Browse: Home / Film on the Internet: KLUTE

Menu

Skip to content
  • Home
  • Who We Are
  • About
  • Privacy
  • Contact Us
  • Login

The-SoluteLogo

A Film Site By Lovers of Film

Menu

Skip to content
  • Features
  • Reviews
  • Long Reviews
  • News
  • Articles and Opinions
  • Other Media
  • El Topo (Year Of The Month)
  • Celebrating the Living: James Whitmore, Jr.
  • Attention Must Be Paid: Gracie Allen
  • Disney Byways: KING OF THE GRIZZLIES
  • Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of August 1970

Film on the Internet: KLUTE

Posted By ZoeZ on June 9, 2021 in Reviews | Leave a response

The actual case in Klute–its ostensible excuse for existing–is slim: abruptly presented and largely backgrounded to the tight focus on Jane Fonda’s Bree and Donald Sutherland’s Klute. She’s a complex psychology fully embodied by Fonda (for further details, see John Bruni’s great essay on Bree); he’s an existential force. Bree goes to analysis, examining her own thoughts and actions from multiple angles; Klute, mostly silently and almost always expressionlessly, analyzes others. It’s hard to imagine what he does for fun. But the intensity of his connection to Bree–and the totality with which he feels it–forces a kind of belated complexity on him: with her, unlike on the job, he has no mandate. He doesn’t know what the effects of his actions will be–he only knows that he’ll feel them.

Bree is affected by him, too. Her therapy sessions have the feel of her circling around herself from the outside, putting her on display even to herself; necessary for the work–just as the auditions she goes to, brutally uncaring as they are, are necessary for that work–but also necessarily detached. Klute seems to put her more in her own skin. With him, we gradually come to see her at her rawest and most immediate. When she puts on detached professionalism with him, after they sleep together, it’s a feint, born of emotions she later describes as “mean” and “ugly.”

This is the first film in Alan J. Pakula’s “paranoia trilogy,” and it works on those terms because the film puts you in Bree’s shoes. The atmosphere is oppressive, and the sense of surveillance–of tapped phones and recordings–is ominous. It’s paranoia as claustrophobia: if you can never be free of observation (including observation by yourself), can you ever really be free? The observer effect changes things. When Bree leaves with Klute at the end, it’s partly out of feeling–but it’s also a much-needed escape from ceaseless voyeurism. And even we bow out there, letting them–and especially her–go where she will, knowing that she’ll probably soon break away even from his gaze. If we look ahead to the end of their relationship, it’s a loss that feels like it will make her fully herself–we all deserve an unexamined life from time to time–and him fully human. Both of which are thoroughly bittersweet outcomes.

 

Klute is now streaming on HBOMax.

Posted in Reviews | Tagged Alan J. Pakula, Donald Sutherland, Film on the Internet, Jane Fonda, Klute, noir

About the Author

lamijames@gmail.com'

ZoeZ

Related Posts

Film on the Internet: MAY→

Film on the Internet: SUPPORT THE GIRLS→

Film on the Internet: TWISTER→

Film on the Internet: TRUE LIES→

  • Comments
  • Popular
  • Most Recent
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleWonderful piece, Sam. It's made…
  • j*****@yahoo.com'
    mr_apollo on Year of the Month: Mon OncleFellow heretic here. I've never…
  • n***********@gmail.com'
    Ruck Cohlchez on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEI wouldn't have called it…
  • j***********@gmail.com'
    Son of Griff on LIFE ITSELFGlad to hear back from…
  • n*********@gmail.com'
    Jake Gittes on Film on the Internet: AN AMERICAN CRIMEThis is the single most…
  • “The End” of SAVAGES

    35444 views / Posted November 10, 2014
  • What the fuck did I just watch? SPHERE

    28150 views / Posted March 19, 2015
  • The Untalented Mr. Ripley: The Craft of Standup Comedy and the Non-Comedy of TOM MYERS

    26705 views / Posted June 26, 2018
  • Gordon with Mr. Looper

    Attention Must Be Paid: Will Lee

    26628 views / Posted January 7, 2023
  • Scenic Routes: SHOWGIRLS (1995)

    20685 views / Posted November 20, 2014
  • El Topo (Year Of The Month)

    September 25, 2023 / Tristan "Drunk Napoleon" Nankervis
  • The good, the bad, and the preternaturally lucky

    Celebrating the Living: James Whitmore, Jr.

    September 24, 2023 / Gillianren
  • Such an adorable couple!

    Attention Must Be Paid: Gracie Allen

    September 23, 2023 / Gillianren
  • Every movie gets the Dropo it deserves

    Disney Byways: KING OF THE GRIZZLIES

    September 22, 2023 / Gillianren
  • Flashback Comics Rack: Highlights of August 1970

    September 22, 2023 / Sam "Burgundy Suit" Scott

Last Tweets

    ©2014 - 2016 The-Solute | Hosted, Developed and Maintained by Bellingham WP LogoBellinghamWP.com.

    Menu

    • Home
    • Who We Are
    • About
    • Privacy
    • Contact Us
    • Login
    Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!