Killer of Sheep

This film was written,directed,produced,etc. by a UCLA film student in 1973, but only given a brief run in theaters four years later, after which was plunked back in the can to sit on a shelf for nearly 30 years. I just had the opportunity to see this grainy, kitchen sink black & white film at one of my local art cinemas. I admired the visual look of this film (very do it yourself), and admired the concept of an ensemble piece ('tho without the use of Altmanesque over lapping). I admit, I found some of the dialouge unintelligible (due to the poor recording of the soundtrack---I'm guessing who ever operated the microphone picking up dialouge didn't have much experience in this field). The use of music in this film was well implemented (which ranges from classical to soul to blues and beyond). 'Killer Of Sheep' is a flawed, but none the less, watchable film that should be viewed by any & all serious film fanatics (and should also be screened during Black History Month, as a timeline of creative black cinema).

I couldn't wait to see this movie when it came to town. I only read about it in magazines. I've never knowingly seen a movie before that has been declared a national treasury by the national film registry.

The first thing that stood out for me is the way the kids were playing. I pictured myself playing those games and wearing those clothes. The editing of the film is nothing like what happens in todays movies. Our attention span is much too short. There is a scene where two men are carrying an engine down a flight of stairs and into the back of a truck. The camera holds while the men struggle to carry it, pausing in mid-flight for a rest and then continuing on. This film is very real in the sense of how the neighborhoods looked back then and the struggles with money and staying on your feet. Even though I am not from the area, this film reminded me in some ways of how I grew up. I wasn't born yet when this film was in production.

My expectations were set very high for this film because of its previous awards. I started to wonder why it was selected for the national film registry. Possibly because it showed what the area looked like in the post-watts riot era, or was it a film that was created in the blaxploitation era but set itself apart from other films, or did it have to do with watching how kids grow up or how African-Americans were living at the time. I could be unfairly trying to compare this film with the movies that are block busters in our current time. Make sure you see this film.

Yes, can be cold. Young, soon too old. What a wonderful song and film as this song.

This is the picture here; a life of drab, interminable drudgery, hard work when it does come by and small pleasure, perhaps only the slow dance before the window. They will tell you the attempt here is for neorealism, and you will maybe note how the palette and commentary has been later studied by other prominent directors, black or not. Not so here. Our gain is that it's by a filmmaker who still hasn't learned too much about the craft to lose the innocence of looking and the commitment to keep doing so. Who doesn't have a hell of a lot to say and just wants to film. And who maybe knows this life and neighborhood intimately enough to take us to where it's ordinary and real.

All things considered, it's an evocative portrait of life at the outskirts. It's raw and affective in ways that Malick had to train himself over the years to accomplish. And that Jarmusch and Gordon Green (George Washington) only mechancically repeated in later years. It is about nothing in the sense that every life is, there is no story outside what we choose to remember as one.

So this earth can be cold. But maybe not so bitter after all. It's a moment of happiness that new life is finally on the way. Are they crazy? Who'd be happy to bring a child into this? Things don't work when they should, it's all an uphill struggle to even drive to the racetrack. Love grows distant and sullen. But the kids are playing everywhere you can find them. Young, soon too old. But happy that each one gets to go through it this once?

One of the things I found interesting and original about this film was the ironic and off-kilter use of music. The underscoring includes whistling and other disconcerting sounds that go against the standard, traditional cinematic grain. While black children play in the desolate Los Angeles cityscape we hear on the soundtrack Paul Robeson's recording of "The House I Live In," a song from 1945 that deals with the ideal of racial harmony in America; what a contrast between this high-minded song and the brutal reality of 30 years later. A scene of children throwing rocks at a passing train looks like a newsreel from one of any number of modern African countries in the grip of civil war and poverty. Director Charles Burnett faithfully and accurately captures the texture of daily life in a 70s slum where life is merely existence sustained by a vague but constant hope that things will improve one way or another. The domestic scenes are painful to watch, so barren and stunted are the characters' lives. Similar territory has been explored surrealistically by David Lynch (ERASERHEAD), satirically by John Waters (PINK FLAMINGOS) and with wry formality by Jim Jarmusch (STRANGER THAN PARADISE) but Burnett treats it as cinema verite.

Unfortunately the technical level of this film is only so-so (yes, I realize this was a student thesis project). Although the shots are interestingly composed, usually starting with a close up that makes you wonder what you are looking at and then widening to give you a context, the uneven sound recording and poor diction of several performers distance the viewer.

I think that for showing us the reality of this particular cluster of humanity at this particular time in history KILLER OF SHEEP deserves the attention it has been getting,

Stan works in drudgery at a slaughterhouse. His personal life is drab. Dissatisfaction and ennui keep him unresponsive to the needs of his adoring wife, and he must struggle against influences which would dishonor and endanger him and his family.

Film critic Dana Stevens describes the film's plot as "a collection of brief vignettes which are so loosely connected that it feels at times like you're watching a non-narrative film." There are no acts, plot arcs or character development, as conventionally defined.

What happens in this film is not a documentary, but in many ways it may as well be. How many films really focus on the black community anywhere at any point in time? Very few. And this one does that, in all its gritty and glamorless reality.