Monday, June 16, 2008
Killer of Sheep
I met Charles Burnett and saw his film Killer of Sheep back in 1978 or 79 when it was toured to universities, community centers, and museum film programs. His film took me to another world this suburban kid had no experience in, the gritty reality of South Central Los Angeles--just as Cassavetes and Bergman's films took me to a strange adult world of marital and relationship politics and Scorsese's Who's that Knocking at my Door and Mean Streets impacted me with their visceral impact of Little Italy. I remember being impressed by Killer of Sheep and have never forgot its imagery: the slaughter house, the kids throwing rocks at each other in the street, and the starkness of the black and white photography.
But mostly I remembered the little girl with her doll singing along to Earth Wind and Fire's Reasons blissed away in her own universe. When I saw this scene again on the DVD, I noticed she only caught about every fifth world but comes out very strong at the la la la la chorus at the end. Her mother looks at her and smiles, approvingly perhaps, but very, very knowingly. Returning to Sheep thirty years later, I found many other sequences just as poignant and significant in feeling and in meaning.
Killer of Sheep was a memory but now that the film has been preserved, distributed in a limited 35mm run, and, most importantly, released on DVD, it belongs to all of us. It is a realistic film, but it has a poetic reality. Burnett's use of music is evocative and connective. Paul Robeson and Dinah Washington have a significant presence on the soundtrack, but also so do the blues and some classical pieces. Sheep is a film experience of mood and place.
This black Los Angeles of the seventies seems almost quaint before gang bangers, Rodney King. and crack. There are large lots and construction sites that kids play in and there is a strong sense of family and community where lead protagonists Stan's family and his neighbors are struggling on very little resources. In the title song to Superfly, Curtis Mayfield sings at the end about "Trying to get over." Stan and his family are only trying to get through and get by.
I am pleased that Sheep is back out there in the world. It deserves its place on the National Film Registry. One can look at it as a missing link in the history of black cinema between Parks-Van Peebles era and the "revolution" later led by Spike Lee, Singleton et al. And its influence is likely apparent in independent films of the past couple of decades like David Gordon Green's George Washington But mostly one should look at this film as an accomplishment on its own terms. This is one of those unique and kind of timeless cinematic experiences that has the ability to reveal more and more each time it is viewed, just as the greatest of music, poetry, and literature have that trait and capacity.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:02 PM
Comments:
Hi Bob, love your blog. It's full-on Hughes: the knowledge, the enthusiasm, the intertextuality. I know of no one else who is as knowledgeable about music and film as you are, or who is less pretensious about it. Your honest, affable, direct style is as welcoming on the blog as it is in live conversation. I salute you, amigo. Now, check out The Consummate Dabbler. I've only just begun to blog--soon I'll pick up steam. Best, Jim Finley
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