LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT OSCAR FOR SUTHERLAND LONG OVERDUE
Some praise for this underappreciated star of films from Bethune to The Hunger Games
When the board of governors of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences announced recently that Donald Sutherland would be the recipient of an Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement, some of us felt a little like we did when Tim Raines was finally elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame: justified.
Neither Raines nor Sutherland are Montrealers in the true sense of the word, but we continue to think of them as local heroes.
Sutherland was one of the Expos’ biggest fans, a familiar figure sitting there in the front row over the dugout at Jarry Park, cheering on the boys, finding his Zen zone just as his hero, Andre Dawson, was finding his.
Later, there were the days when Sutherland was here a lot to make movies: The Art of War, Hollow Point, Natural Enemy. … At least they didn’t scare off the Academy, which clearly chose to look at his other work: The Dirty Dozen, Klute, M*A*S*H, Ordinary People, Don’t Look Now, A Dry White Season, Fellini’s Casanova, 1900 and others.
The list of the directors Sutherland has worked with over the years reflects the panorama of his talent: the comic, the scary, the goofballs, the cynics, the tyrants, the lovers, the seducers. Of course there is that voice, a voice that sold insurance and Volvos and could probably sell pretty much anything.
And in return, Sutherland offered those directors, apart from his talent and dedication, a rare form of loyalty, gratitude and respect by naming his children after them, Roeg, Kiefer, Angus and Rossif.
We met for the first time in an elevator in the Kunlun Hotel in 1986. We had both just arrived in Beijing, him to play Dr. Norman Bethune, his hair cut just like the dashingly bald Bethune. He was slouched over but still loomed large, an impression that was accentuated by the fact that he was whippet thin, as if he had just done a fair bit of the Long March, even though shooting had yet to start.
I introduced myself. He was not friendly. When I asked how he was doing, he replied, “I would kill for an avocado.” I knew then and there that the production was in for a bumpy few months.
Later, I was walking near the hotel. Beijing in 1986 was a sea of bicycles, cars a rarity. Seeing him dressed as Dr. Bethune, sitting on his bicycle and, at 6 feet 4 inches, atop everyone else within viewing distance on a Beijing boulevard, is a mental picture I still have.
A whole new generation now knows him as President Snow in The Hunger Games franchise. In these movies, nobody looks like he is having more fun than Sutherland, filling the screen the way an actor playing a character whose first name is Coriolanus would be expected to.
In 2016, when he was on the jury of the Cannes Film Festival, during the jury press conference he was asked about Canadian cinema.
“I gave up talking about the Canadian film industry … a long time ago,” he said to the great amusement of the assembled. He continued. Three soldiers — a Frenchman, a Brit and a Canadian — are captured and sentenced to death, he said. Just before the rifles are loaded, they are accorded one last request.
The Brit orders tea, the Canadian asks for 15 minutes to discuss Canadian identity and the Frenchman asks to be shot before the Canadian.
Not a bad joke for a guy who is not famous for his quips.
He is now a resident of Miami Beach, but I assume he still loves to give people his address in Georgeville on Lake Memphremagog in the Eastern Townships.
“Just write D. Sutherland and add the postal code, no number, no street,” he once told me.
Well, D. Sutherland, congratulations on a lifetime of great work: 140 movies and still counting. There is bound to be a bow wow here and there, but seriously, what a career.
There are rumours of a new baseball franchise here. Maybe we will see you once more behind a dugout, though I would prefer to see you in another great role, one that shows your Canadian identity so you won’t have to talk about it.
Donald Sutherland will receive his Honorary Oscar at a gala dinner on Nov. 11 in Los Angeles.