Review: Killer of Sheep (1977)

On the long commutes to and from work, I carry a book with me to pass the time. It's not usually a novel or an in-depth nonfiction work, mostly because I read all day for a living and can't take staring at page after page for extended periods of time. (And with all the work on tracks and stations that CTA is doing these days, the periods of time are extended indeed.) Short story collections are good for such long rides, as are books that don't necessarily have to be read in sequence to be enjoyed, like Max Brooks's Zombie Survival Guide.

Lately, one of my travel companions has been The A List, a collection of essays on 100 essential films by members of the National Society of Film Critics. This is not to say that these are the 100 greatest movies ever made. In his introduction, editor Jay Carr admits "no single member agrees with this list in its entirety." How could they? Everyone has his or her own individual tastes in movies; what excites one viewer will bore another. The A List includes several of my favorite movies-- Citizen Kane, Duck Soup, Night of the Living Dead and Pandora's Box--as well as a few movies I like, but don't agree with including--Enter the Dragon (a lot of fun, but not at the top of my list), Modern Times (I'd have chosen City Lights or The Gold Rush over this) and Chinatown (probably the only film in this book that I can honestly say I outright hate).

I'm familiar with nearly every film included in The A List, either because I've seen them or at least heard of them--hell, I own copies of about half of them. But there was one title that I didn't know either by sight or reputation: Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. I had heard of Burnett and some of his other work, like the excellent To Sleep with Anger or the documentary Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, but Killer of Sheep was foreign to me.

There are reasons for this. Even though Killer of Sheep, originally released in 1977, was selected for the National Film Registry in 1992 (one of the first films chosen, in fact), the movie has been out of circulation for years and has never been available on video, at least partly because of music rights (an issue that has held up the release of many movies and TV shows over the years, like SCTV, WKRP in Cincinnati and Witchfinder General). Burnett didn't employ a generic instrumental score, but specific songs for specific scenes by artists like Paul Robeson, Dinah Washington and Louis Armstrong, no doubt making it expensive to reissue.

The nature of the film itself probably didn't help. Killer of Sheep was shot in black & white and doesn't have nything you could even charitably call a plot, but instead strings together vignettes displaying life (or what passes for life) in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, centering around African-American slaughterhouse worker Stan (Henry G. Sanders) and his family, friends and acquaintances; it doesn't end so much as it stops observing. In a decade that gave birth to Blaxpoitation, Killer of Sheep must have been an impossible sell.

Consequently, this movie was well on its way to becoming a lost film, a fate that usually befalls much older works (including many silent films) whose film stock degenerates to dust or gel. Fortunately, though, the UCLA Film Archive, with funding from multiple sources (including my favorite cable channel, Turner Classic Movies), restored the print and untangled the music rights so that Killer of Sheep could gets its first proper nationwide release 30 years after the fact.

In Chicago, Killer of Sheep opened in the classic Music Box Theatre, and when I went to see it there it wasn't playing in the generous main auditorium (one of the few old-school movie houses to escape being carved into smaller screens), but in the smaller, more intimate side screening room. I hadn't seen a movie in that room since an ill-fated viewing of the beautifully restored print of Metropolis several years ago. I'd just come from having drinks with my best friend and the woman I was head-over-heels (or was that head-up-ass?) for. She talked about the man she'd fallen in love with (not me); I asked my best friend for his take on the situation; he told me hard truths; I cried most of the rest of that evening, and nearly all the way through Fritz Lang's silent classic.

There were no tears in the mostly full screening room this day, though--only nods of appreciation at what Burnett was going for. He wasn't trying to tell a story, at least not in the conventional sense, but to show an oppressive way of life that sucks the will and hope out of all who have to live it. Stan comes home exhausted, can't sleep and barely has the energy to talk to, much less dance with, his wife. The neighborhood children (including Stan's son and daughter) play in the alleys and empty lots, having rock fights from behind plywood shields and leaping from one rooftop to another, risking certain death if they fall.

Burnett observes the casual cruelty children visit upon one another, like throwing stones and dirt at a little girl whose only crime is that she was hanging wash on the line at exactly the wrong time, as well as the more carefully considered (but no less wounding) cruelty of adults. He also inserts scenes from the slaughterhouse where Stan works, with the Judas goat leading the sheep to their fate and the employees (including the only whites seen in the film) operating the equipment and cleaning the meat hooks

There are also moments of humor for both the young and the old-before-their-time; some of those moments are downright surreal, like when Stan's daughter walks around the house and yard in a rubber dog mask. There would have to be such moments where you can laugh for a minute. Otherwise, Killer of Sheep would be too stinging to watch.

As it is, with its lack of conventional plot or character arcs, not everyone will watch this movie and enjoy it. To some, it may just look like somebody's home movie, with its sometimes-grainy black & white photography and unsteady frame. But therein lies Killer of Sheep's strength--it looks and feels like real life, even if we know it's "just a movie."

Therein lies its continued relevancy as well. Neighborhoods like the one seen in Killer of Sheep existed in most major American cities long before this movie was ever made in the mid-1970s, and they have persisted in the decades since. (Stretches of Chicago's west and south sides still look like this now.) The photography gives the movie a timeless appearance; only the cars in the movie betray its date of birth, and even that can't be used as an exact measure.

Killer of Sheep could have been shot 20 years earlier than it was--or it could have been shot yesterday.