DONALD SUTHERLAND

ALL KNOWNG ACTOR AGENT PROVIDES OMNISCIENT NARRATION ON FILM

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The person on the inside has absolute knowledge, but that knowledge has no value except through the agency of another person.

In real life events, such as Watergate, the inside person was an FBI Agent code named “Deep Throat’ who leaked the story details about the dirty tricks operation of United States President Richard M. Nixon to Washington Post reporters.

In film, the agency is one layer of textuality further removed because an actor is an agent of the character with the absolute knowledge of that film personality who must use another actor whose character is the agent who can act on that knowledge.

Donald Sutherland has been that agent actor in war, in espionage, in crime and in sports and medicine.

Director Robert Altman cast Sutherland as the medical doctor sent to a field hospital during the Korean War who knew all too well about surgery but he also knew about personalities and the debilitating effect on humanity of prolonged military conflict in M*A*S*H (1970).

Sutherland stars as Hawkeye Pierce, with Tom Skerritt costarring as Duke Forest and Elliot Gould as Trapper John McIntyre.

All three actors would go on to have successful film careers with Skerritt appearing in the franchise launch Alien (1979), Top Gun (1986) and then A River Runs Through It (1992). Gould has acted in A Bridge Too Far (1977), Bugsy (1991) and the franchise series that launched with Ocean’s Eleven (2001).

M*A*S*H was spun into one of the longest running television series, M*A*S*H (1972-1983).

In that same year, Sutherland played tank commander, Oddball, in Kelly’s Heroes (1970). Oddball had the inside story on the US military advance though Europe during World War II. Clint Eastwood stars as Kelly, a US soldier who discovers through the interrogation of a German officer that a fortune in gold is being kept in a bank of a small European town. Kelly knows about the existence of the gold, but Oddball is very aware of what is required for such a  covert operation.

Sutherland would then provide a supporting acting role to Jane Fonda in Klute (1971). Sutherland plays a private detective who uses a New York prostitute to find a missing person.

Ten years later Sutherland plays the father of a family with a troubled teen athlete in Ordinary People (1980). Calvin Jarrett is the family patriarch, but he must manage the family dynamics after one of his son’s has died and the mother of his children, played by Mary Tyler Moore, has come to blame their surviving son, played by Timothy Hutton. Sutherland shows his typical calming demeanor while the family gradually becomes torn apart by the guilt of the loss. Calvin is very aware of what the problem is, but he cannot do too much about it.

Ordinary People received critical acclaim as did Robert Redford in his feature film directorial debut, receiving six nominations and winning four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting actor for Hutton, and Best Writing. Redford also directed A River Runs Through It.

In A Dry White Season (1989) Sutherland plays a white suburban land owner in Apartheid South Africa. Ben becomes involved in the black struggle when his gardener’s son goes missing and the gardener is himself subsequently beaten by secret police at a protest rally.

Ben knows white society, but he learns more and passes on his knowledge as he investigates all possible outcomes. Ben is powerless though, and thereby forced to find a way to help by seeking legal counsel.

Director Ron Howard cast Sutherland as the imprisoned arsonist with the knowledge to solve a series of arsons targeting city officials in Back Draft (1991). Arsonist Ronald Bartel is a pivot key in the love and hate triangle within a family of Chicago firefighters, starring Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Scott Glenn and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Sutherland transforms his otherwise endearing screen persona into a creepy other person only forensic psychiatrists would find the time for.

In JFK (1991), starring Kevin Costner and an ensemble cast, Sutherland plays an informant to the New Orleans District Attorney investigating the Kennedy assassination. X is a deep cover government operative with inside knowledge of government run black ops. Sutherland finds his ultimate role with his character in possession of the deep background information that Jim Garrison needs to put the pieces of the investigation together.

Sutherland’s screen character has built up a lot of trust by this point in bis acting career. And Director Oliver Stone helps Sutherland cash that good will in for him at the box office.

Sutherland has always created that character that the other characters want to sit down at the dinner table with, like in Ordinary People.

Stone casts Sutherland in the reversal scenes after taking the audience to the highest point of interest in the script material. X and Garrison literally sit down with the audience in the Washington Mall discussing how secret government deep cover operations are successfully carried out and how they are not.

In A Time To Kill (1996) starring Matthew McConaughey as Jake, Sandra Bullock and Samuel L. Jackson, Sutherland plays retired senior lawyer Lucien Wilbanks. Wilbanks claims to have been run out of town by the legal community, but he still has the respect of Jake, the young lawyer to whom he sold his law practice.

Sutherland finds a role as the elder supporting character to a new generations of actors, after he himself experienced a flourishing of talent in the early seventies with M*A*S*H and then again in the early eighties with Ordinary People and in the early nineties with Back Draft.

In Without Limits (1998) Sutherland plays Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, starring Billy Crudup as Steve Prefontaine. Bowerman coaches America’s finest distance runners while developing the running shoes and training techniques that would revolutionize the sport. Bowerman’s knowledge and experience draws world class athletes to him.

Sutherland again optimizes his screen character’s attributes, playing the tough love father figure in coach Bowerman using the runners as agents to obtain more knowledge and then turn that knowledge to help other runners.

Sutherland almost inspires the audience to become runners just for the slimmest chance in having the opportunity to be coached by him in preparation for world class events.

Crudup captures the essence of a distance runner of the time, as part athlete, part ego and part rock star.

Crudup had a supporting role as station manager on the outside looking in of a sex scandal in the Morning Show (2019), costarring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. And Crudup played the journalist interviewing First Lady Jackie Kennedy following the President’s assassination in Jackie (2016), starring Natalie Portman. Crudup also had important supporting roles in Public Enemies (2009), The Good Shepherd (2006) and Mission Impossible III (2006).

Sutherland goes on to land a recurring role in the franchise films, The Hunger Games (2012), starring Jennifer Lawrence.

Sutherland continues to act, drawing in audiences now just with his name on the marque.

In The Leisure Seeker (2017) costarring Helen Mirren as Ella Spencer. Southerland plays John Spencer, the more forgetful part of an elderly couple going on one last road trip in a recreational vehicle before their age catches up to them. Southerland plays the husband driver with early stages of Alzheimer’s.

Mirren shows how her character still dotes over her husband despite his obvious failing mental health, choosing to support him and stay by him, instead of abandoning him to a care home.

Over the years, Sutherland has maintained his screen character while every once in a while taking the mask off the character attributes and narrowing them down to an eccentric part of what the main idea could become under certain circumstances.

The character, following either good or bad impulses, more often than not has a secret that he would like to share with someone who can profit by the information.