I HATE THIS NEWS

Oh no! One of the most interesting actors ever and certainly ranked in my top three. I hate news like this, but also it’s his release from terminal illness.

From this morning’s LA Times:

Donald Sutherland, stately star of ‘MASH,’ ‘Ordinary People’ and ‘Hunger Games,’ dies at 88

Donald Sutherland, the prolific Canadian actor who roared to fame in the irreverent antiwar classic “MASH” and captivated audiences with his dramatic performances in films such as “Ordinary People” and “Don’t Look Now,” has died.

A mainstay of Hollywood for more than six decades, Sutherland died Thursday in Miami after a long illness, his agency confirmed in a statement. He was 88.

Son Kiefer Sutherland also confirmed his father’s death “with a heavy heart” in a statement Thursday morning on social media. “I personally think he’s one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that. A life well lived.”

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I first became aware of Donald Sutherland when he and Jane Fonda brought their “FTA” (F* The Army) show to Fort Hood. They were getting a lot of shit from the Nixon Administration (surprise surprise - not). Sutherland was risking his status in the country as a Canadian national to protest Vietnam doing this. A ban from the U.S. would destroy his career, but he put it on the line.

Kiefer is right about his father’s position in film history.

“M.A.S.H.” made his reputation, and that heartbreaking performance in “Ordinary People” as his character realizes his wife cannot change and they will separate despite his love for her “gets me” every time I see the film.

To me, the role that truly stuns in its intensity and quality came in “1900,” where he plays Attila Mellanchini, the man who rises from a peasant the aristocrats think they can control when they make him the leader of the blackshirt gang they’re organizing, who rises to dominate and destroy them all as the local Fascist leader. I don’t know how some reviewers say the role is “supporting” to that of Robert DeNiro’s aristocrat, Alfredo Berlinghieri, and Gerard Depardieu’s communist leader, Olmo Dalcò. Sutherland’s performance personifies the dark night of Fascism from the moment in the first scene where he flees from those he persecutd and dominated for 24 years as Liberation Day comes to Italy, through moments that are so chilling you can never forget them, to finally return to Liberation Day and his death at the hands of his victims.

The moment that tops them all for me is when he picks up a kitten, telling his gang that “Communism is like this kitten, so soft, so lovable.” He then takes the animal, ties it to a post with his belt, steps back ten feet and runs at it. The kitten’s scream is heard as he butts it to death with his head. He then turns, blood running down his face from claw marks and proclaims, “Fascism is the triumph of the will!”

The 5-hour director’s cut is now available on streaming. It doesn’t seem like 5 hours when you watch. And in every moment he’s onscreen, Sutherland steals everything in sight in broad daylight.

Now he’s for the ages.

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