Killer of Sheep (Shauna)

In his commentary on Killer of Sheep (1977), Charles Burnett habitually downplays his own role. He seems to construe his sublime compositions and vignettes merely as true-to-life portrayals, or fictitious constructions derived from real people and real spaces. He sees himself in terms of documentation, though the film is not a documentary in the formal sense. Deft attention to environment, dialect, “invisible” characters, and the integration of improvised moments and staged scenes, illuminate Burnett’s tendency to incorporate documentary-style realism into his film texts. He speaks of lighting, framing, and collaboration with actors in terms that are pared down and frank. Perhaps the cinematic and narrative elements had always existed, and Burnett merely had the audacity to cull and splice the pieces together. There is nothing exploitative about the picture. And there is no pompous pretense to his language. Unencumbered by a monolithic artistic vision, Killer strives towards honest portraits that elicit a spectrum of potent emotions: jarring, rousing, titillating, and tragic.

Unique framing, candid blocking, and precise dialogue reflect Burnett’s discerning eye — and his ability to distill from fragmented, contradictory, disordered moments of a day or year, a coherent and lasting impression of the local world and its inhabitants. That Burnett’s work substantiates and gives voice to a group that has been historically ostracized, undermined, oversexed, or undersexed by Hollywood, represents an accomplishment independent of its artistry. Yet, even if we view Killer in a social-cultural vacuum, divested from the disparities, segregation, and inherently unequal parameters of life in the United States, the result is a stunning aesthetic achievement. Killer of Sheep plays out an urban space, interspersed with great expanses, massive trains, open lots, and construction sites resembling war zones. It incorporates elements of the Western, and of the metropolis, yet Killer transcends both of these locales, establishing a potent temporal and spatial coherence. The circumstances of this particular universe in Watts, Los Angeles, vacillate between melancholy and dark comedy. Nuclear families, neighbors, and floaters proceed through life, seemingly unencumbered by the objective eye of the camera. And it is this ambiguous balance between the despondent and the droll, which resonates with the human psyche.

The flexible, agile bodies of the children in Killer navigate their neighborhoods, forming a dynamic pattern against steeply inclined streets, construction lots, and freight trains. Their figures elicit in the viewer a sense of exuberance and compassion, interest and astonishment. We are transfixed.

Nor can the audience help but to indulge in watching the incoherent freeloader rub his face, tug at his bandage, and lick his lips. There is something fascinating about his impenetrable torpor, and the slow dolly back that reveals the car motor beside him. A woman in the same room massages lotion into her decidedly un-Hollywood legs and thighs, rippling, yet oddly enticing, nonetheless. The two figures, each surpassing the bounds of the frame, are united by an ephemeral and disconcerting jump cut that is visual shorthand for her physical blow to his bandaged head, following her comment, “You ‘bout tasteless as a carrot.” It is the odd balance between pleasure and pain that imparts such gravity to the scene. First, there is the electric thrill of her verbal quip (which, incidentally, seems both a trite cliché and a unique turn of poetry). Then, there is the visceral recoil as she delivers the blow, which is abstracted by the violent cut and Stan’s appearance at the side of the groaning, damaged, contorted body that twitches like a squashed insect. All the while, the flamboyantly dressed “uncle,” tugging at a jerrycurl and fawning over his reflection, lends ambivalent comic relief.

Bishetta Merritt has emphasized the juxtaposition of imagery from the slaughterhouse and shots of the children, who are “oblivious to the squalor and poverty around them” (2008: 113). Neither the sheep nor the children, she asserts, are cognizant of their impending demise. But such an assertion fails to convey the full richness of Burnett's visual metaphor. Moreover, the film seems to challenge such didactic principles.

Indeed, children constitute the only truly resilient force in the film's universe. Although they are not immune to suffering, they surely are not doomed. In contrast, the living sheep are inseparable from their limp, shaved counterparts hanging on prongs, or the gelatinous ovine bodies moving weirdly with the spray of the hose. The sheep connote monotony, angst, and suffering. Such qualities are evocative of the lives of adults in the film, but rarely those of children. While Stan's crisis seems uniquely “existential," most adults execute day-to-day rituals of work and family with alternatively dark and humorous perspectives.

Stylistically, the film exemplifies Burnett’s interest in capturing and conveying life in an unadulterated, unspoiled form. These lives transpire in a tactile, emotional, and architectural environment irrefutably linked to his own childhood.

Parallels between the open environments of the Italian neorealists and Burnett’s Watts emerge early in the film and constitute a sustained motif. Burnett, like the neorealists, delights in gritty, naturalistic landscapes. Indeed, part of what makes Killer of Sheep so intriguing is the constant interchange of locations. Although there is a degree of continuity (the camera never ventures beyond a particular cultural and social universe), there is a surprising multiplicity of spaces. Burnett acknowledges that his familiarity with the neighborhoods afforded him a variety of locations for shooting. Although he is ostensibly the master of this realm, he never overtly directs us in how we should judge the space and the individuals who inhabit it. We empathize with Stan, yet never fully understand the social or clinical origins of his depression. Likewise, we identify with the old man who witnesses a burglary across the alley, yet his departure from the yard to contact law enforcement does not seem exactly heroic.

We are complicit in the crime insofar as we recognize it would be a shame to disrupt what Burnett has orchestrated: the balanced composition, with the thieves running down the street, heavy T.V. in tow. Why sacrifice this robbery-dance to bureaucracy and justice? Anyway, the police would likely spawn new problems for the neighborhood.

 

 

Comments

[p.a.]

Excellent writing, can't wait to see this film!