by Nick Taylor
It has been so heartwarming to see the outpouring of love for Donald Sutherlnd in the wake of his death. Co-stars, crew members from his films, folks whose connections to the actor seem almost random until you read how Sutherland’s kindness, generosity, politics, and talent left a lasting impression on the person commemorating him. The write-up from our own Cláudio Alves is among the most touching and thorough I’ve seen. I wanted to add my own tribute, and chose to write about his central, film-enabling performance in Philip Kaufman’s 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers . . . .
Sutherland plays Matthew Bonnell, a San Francisco health inspector. We first meet Matthew about ten minutes into the film, inspecting the kitchen of a fancy restaurant, combing every surface while the owner distractingly blathers at his heels and the cooks watch him like hawks. He soon finds the smoking dud - a rat turd masquerading as a caper in a boiling pot, and gets a confession by daring the owner to eat it. There’s no stopping or stalling this man. Even when Matthew finds his car’s windshield fractured by a wine bottle, he just exhales with a huff and drives off, mentally tallying up what he’ll need to do tomorrow morning to prove those fuckers are serving contaminated food.
Matthew is also a terrific friend, warm and rambunctious with his colleague Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) when recounting the incidents at the restaurant. It’s evident that Matthew and Elizabeth have a mutual attraction, something long-grown and unconcerned by her lame boyfriend. Their chemistry reads as an attraction borne organically out of their friendship, inextricable even from the smallest conversation or corny joke, something so long-burning and precious that maybe they’re nervous about speaking it aloud. Surely they met each other through their work, or was their first interaction even further back, somewhere else? Are they amicable exes waiting for another shot to get things right? Have they been having a passionate affair since long before the narrative began? Likely not, but even if I wasn’t watching Invasion specifically for Sutherland’s work, I find Matthew and Elizabeth’s relationship to be an essential part of the film’s success. Their bond is the sort of casually humane texture that can single-handedly deepen a film while inspiring a whole lot of fanfiction. You just can’t beat the warmth that kindles between Sutherland and Adams in that fireside dinner, or the way he sheepishly asks her permission to finish telling her a joke they’ve already shared.
“Casually humane texture” is a great descriptor for what Sutherland is doing here. Indeed, it’s a great descriptor for most of the actor’s roles. Sutherland’s characters rarely if ever register as blanks or one-dimensional chess pieces - he’s too good at conveying humane detail to ever settle for less. The lovestruck dope, the free-spirited former hippie, the civil servant who intuits how corrupt his government has become much later than the audience does at no cost to our perception of how smart he is, the by-the-book agent who’s not afraid to get a little risky with it. All of these traits come through fully in Sutherland’s performance, sometimes at unexpected moments.
He’s so good at adding just a little more information in his expressions, postures, and line readings than is strictly necessary, fleshing out a character so elegantly you might take it for granted. I didn’t appreciate how much information Sutherland gives us about Matthew’s in hiis first proper conversation with Elizabeth when they're at work. His feelings for her, his thoughts on her boyfriend, the way he’s able to slide from chummy support to stern bestie to something a little bit meaner towards her man - at least until he excitedly tries cheering her up with his souvenir from the restaurant. Conversely, Sutherland is just at skilled with Matthew's single-minded expressions of ardor, terror, and determination. He very nearly out scream-queen's Veronica Cartwright,
I love the refusal to play Matthew as a skeptic or premature curmudgeon, instead embracing a wide range of intellectual, hormonal, and emotional behaviors without editorializing them. Sutherland amplifies Kaufman’s sense of paranoia by really listening to Elizabeth and the dry cleaner’s husband talk about partners who have suddenly turned “wrong”, trying to find some way for their distress to make sense without endorsing their conspiratorial thinking, or calling them insane to quash their fears. He’s supportive as hell, even when he has no idea what’s going on - Matthew just sees his friends are troubled and wants to help however he can. He literally can’t believe his eyes when he’s shown the immature duplicate, but once he starts studying it Sutherland is all business, not just ready to believe what he’s seeing but making educated, scientific guesses from the body of evidence. At every stage, Matthew’s choices register not as the pre-scripted traits of a final girl but as one ordinary guy getting backed into an increasingly tight corner. Smart writing and filmmaking are undoubtedly part of this achievement, but Sutherland embodies all of this with economic, unfussy brilliance.
The last sequence of Invasion simply wouldn’t work if Sutherland hadn’t been giving us so much color to look out for up to that point. As an audience member, I’ve rarely if ever felt the desperate pull to believe a character was still “there” the way I look at Matthew as he goes about his new routine. How could the light in his eyes suddenly not mean something? Is his expression towards Elizabeth one of loss? Disgust? Poignant longing? Does he really have no feelings about the forced amassing in San Francisco? It’s so tragic, and so goddamn horrifying, and even as he gives up the ghost I’m still looking at him and wondering. Does he seem a little angrier than the others when they let out their unearthly screech? Is Matthew really gone? Is he really, really gone?
He is gone, and I hate it. I’m really going to miss Donald Sutherland. He truly felt like he'd be around forever, possibly because I’ve known about him since before I was properly interested in cinema and have only been more impressed as I’ve learned more about him and seen more of his work. I am absolutely the kind of mark to appreciate Sutherland just for how often he's played second banana to very fascinating female leads. You see that here, where Sutherland's just as supportive of Brooke Adams' watchful, equally real performance as he is of the film itself. His consummate generosity as a performer and a person is so stunning. It speaks to how brilliant his career is that you could pick any of at least a dozen films and point at them and say “that’s his best film, that’s the best he’s ever been, that’s the first thing I watched when I heard he’d died.” That’s beautiful. Invasion was my pick, and I hold it and his work in it very close to my heart.
