Here is
the IMDb’s description of Charles Burnett’s
Killer of Sheep (1978):
Set in the Watts area of Los Angeles, a slaughterhouse worker must suspend his emotions to continue working at a job he finds repugnant, and then he finds he has little sensitivity for the family he works so hard to support.
I saw the movie almost twenty years ago. I gained little from it, which was my fault. I might have payed closer attention to
Roger Ebert’s review.
It also might have helped to have been familiar with two of Burnett’s later, smaller pictures:
When It Rains (1995; 13 m.) and
The Final Insult (1997; 55 m.). The lead actor in both short movies is Ayuko Babu. Los Angeles is the setting.
Three elements of
The Killer of Sheep are present, to a greater or lesser degree, in both shorter movies: the episodic nature of the storytelling, the judicious use of music, and the blending of “acted” and “candid” footage.
When It Rains is the most accessible of the trio. The plot is simple. A woman and her daughter are evicted from their apartment. The woman tracks down a jazz musician (Babu) and asks for help. The jazz musician talks to the landlord, who refuses to budge. (He is “crazed,” the jazz musician mutters, perhaps slightly unreasonably.) The jazz musician goes around to various acquaintances to raise funds “for a Sister.” Most refuse. A kindly scrapyard worker gives a few dollars. This money is subsequently – and humorously – lost. Reconciliation with the landlord, when achieved, is not financial; it occurs because the jazz musician is able to find common cultural ground with the landlord. It’s not enough that all of the characters are Black; they have to like the same music. The jazz musician reflects that he was fortunate not to have been seen carrying a hip-hop record.
In
The Final Insult, Babu plays a banker who advises business owners to hire temporary workers in order to avoid paying taxes and employee benefits. At the end of his shift, the banker goes to his car. This is where he resides. He may have a job and wear a white shirt and a tie, but he is homeless (or quasi-homeless). The car is not in good shape. The banker is one breakdown from disaster.
Blended with this story are interviews with and “candid” footage of real homeless people of various racial and class backgrounds. The point of these grueling passages, I guess, is to show that homelessness is no joke.
When It Rains is about the threat of homelessness, but it’s easy to watch because it’s funny.
The Final Insult contains passages of poetry and piquant irony. But these are swamped by the prosaic bitterness of real people’s sufferings.
The banker is not a real person,
as Jonathan Rosenbaum points out. His misadventures become more fanciful as the movie goes on. I don’t believe the banker is meant to invoke our sympathy. He is “most of us” – but we are unlikely to admit it. He symbolizes a transitional status. He is a prosperous person fallen on hard times who retains a bourgeois attitude. An automobile user, he is, for the time being, insulated from the horror of forced pedestrianism in a traffic-heavy society. Other homeless people react angrily when, after he loses this insulation, he calls for revolution.
Intriguingly, the theme of finding common ground through music is revisited. Another homeless character – a (possibly educated) white man – sings Korean ballads at a bus stop to a group of Korean women. They are charmed.
How do you know this music?, they ask.
From listening to records, he says. The man also sings Italian opera songs, and he can speak Spanish.
But although this man’s encounters are uniformly positive, they provide no lasting material relief. He remains homeless. The question is whether positivity and human connection can be enough. The movie doesn’t say.
Open-ended and loosely structured, the two short movies do manage to say a good deal. One is pleasing; the other is a downright slog. Considering them together is more enlightening than considering them apart.