Synopsis
An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
Directed by Charles Burnett
An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.
Matador de ovejas, Schafe töten, 양 도살자, Вбивця овець, 杀羊人, O Matador de Ovelhas, Забойщик овец, Koyun Katili, 殺羊人, キラー・オブ・シープ
I grew up in a South Central L.A. ghetto neighborhood — on the corner of 59th Street and Slauson Avenue, to be specific. Every day seemed as trivial as the last. I was never aware of the constant danger surrounding me. I didn't even have an inkling of my family's own poverty, though I had my suspicions that, crammed as we were, three to a room (in a cold apartment that only had two bedrooms and one bathroom for 6 people), we were not exactly middle-class. Even though my parents could tell I was going ... somewhere (and even though they fought to get me where I am today), it was all behind-the-scenes for ten-year-old me. As far as I…
Nothing happens. It's perfect.
I think everyone, at some time, has fantasised about making a film like Killer of Sheep. Not necessarily when they were in a creative mood, just when they were hanging out with friends or walking through their neighbourhood and just observing life, and thinking "Why does no-one make a film that's like this?" The thing is, it's almost impossible to make - unless you're Charles Burnett.
Burnett opens with a sterling example of Derek Cianfrance's rule about a great opening shot teaching you how to watch the movie. A young man, in close-up, shot in lustrous high-contrast black and white, with what seems to be an angry inner voice berating him. Then Burnett pulls out a…
watched this for class and when the movie was done, the prof asked, "so who is the sheep, really, and who is the killer?"
the power is in the images, not the movement. there is no set story or plot. this is a piece about a community and a mindset and a family just trying to survive. the weary, slumped shoulders of the slaughterhouse worker is contrasted with children leaping from roof to roof. a motor that could have brought prosperity breaks and sheep are led to slaughter. the images are discordant but related- they stare into your soul as the (outstanding) soundtrack plays in the background.
brutally neo-realistic, it's spare enough to become harsh poetry. burnett does not editorialize. he does not explain so much as he lets you feel. the camera meanders around and strings day to day life together, letting the…
A low-rise monolith that looms over modern film history, and granted inspiration to those filmmakers who reached out to it (and knew where to find it). Fragmented, fraught, elusive, beautiful.
"The film’s saddest moment is a moving single take of Stan and his wife dancing—well, more like softly swaying while embracing—in their bedroom to the sound of Dinah Washington singing 'This Bitter Earth.' The song, like the movie, is a plaintive piece of romantic realism that itself recognizes how life can often feel like a dead end."
Full review here.
burnett is so great with quotidian textures. i was especially moved by the warmth of a tea cup to a cheek, the sunlight making halos behind children’s afros, light peeking through between two bodies embraced in a slow dance and then a scene carrying on past a romantic needledrop...
16mm. MoMA.
The land where dreams go to die, full of slaughtered promises. Neo-realism in its finest form.
I think we have watched this film as much as anyone. It surprises me when people write that they don't see a storyline. Yes, the film is primarily a poetic vision of children and how they experience life: the games, the danger, and the tears. But life's harshness has led to father Stan's inability to sleep, his numbness to everything around him, even his beautiful wife. Yet he retains his integrity throughout it all, and keeps trying, past the failings, such as with the engine. Even after a failed trip out of the neighborhood, there's a new pregnancy that gives hope for the future. And at the very end, he sees his wife and daughter, and there's finally a slight…
A house with no base seems to hover above the trampled dirt, rusty wrenches, and scrap metal surrounding it. Dog mask to hide the teardrops. See a man; shake a hand. Minding the gaps and clearing them. Contriving a crooked smile. Holy motor, blocks busted; no use now. Shirtless and slow dancing, she feels my skin, rough as a ram horn; her fingers are a crisp sip of cool water in the dregs of August. Lives like dried dust of this bitter earth, that is, forgotten, stowed away like sheep to the slaughter.
this cautious ennui of poverty that seeps in through makeshift spaces and broken promises -- "that's the way nature is." the ironic refrain of music emerging from inside docu-drama surfaces aligns burnett's film with both a populist vernacular and the alienated post-war tradition, i felt killer of sheep was quite close to the loose qualities of king vidor's the crowd and susumu hani's she and he, a type of cinema that calculatedly presents the feeling of spontaneous action and rides that tension. the matchcuts that burnett employs are very lively and give definitive formal shape to a seemingly 'plotless' film, and i adore the warmth of this film's black & white off-center compositions, there are several 70s trends in cinematography that i feel were deleterious to cinematic language writ large, but burnett avoids all of them and constructs his own unsteady beauty.