Review by Keri O’Shea
I’m going to start this review with a confession: I’m not a huge fan of the giallo genre. Gialli are stylish to look at, but once I get over the visual good stuff I find their plots are often contrived to the point of predictability, even when the eventual outcomes are the last thing any right-thinking person would expect – a sort of formulaic lunacy prevails. This outlook has affected my opinion of a lot of horror classics which either have one foot in the giallo camp or draw a great deal of influence from the genre, and this includes the early output of Dario Argento, who could very definitely be considered a proponent of the knife-or-gun happy whodunnits back in the 70s. He didn’t always keep within those confines, of course: Suspiria (1977) is one film which definitely deserves its place in horror canon, using as it does a creepy location and premise, vivid aesthetics and a haunting soundtrack to powerful, lasting effect. Although Suspiria owes something to giallo, it more than compensates in other areas, and it is one of my favourite movies.
Why is she talking about Suspiria, when this is a review of Masks (2011)? Well, because – on paper at least – Masks is less an homage to Suspiria than a ‘reimagining’, and this is strikingly obvious during the earliest scenes of the newer movie, where a young woman arrives to claim her place at a Berlin drama school, interrupted by a terrified and fleeing female student as she does so…As a fan of Suspiria, I was curious to see where Masks was going to go with this obvious nod to its predecessor. A remake of sorts, getting in ahead of the apparently-in-production remake due for release in 2012? Actually, Masks may frame its plot in very similar terms to an obviously much-beloved influence, but it is more than worthwhile on its own merits. This is an accomplished surreal and often nasty horror which really drew me in.
Aspiring actress Stella (Susen Ermich) is finding out the hard way that her chosen career is a dog-eat-dog-world. As she gets rejected at yet another audition, however, it seems like someone is ready to give her an opportunity: she is approached by a person who offers her the chance to enrol at the Matteusz Gdula Institute, a mysterious school in Berlin about which very little is known other than they use some pretty unconventional methods there, and back in the 70s this approach led to the deaths of several students. Still, needs must: Stella agrees. She wants to excel. If she needs to get there by embracing ‘the method’, then she will.
This involves giving up her life on the outside (including any contact with boyfriend or family) and moving in to the school; people aren’t particularly friendly to her, with the exception of one girl called Cecile, and the method certainly demands a great deal, mentally and physically. It isn’t long before the expected exhaustion and sense of alienation which results from all of this gives way to a culture of acute strangeness and excess, as Stella is invited to take part in hush-hush ‘special classes’. Again, she accepts – she’s nothing if not driven to give the ultimate performance. This time though, she’s encouraged to imbibe powerful hallucinogenics in a quest to reduce her down to her component parts, to get at whatever it is which is blocking her natural acting abilities. Vaguely, with difficulty, Stella begins to appreciate the vulnerable situation she is in…
It barely needs saying that the tone of much of this film is nightmarish. Writer/director Andreas Marschall makes a good job of establishing Stella as a believable character before hurling her into a damaging situation too, so we really get the sense that this is a real person struggling to understand something beyond her control. A spiralling sense of unease is difficult for me to accept when I don’t feel that a reality beyond that exists, but in Masks, there is enough there to allow empathy with Stella, even when she makes some odd decisions in the name of ‘success’. The film also plays with the idea of postmodernism; I know this is a term which is bandied about far too often in criticism, but here it fits. As the film progresses, it asks questions about what can be classed as performance: where performance begins, where it ends. Without turning into a lofty philosophical piece, it definitely adds another layer to the narrative and could easily have been made more of, though there is enough there to ponder.
Where Masks really jeopardises its interesting premise is, and at risk of sounding like a broken record, by being too long. Lose ten minutes from this, particularly from the middle of the film, and it would allow Stella to drive onwards towards the film’s finale with less risk of Masks outstaying its welcome. Also, at the risk of sounding like a prude (which I am not, I would argue!) some of the nudity here felt like it had been crowbarred into the plot; it might well help to sell a film, and it might well add one more nod to the 70s influences, but random inserts of people wandering into shot shirtless to answer the telephone felt a bit tedious and a teeny bit cynical.
Still, overall I was very impressed with Masks. It shares the aesthetic qualities used by homage-fest Amer, except it underpins all this with a workable story, strong performances and an end sequence which I thought was nothing short of brilliant, a really redemptive moment. Whilst Argento fans will enjoy the affectionate debt of gratitude owed to Suspiria (in particular), there is a lot more here to explore. What seemingly starts as a reimagining blossoms in its own imaginative, grisly right.