Of Missing Person Case and Murder Mystery

Film review: Klute

Late June in Shanghai is usually a time when raining days and rising heat conspire to make the city feeling like a swamp. June 2024 is no exception. So, paranoia about the lousy weather calls for watching a paranoia flick. I looked at my shelf, seeing the Criterion release of Klute and thought there might be no better time to watch it again with “in memory of the older and better Sutherland” on the top.

As we are trained to think in the legal profession: no one really commits the act of dying, death just happens to the deceased. So, at the “tender” age of 88, death happened to the Canadian actor (Don’t look at me, that’s what wiki search bar and IMDB say.) Donald Sutherland. And the information just cannot be shut out as I was informed just by opening a browser window in the office on Friday.

While I had seen his son Kiefer as the embodiment of THAT Bush era US jingoism for almost 200 hours, I can count the number of seeing senior with only one hand. Watched the Palme d’or winning M*A*S*H back before my freshman year in college, but old Don’s performance is about the last thing I can recall from that great farce. He certainly was lively in Dirty Dozen, too bad that one only let the characters of Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson and one drill sergeant live. And in the subject of this review, while playing the titular character, he didn’t get the top billing and rightfully so one might add.

Those who “weaved” before

Jane Fonda who played Bree Daniels is the one getting top billing in Klute. She won Best Actress at the Academy Award with this role. I mean a woman finds a second to checking her watch while moaning during sex is giving an Oscar worthy performance.

Sigourney Weaver was cast in Alien partially because a real small sample group found her possessing the film star quality of Jane Fonda. Funny enough those 2 actors were born 12 years apart from each other yet both weeks after historical events for here in miHoYo’s country of origin. Weaver was born in October, 1949, weeks after PRC announced itself, while the Fonda in question was born in December, 1937, weeks after Chiang’s ROC lost its old capital to the Japanese invaders and the horror stories regarding occupation were still going on. Of course nothing can be done with a director.

Klute’s director Alan J Pakula had been a producer of well-liked drama flicks like To Kill A Mocking Bird before he started to direct. As far as a potential sophomore slump goes, Klute is a very impressive piece of work and did pave ways for Pakula’s late flicks. For one thing the 1971 flick would be seen as the first in a thematical tiro known as Pakula’s Paranoia Trilogy, with Parallax View and All the President’s Men. The former being an action-packed horror film that engulfs the audience in its nightmare about a Murder Incorprated and the latter is just peak 1970s cinema if you are into “all talk no action for the talk is the action”.

Here in miHoYo’s country of origin, Pakula is more known for his 1982 “Oscar bait” (Pakula himself was taped saying how he found all those awards meaningless.) Sophie’s Choice, which got Meryl Streep hers from the Academy. It’s said that Streep acting her tits off, figuratively speaking, telling the audience what happened is more effective than flashbacks. It’s very funny, because Klute, clocked in 36 minutes shorter than Sophie’s Choice is all telling and no showing. It does work with the talents involved.

Ms. Fonda as Bree Daniels is an actor working as a call girl for a living. The film does not judge her for that since her acting training does enhance her efficiency as a sex worker. For a client does have the need through only watch and no touch approach, something not all sex workers can provide. Interestingly enough, it also makes her into an unreliable narrator not just to the audience but also herself. Her most open moments involve her spilling her guts to her shrink, sometime the film would show her visually standing across the shrink while other times her talking to the shrink serves as voice-over narration. Yet open does not mean real here, because there are moments when her feelings might get in the way of her getting hold of reality.

Another interesting visual choice is that Bree does not look as traditional attractive when she talks to her shrink through lighting. Jane Fonda is undoubtedly one of the most pointed to example as traditional attractive woman, and the film she stars in, even those in her later years, would just light the hell out of that pretty face of hers. Those shrink section, on the other hand, cast shadows on her face to make it less desirable.

Head and tail of a “little island” designated “573”

Klute is a talking heavy picture by the standard of any time. Which raised the question: why its praise should be sung in front of video game players? Well, the flick got the video game feeling with Don Sutherland played the stoic throughout when nearly everyone else was figuratively acting one or more of their body parts off. Another thing would be Hideo Kojima in short. The longer version: things sold as “A Hideo Kojima Game” under Konami began and ended with imitations of this flick.

Hideo Kojima jokingly said that where there should be water in his body there is cinema being a man thrived through taking inspiration from the media form. It would be fair to ignore his top lists of movies and search for his likely secret sauce. Klute was likely one of ingredients in that sauce.

For one thing, its plot summary was just stolen for Policenauts. D Sutherland as John Klute is a private investigator and a friend of family to a rich man named Tom Gruneman. 6 months after Mr. Gruneman went missing, the missing man’s colleague Peter Cable hired Klute to work on the case. The only clue Klute has is a call girl in New York named Bree Daniels, who might or might not have entertained the missing man before.

Since this is a Hollywood script, Klute and Bree became romantically involved. To be fair to this film, Klute being the more naïve part of the pairing does make it less uncomfortable. They shag for the first time because Bree wants to trade a “party” with Klute for the wiretap tapes the man had on her. After Klute gave up the tapes without touching her, she initiate the er intercourse. To her it’s standard process by the end of day: always get the john to pay before he can get his dick wet.

Then Bree helps Klute to navigate the underbelly of New York city. Soon comes the kicker, Klute’s client Cable is the killer all long. The missing person is long gone. Cable is a sadist known among sex workers in New York. Once he escalated to killing one, and his colleague happened to witness the foul pay. So, Cable went for the dollar after the cent. In many ways, Policenauts plus many video games before and after it ate very well on that twist. Can’t blame them, how better can you say “Game over, man! Game over!” than “The task giver is hostile. Go get them!”? Klute is lucky to make the realization without Cable knowing so he has option in the movie, while Jonathan Ingram was caught with his figurative pants down and cerebral dick out in Policenauts.

Cable in Klute is a particular sicko, as he would record some of his dirty deeds with a portable tape recorder. Which comes to the last “Hideo Kojima Game” Konami put out, I would call it MGSV in general. The shorter Ground Zeroes has one absolutely disgusting sexual abuse of underaged people on tape, while the too-long-for-its-own-good Phantom Pain has a tape of Dr. Strangelove making her will before she ran out of breath. I wonder if they are both inspired by the tape on Klute. It records Cable getting a woman with drug addiction lying down before killing her. The deceased could have pointed him out to the cops. Any of you hard-hitting journalists got the guts to ask Kojima about that for me? Anyone?

And of course, the film got much better visual presentation. Jane Fonda almost crying her eyes out listening to the terrifying type must be another reason why she got an Oscar for this one. Charle Cioffi playing Cable talking to his next potential victim in a tone as if he is putting up a defense in the court of law is deliciously twisted. What do MGSV have visually? Probably the commando barely played by Sutherland Junior during an operation’s downtime.

High-tech, low-life for real

This plot light yet vibe heavy flick can be summed up as detective, dame and killer interacting with technology available to them. Yours truly showed Klute with gun and flashlight, the detective can be often seen on phone and tape recorder. Bree was looking at a watch for the hustles in her life depend on it. The killer Cable uses small for its era tape recorder to keep his boat afloat. If Cyberpunk is a science fiction subgenre all about noir meets tech, then I say even the tech part got precedence.

Then there is the film’s impact on this modern era beyond any Cyberpunk writers’ wildest imagination. This flick’s “if you tell well enough, you don’t have to show” tendency is something so-called Prestige Drama started to pick in the 2010s. Characters sitting down and just spilling their guts about their life story or some deeds they did? The Wire on HBO did not use that as a rut in the aughts, but Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones did, both started and ended in the teens. Netflix’s Marvel series used this to a ridiculous degree. Pakula flicks are only feature length so it’s fine. Dozen hours long seasons on the other hand, doing so would be going again their name, they are called “shows” by us common folks, should we call them “tells” instead?

Start from the top

As far as writing about a movie while thinking about the late Donald Sutherland goes, Klute is not the best one to pick. A Chinese comedy back in 2001 (Shortly before Junior started to become THAT Bush era’s poster boy for his Leviathan.) in which Sutherland Sr. played one film director almost died and wanted to turn his funeral into a farce should be more fitting. Still, as someone who wrote about one of the last thrillers of 1970s, it just felt tempting to write about one of the decade’s earliest flicks. The result is bit more “gamer brained” than I excepted. So what are you all waiting for, my fellow video game player? Try it, if you are interested.