Killer of Sheep Release Date: March 30, 2007 Starring: Henry Gayle Sanders, Kaycee Moore, Charles Bracy, Angela Burnett, Gene Cherry Directed by: Charles Burnett
Thirty years after its creation, Charles Burnett's debut feature still hits with the force of revelation. A mere 80 minutes long, shot in crisp, deep, black and white, Killer of Sheep immediately casts a peculiar spell that by the end leaves you not only emotionally charged because of the people and places and events you've seen, but filled with a new sense of what movies are and what they can do.
Beginning with a stark, claustrophobic scene of an African-American man furiously scolding his son, Sheep then serves up a torrent of imagery that suggests what Zero For Conduct might have looked like had Jean Vigo been a black filmmaker in the Southern California of the late '70s. Groups of poor kids playing by railroad tracks, hurling dirt and rocks at each other, concocting desultory games; all this unfolds without hurry, simultaneously conveying the glory of being alive and the misery of life without means.
Soon a narrative begins to emerge, focusing on Stan (Gayle Sanders), who works in a meat-processing plant — he is seen hosing down the killing floor as well as herding and executing the title sheep— has a rundown house, a couple of kids, a wife (Moore) whom he sometimes regards with a disinterest that fuels her resentment, some ne'er-do-well pals... all of what Stan's got is conveyed in a series of seemingly random scenes. One such sequence, involving Stan's purchase of a car motor, is a tragicomic exercise in futility at every level, as is a scene in which Stan and some friends set out for a racetrack. There are moments of tenderness, as when Stan dances with his wife to Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth," and moments of what should be banal exchanges that become filled with discomfiting tension, as when Stan goes to cash a check at the local liquor store and receives a proposal from its proprietor.
In pulling all these fragments together, Burnett creates an insistently poetic, devastatingly ironic world and work. This picture received scant distribution at the time of its making, and has been restored by UCLA and is now getting a high-profile arthouse release through the good issue of Milestone Films and Steven Soderbergh. Anyone with a passion for cinema of both the past and the future owes it to herself to see it.
READ MORE: Critic's Choice: Best of 2007
