Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ...you can learn from:

Klute (1971)

Bree: Don't feel bad about losing your virtue. 
I sort of knew you would. Everybody always does.

You ever have a movie where you can't get what everybody's swooning about for the longest time, and then you rewatch it years on and wham, it's like a freight train clobbering your heart? Klute is probably the best example of that from my year point five of pandemic watching -- I thought I didn't like it for a long time but then suddenly I fell totally in love with it on a watch a few months back. Now it seems nutty that I ever thought it wasn't for me. All those inky 70s blacks and browns, creepy pervert killers, Donald Sutherland. Jane Fonda saying "button freak." This shit was made for me! Anyway a happy 84 to Miss Fonda today.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

the film is a masterpiece and, in my estimation, fonda's performance is the best in the english-language.

shaun said...

I rediscovered this movie during the pandemic too. It's really special, and I was just thinking the other day about how often it pops into my head. Good stuff.

joel65913 said...

I can see being disenchanted with this if you watched at the wrong point in time. It's grimy, dour and often nihilistic, not that was too unusual in the early 70's, but it can be off-putting. I never disliked the film but I wasn't terribly impressed by it until the second time I watched.

What did knock me out the first time though was Jane Fonda's work in the film. Until I saw it the only film of hers that I had seen post its making was the fluffy Fun with Dick and Jane otherwise she was the Jane of Cat Ballou, Barefoot in the Park, Any Wednesday and other films of that vintage. A delightful creature and expert comedienne but not much grit so this was an eye opener! As good as she is the picture it lead me to seek out what I think is her best work in the grindingly melancholy "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" That film makes this one seem like a funhouse ride!

Anonymous said...

What is a button freak exactly?