I will be watching Body Snatchers again, as I have not seen it since I was a young teen in the mid-80s. For me, Sutherland climbed into my consciousness with Animal House. I was about to head off to college after graduating from a fundamentalist Christian high school. Is that what college professors would be like? He was both awesomely cool and a complete and utter jackass of a man.
Ordinary People, and specifically Sutherland’s character in that movie, touched me. I identified with him somehow, much more so than with the son (Timothy Hutton) who was around my age. I'm like look kid, if you think you have problems, take a look at your dad who married a sociopath. Sutherland figures this out during the movie, carrying and projecting grief through every scene. It is an extraordinary performance.
One bit in the movie I love is when person on the other end addresses his character, Matthew Bennell, by name even though, as he keeps repeating, "How do you know my name? I didn't give you my name...!" It's like his brain's momentarily frozen as he realizes just how deep and wide what's going on is....
As he aged Sutherland played more Lawful Evil figures, but occasionally somebody would remember the younger, appealingly rumpled man he was when he was younger—as in the not-very-good International Cop series CROSSING LINES where he played retired International Criminal Court judge Michel Dorn(!—"Today is ze good day to judge") as a charmingly eccentric old man who seemed to be more at home feeding pigeons in the park than in the offices of the ICC's fictitious "special crime unit" which he ran. (I think—it was never very clear what his position was.)
I think it was a rule for him—the better-dressed and -groomed he was, the more likely he was to be a villain.
This is such an articulate analysis that if I could ever bring myself to watch scary movies, I would start with this one simply to enjoy identifying the subtleties as you described them.
I will be watching Body Snatchers again, as I have not seen it since I was a young teen in the mid-80s. For me, Sutherland climbed into my consciousness with Animal House. I was about to head off to college after graduating from a fundamentalist Christian high school. Is that what college professors would be like? He was both awesomely cool and a complete and utter jackass of a man.
Ordinary People, and specifically Sutherland’s character in that movie, touched me. I identified with him somehow, much more so than with the son (Timothy Hutton) who was around my age. I'm like look kid, if you think you have problems, take a look at your dad who married a sociopath. Sutherland figures this out during the movie, carrying and projecting grief through every scene. It is an extraordinary performance.
One bit in the movie I love is when person on the other end addresses his character, Matthew Bennell, by name even though, as he keeps repeating, "How do you know my name? I didn't give you my name...!" It's like his brain's momentarily frozen as he realizes just how deep and wide what's going on is....
As he aged Sutherland played more Lawful Evil figures, but occasionally somebody would remember the younger, appealingly rumpled man he was when he was younger—as in the not-very-good International Cop series CROSSING LINES where he played retired International Criminal Court judge Michel Dorn(!—"Today is ze good day to judge") as a charmingly eccentric old man who seemed to be more at home feeding pigeons in the park than in the offices of the ICC's fictitious "special crime unit" which he ran. (I think—it was never very clear what his position was.)
I think it was a rule for him—the better-dressed and -groomed he was, the more likely he was to be a villain.
Beautiful tribute
Thank you.
This is such an articulate analysis that if I could ever bring myself to watch scary movies, I would start with this one simply to enjoy identifying the subtleties as you described them.
Well done.