Klute (1971, Alan J. Pakula) (Patreon)

69/100

Second viewing, last seen 1999. That was at MoMA, which almost certainly would have screened a good 35mm print, and yet somehow I apparently did not exit the museum firmly believing, as I do now, that Klute ranks among the most visually arresting movies ever made. Gordon Willis pushes whatever film stock this was to its limit, enshrouding most interiors with gloom so thick that there are often only minuscule portions of a shot that one could credibly say are illuminated. This movie makes Don Corleone's office look like Don Draper's office. (That's my Anthony Lane one-liner for 2023.) Not that there's necessarily any need to light an entire given room, since Pakula's signature composition—in this film, at least; can't recall whether he leans on it elsewhere—uses one actor's back to obstruct roughly ⅔ of the frame, placing another actor's face in the relative sliver that remains. It's so ludicrously simple-but-effective that I can't fathom why people don't constantly steal it. Then there's deranged-hence-magnifique, subdivision Insane Self-Confidence For A Middle-Aged Man Directing His Sophomore Feature: At one point, Pakula orchestrates what appears to be an impending sex scene (Bree sure thinks so) by placing Fonda and Sutherland in the foreground as a barely visible mass of bodies, with Fonda's hands caressing Sutherland's back out of focus in a full-length mirror behind them; when Klute tells Bree "There's someone on the roof," her hands suddenly freeze...still out of focus. I haven't seen a move that gutsy in ages. Anyone else would've racked at some point, cheapening it just a little bit. The whole scuzzy, crepuscular aesthetic rightly belongs in a modern-art museum.

Wish I dug the script half as much. That we're more or less told, very early on, who the villain is doesn't bother me (especially given that first gloriously abstract shot of The Villain's office door sliding closed, which only makes sense when we later see it happen from within). But while I admire Sutherland's unemphatic performance, John Klute stays a frustrating cipher throughout, and I rapidly lose interest when his relationship with Bree not only turns sexual but starts to feel redemptive (for her). Might've worked for me had it been left as murky as their environment; instead, Bree keeps delivering emotionally expository monologues to her therapist, as if to prematurely solve all mysteries of the human heart as well. Beautifully acted by Fonda, admittedly, but blech. Sometimes, form and content engage in an epic battle of wills, leaving me torn—the penultimate scene (in the garment district) indulges a whole lotta talking-killer hooey that one can only half-justify as ornate sadism, but Bree listening to Arlyn's murder in a single unbroken medium shot, as tears roll down her face and snot drips copiously from her nose*, is so extraordinary that I'm inclined to make allowances, even for the hokiness/hackiness of Klute coming to the rescue just in time (which requires some very lame machinations, viz. Bree leaving a message for her therapist saying that she'll be reachable there for the next five minutes). Even on the basic level of script and performance, there's a lot more here that I like than that I don't, especially on the margins; Bree and Klute tracking Arlyn down, finding her and her boyfriend badly jonesing, and then inadvertently scaring their dealer away is just agonizingly sad, considering that we've barely even met these people. Ultimately, though, Klute is for me a deeply flawed character drama thrillingly intensified by images from the pits of hell.

* My previous viewing of Klute was on 16 April 1999, and I first saw The Blair Witch Project on 18 March 1999. Lotta dripping snot for one month.