Baa Baa Black Sheep

I vaguely recall this show from the 70s starring Robert Conrad. It was set, if memory serves, during WW2.

But that's not what this is about.

It's a review of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (I call it KOS from now on).
In KOS, Charles Burnett, the director, chronicles the life of Stan and his family. To give you a sense of the history, this was a student film running about an hour and a half. This was filmed in 1977, when a little film called Star Wars came out.

The film has a timeless quality. Because it's in black and white, it feels, at times, much like it's the 1950s or the 1940s instead of the mid-70s.

There is no plot, per se. It shows snippets of the life of Stan, a hardworking man, whose trying to do well for his family, but in the end, struggles in poverty. After some time, you see that he works in a slaughterhouse where he slaughters sheep. Among the few white characters (with no speaking parts) are the other folks in the slaughterhouse.

These scenes occupy very little screentime, but have a lyrical quality, as the sheep don't realize they are being slaughtered. I suspect, with Stan working there, that Charles Burnett lays some blame of the plight of African Americans (effectively, the sheep) on African Americans themselves.

Burnett is not at all overtly political. It doesn't give a particular reason why these folks are struggling, merely that they are. The characters don't ascribe much blame, not to the white folks, for their situations. Indeed, by spending most of its time in black communities, you see kids that seem on the verge of destroying themselves, though mostly in the name of play.

Early on, kids are tossing stones at signs, at railcars, at one another. We're not even to the point where they imagine they'll be NBA stars. All the while, they lack the means to get ahead. The choices seem to be: stealing, killing someone, gambling, and working hard. Working hard, while given some credibility, is contrasted with its general ineffectiveness. To be fair, the other ways (gambling and stealing) don't appear to work well except people seem to be dressed "better" (at least, in a 1970s urban sort of way).

Most of the times, we observe. Kids are pretty anonymous, but may indicate the cycle of doing nothing. The parents do nothing. The kids do nothing. In one scene, the kids are playing, two older girls are doing disco, hips colliding, when a kid rolls in on his bike and insults the girls. They knock him off his bike, and he begins to cry and runs off, the front tire of his bike having also fallen off. The girl yells at him to get his "raggedy bike".

Another scene has a kid sitting underneath a train, as other kids attempt (unsuccessfully) to push the train so it rolls over the kid. The kid seems to think it's all in fun. Another scene has kids throwing stones at one another, like a scene from 300, with improvised shields.

Kids play in abandoned buildings as if it were a war zone. And yet, the tone isn't very bleak. Other than the taunting, the kids seem to be having fun. They may represent the innocent sheep that are being sent to the slaughter.

Many of the observations made then seem to hold true now, the grumblings of trying to make it in the world, the isolated view of the outside world, women who yell at their men, men who yell at their women, worrying about being presentable (scenes of men picking their afro, women trying to put makeup on).

Burnett overlays music from pieces of the 70s, to older pieces, including a song about "What America Means To Me", which seems ironic (the usual virtues of America, overlaid with the empty lives people are leading), as well as some classical music.

If anything, the sheep represents an innocence that is perhaps mythical, innocence being destroyed.

Burnett has a delicate touch. He lingers on many scenes letting us watch the struggle (one scene where two guys bring a heavy engine down the stairs to a truck, until, due to injury, they don't push the engine far enough in, and it falls and cracks, making the entire effort futile--it's done with such a light touch, you don't think it's symbolic, even though it is).

Burnett also creates bizarre scenes that jar the otherwise naturalistic feel. The daughter that wears a dog mask. Kids coming out of a hole from a house. Long shots of kids running, throwing stones, standing on roofs.

You feel, at times, that the film is going to burst out into violence. Someone's going to get killed. In one scene, kids jump across rooftops, and you think that yeah, this is how urban kids might play, but no one gets killed, no violence. It's all the more amazing as many a director falls to the temptation of violence because they can get great impact (Scorsese, Tarantino). Much harder to make a film that seems to suggest there will be violence, but doesn't have much of it.

I suppose one could point out things that don't appear. Remember when Spike Lee made a film without drugs and was criticized. There isn't really much drug use in the film, nor, as mentioned earlier, criticism of white America.

Even so, it portrays a society that tries to make do, but in the end, is living without much hope, and yet, somehow, it's not relentlessly downbeat. As much as their lives are bleak, they go on living. Indeed, it's suggested early on "why don't you kill yourself", and yet, they don't. The pain of living is not so great. But perhaps, like the sheep, they have no idea they are being slaughtered.