS HER TO DO, IT IS HIGHLY PLAUSIBLE THAT WHEN SHE DID THIS SUSIE RETURNED THE INCARNATION OF DEATH BACK INTO ITS ORIGINAL LIFE FORM SEEN BOWING TO SUSIE AND KILLING THE MARKOSITES! WHY ELSE WOULD THE SAME ACTRESS AS THE MOTHER PLAY DEATH INCARNATE, AND WHY DOES SUSIE LOOK AT DEATH WHEN DEATH BOWS TO HER AS IF SHE RECOGNIZES THE LIFE FORM? SHE ARGUABLY EVEN LOOKS RELIEVED! AND WHEN SUSIE SAYS "Death to any other mother," IT IS HIGHLY POSSIBLE THAT SHE IS REFERENCING MARKOS AND THE MARKOSITES, FOR THEY WORSHIPPED A FALSE MOTHER AND WERE ABUSING THEIR POWER FOR A CORRUPT CAUSE. SO SUSIE'S MOTHER (DEATH INCARNATE) KILLED THEM ALL THROUGH SUSIE'S WILL BECAUSE OF THEIR ACTIONS! AND FINALLY: THE DIALOGUE FROM MADAME BLANC IN THE SCENE WHERE SUSIE IMPROVISES 'OPEN AGAIN' FREELY AT ITS HEART HAPPENS TO ADD EVEN MORE SUBTLE SUBTEXT TO THIS NEW THEORY: BLANC: "I want to start a new piece! (The coven becomes newly reformed after Susie regains control.) A piece about REBIRTHS. (Death and Susie being reborn twice.) The INEVITABLE PULL that they EXERT (Susie's inexplicable pull to Berlin,) and our efforts to escape them (some Markosite witches attempt to escape their punishment once they realize that Markos is not the true Mater Suspiriorum.)"

2. This one has divided the fans because they can't tell if what Susie as Suspiriorum does at the end is any better than what the witches have been doing. But anyway: Susie didn't reveal her true identity in the Black Sabbath scene because SHE WAS GIVING HER DAUGHTERS A CHANCE TO STOP. SHE WAS ARGUABLY GIVING THEM ALL A CHANCE TO REALIZE THAT WHAT THEY WERE DOING WAS ABSOLUTELY WRONG. AND SUSIE LITERALLY IS IN TEARS WHEN SHE RIPS HER SUSPIRIORUM MARK OPEN, BECAUSE SHE IS THEIR MOTHER. SHE WAS FORGOTTEN. SHE COULD NOT KEEP THEM UNDER CONTROL. THEY HAVE TURNED HER COVEN CORRUPT, ABUSING THEIR POWER AND CREATING A GENERATIONAL GUILT THAT ECHOES THE GERMAN AUTUMN'S. Those who say "But she could have stopped it!" or "But she's no better than the witches because she resorted to violence too!" are completey right. But I ask those of you who say this to really pay attention to every single detail in these last few scenes: especially to Dakota's expressions, which many have claimed to be too subtle but was actually, as Jessica Harper stated, "Just right." Reason A: Although it is obvious at this point that Luca Guadagnino recreated the original mythology that Dario Argento and Daria Nicoloddi created in making the original Suspiria, there are still certain things that he did not change in this reimagining. And based off of everything that Dakota nails (from her lines, characterization, and overall actions in the film,) Mater Suspiriorum/Susanna Bannion is exactly how the original Mothers were described in Thomas de Quincey's essay that inspired Dario and Daria to create SUSPIRIA, 'Suspiria de Profundis'. It is stated in the original AND in the essay that Mater Suspiriorum is "the oldest and wisest of the three." And she is. What Dr. Klemperer says to Sara in his apartment rings true: : "...Three Mothers lost in time, predating all Christian invention. Pre-God, Pre-Devil..." Reason B: The decisions that Susie as Suspiriorum makes at the end of the film are arguably abusing her power. And although I do applaud the filmmakers in making these aforementiomed actions unclear as to whether they are or not, after really digging into the film's script and rewatching it nearly a million times, I can say that without a shadow of a doubt that I believe that those actions are NOT abusive for her power. Yes, she kills Olga, Patricia and Sara after all of the Markosites are obliterated by Death. Yes, she could have healed them and wiped their memory and let them be free from the academy, or let them stay and continue to dance in ignorance of the unflinching horrors that the matrons committed to them. But if Susie had done that, it would have defeated the purpose of the entire film's message and it would not correlate to the background of the RAF's storyline (which happens to be REALLY significant to this film's themes.) So she gave them what we all experience in society when a wrong has been comitted: Justice. We may not get justice the way that we want to receive it. There are millions of examples throughout history that I don't need to cite here because you can even look at our current world and see on the news or online or on any social media outlet that justice may not always be given the way that people want it. Sometimes justice can be bent into a warped version of civil disobedience like the protestors from the RAF did. Sometimes justice isn't what everyone makes it out to be, and one person might give another person a piece of what their ideal justice looks like, that person might disagree and fight even harder for something that they may or may not even have. Klemperer is a perfectly necessary example of this topic. Did he ever get the justice he needed from Susie in the epilogue when he finally discovered the fate of Anke Meier? Was he satisfied with knowing what he had unintentionally done by being a bystanding "witness" of Anke's situation by withholding her aryan papers out of fear? Would he really have lived the rest of his life better without Susie's memory wipe of all of the terrible guilt and shame of being this kind of person again with Patricia and Sara? And is it even fair that Klemperer was gifted this act of kindness? That is up to you you decide, for that is the beauty in these modern and classic pieces of art that we all collect and enjoy: films, television shows, books, music, dance, etc. But I would like to think that, despite the inevitable indifferences that humanity has every generation, the majority of us would say yes: because it does no right to commit two wrongs. It does no good to be bystanders of horrid atrocities and to idly stand by and not take action to make our world an ideal place with the best of our abilities. And it does us no good to assume that a person's intentions are harmful or helpful if we don't have any knowledge on whether if their purposes in doing the things they do are for better or for worse. I could easily be incorrect on Susie's actions. But once I look at the overall picture from the most subtle piece of subtext to the most overt line of dialogue in this film, I am 100 percent positive that the majority of people would agree with me and see that Luca Guadagnino and the cast and crew of his 2018 remake of SUSPIRIA has created a modern masterpiece in film that will surely stand the test of time due to its impactful story and its unflinching honesty in what horror is. And whether or not you like his vision, you cannot deny that although you dislike it, it MADE YOU FEEL SOMETHING. If a film didn't affect me in any way at all, it wouldn't be a good film at all.

More theories to come soon!

Submitted August 26, 2019 at 05:53AM by shookethfanboy https://ift.tt/2NyN5FI