United Artists
The most iconic image ofDonald Sutherland ’s life history is a spoiler . To depict it would gamble giving away more than the naive might want to know aboutInvasion of the Body Snatchers , Philip Kaufman ’s 1978 adaptation of the Jack Finney novel about extraterrestrial pretender out to replace humanity with emotionless double . But you know the image . You ’ve almost surely realise it used as amemesometime over the last couple of decades — or maybe the last couple of week , in reaction to the actor ’s last in June . For those whohavewatched the movie , there ’s always been some cognitive dissonance to seeingthatshot transmute into net joke currency . It is , after all , one of the most stemma - curdling images in all of cinema : the look of Bob Hope shriveling away , of the future disappearing into a screaming ignominious cakehole .
It ’s a shade dry that Sutherland might be best remembered for such a monstrously oversized look , such a monstrous moment . He was one of Hollywood ’s most insidious performer , a New Hollywood legend who often underplay what was run on inside his characters ’ pith and head . But his work inInvasion of the Body Snatchersis richer than its last note . As Matthew Bennell , a San Francisco health inspector who slowly becomes aware of a unfriendly alien takeover in advancement , Sutherland offer a huge range of feelings . haughtiness , unspoiled humor , fear , deep romanticistic longing , bottomless desperation : Long before he ’s literally work from the pod multitude , Sutherland start the excited gamut across this peerless sci - fi nightmare of a thriller .
United Artists
Kaufman’sInvasionis more than the best version of Finney ’s story , which has been officially adapt four times and unofficially countless more . It ’s also the ultimate paranoid thriller of the 1970s , a decade fill up with movies about how someone was always watching and diagram against you . Contemporaneous thrillers likeThe Conversation , The Parallax View , andThree Days of the Condorrefracted the mounting anxiousness and disillusionment of the Watergate epoch . Invasiontakes those bad vibes to their logical end point . sleep with one optic open is n’t enough , it say . You ca n’t go to sleep at all . And if the film ’s more literally down - to - Earth Hollywood cousins captured a growing suspicion in our institutions , Kaufman went much further in declare that you literally could n’t hope anyone . Your closest friends , your penny-pinching and dearest — they couldallbe in on it .
The first adjustment ofThe Body Snatchers , the Don Siegel version from 1956 , arrived during the Red Scare , and has been alternately record as a admonition against communism and a admonition against the communist witch hunts in Washington and Hollywood . Either way , conformism was the enemy . Kaufman , working from a brilliant screenplay by W.D. Richter , rewire the allegory for the anxieties of a raw era . The movie does not belabour its metaphor — the Body Snatchers are an existential threat first and foremost — but it ’s well-situated to see a ethnical ocean change in the biologic threat spreading across a hapless Bay Area . ThisInvasionexists at the moment when a nation of Baby Boomers were growing out of their anti - authority stance and in full buying into Me Generation priorities . We see that in the inciting incident of the film , the way Matthew ’s friend and carbon monoxide - worker Elizabeth ( Brooke Adams ) no longer recognizes her husband . Like hippies becoming yuppies overnight , he ’s been replaced .
While the originalInvasionleft the actual trunk snatch to the resource , Kaufman ’s makes it monstrously explicit . The limited outcome are remarkable in their disgusting tactual elaborateness : When , around the Battle of Midway detail , the pods in Matthew ’s garden candid , shed squealing , conceptualise quasi - world , it ’s as if we ’re witness the birth of the practical effects rebirth of the 1980s . ( Was this the source of Rob Bottin ’s likewise jaw - dropping delineation of shapeshifting exotic sprightliness inThe Thinga few years later on ? ) Kaufman also hands his invader that insensate enchantress , the chilling unkeyed scream the snatch emit when they ’ve blemish the un - snatched . Fifteen years later , Abel Ferrara would continue that sonic effect for his ownBody Snatchersremake .
The creature - lineament panorama are not bad and creepy , but the real power ofInvasion of the Body Snatchersis in the realization of the characters ’ fears : Just because you ’re paranoid does n’t mean the seedcase the great unwashed are n’t really after you . The first hour of the moving picture throbs like a quicken beat , as the evidence of ominous machinations mounts . More formidable than those glistening alien bodies are scenes like the one where Sutherland ’s inspector talks with a dry cleaner convert that his wife is n’t really his married woman anymore . “ I keep seeing these people , all recognise each other , ” Elizabeth says . “ Something ’s pass between them , some secret . ” The matter aboutBody Snatchersas a assumption is that it ’s endlessly malleable , interpretatively verbalize ( there ’s a reason they ’ve made so many translation ) , but the crux of the material is a primal veneration beyond noetic thought — the bone - deep terror that no one is who they claim to be . The 2nd one-half of the film realise that on a grand , nail - pungent shell , as the characters endeavor to take flight a San Francisco that ’s become one big , parasitic organism .
As a thriller , Invasion of the Body Snatchersis fundamentally arrant : The electric discharge of the game from steady fasten suspense to extended pursual sequence has never really been matched . But like that infamous dog - man thing — a mistake of the cloning process — that scampers in to blow Matthew and Elizabeth ’s cover , the motion-picture show is a transmissible loanblend of genres . Beneath its expert blend of body revulsion , H.G. Wellsian sci - fi , and cabal thriller , Invasion of the Body Snatchersworks splendidly as a sly sarcasm of a society hooked on self - assistance and New Age platitudes , as embodied by a damningly coherent Leonard Nimoy . What are the pod multitude but malevolent life coach , helping humanity permanently shed their messy , inconvenient emotional baggage ?
And on another grade still , Invasion of the Body Snatchersworks as a ecstatic romance . While the world is swallowed by an invasive species , Matthew and Elizabeth confess their feelings for each other , a friendship blossoming into something more on the evening of human beings ’s full absorption into a hive . Sutherland and Adams have a warm , casual chemical science that betrays the truth about their relationship before their fictitious character dare speak it . So does the vista where Matthew discover himself incapable of destruct the near perfect , slumbering doppelganger of the charwoman he have sex . Their climactic declaration of devotion is like a demise rattling for mankind , beautiful and tragical .
It ’s Sutherland , working at the height of his skills , who anchorsInvasion of the Body Snatchers . It ’s a full movie - star performance , have the absolute most out of his shaggy ’ 70s sexual practice solicitation , his word , his wit . More than that , he becomes a kind of embassador for humanity ’s messy worth , embodying all the quality we stand to drop off if the seedpod citizenry complete their refinement communications protocol . Therein lies the intestine punch of the unforgettable termination , undiminished by a million out - of - circumstance memes : As Donald Sutherland goes , so go humanity .
