Killer of Sheep.
The first time I saw Killer of Sheep, I was an early twenty-something living in Iowa City. I’d gone with my friend to this theatre that plays films like this one, independent films that are quiet and beautiful and aren’t always so neatly tied up with a bow by the end. Independent films that are sometimes more about aesthetic and feeling and gaining your own meaning from a thing, as opposed to having that meaning very clearly explained to you. I like films like that (books too, poetry), films that seem to suggest that you can take what you will from them, that if you walk away without quite getting it, maybe that’s the point.
In my early twenties, watching this movie, I liked it for sure. I liked how weird it was especially—the long shot of the young daughter with a dog mask on, just looking. What does it mean that she’s wearing this dog mask? Why is she staring at her family for so long? A dog doesn’t come back and bite the family or bite the girl, there is no neat A to B with this choice—it’s just a choice, and Charles Burnett knows what it means (if it means anything. Maybe if we watch long enough, it’ll start to dawn on us too.
I liked how weird the movie was, and I liked that everyone in it was Black and that they didn’t seem to be performing for anyone but themselves. It felt like an inside joke in that way, a story for people who already know the story, and again, this is why I love independent movies, independent stories: they seem less anxious to prove something to onlookers, less worried about teaching them a lesson, about coming off as mature and healed by the end.
I didn’t get it when I watched this film the first time, but I definitely liked it. I still might not get it now that I’ve watched it again, but I’d like to think I understand it more and perhaps for this reason also like it more.
I like that in the midst of Black films from the ‘70s (we’ve got Sweetback, we’ve got Shaft, we’ve got Coffy), here is a man who is not really a hero and definitely not on the run to or from anywhere. Here is a man who stays put, and though he doesn’t have the gusto to go, he isn’t particularly thrilled to be here saddled with a dead end job, with a wife and kids and friends just as stuck. He’s depressed, but not in a way that makes him violent. Instead, he won’t sleep with his wife, he won’t smile much, he won’t move about—he just goes to and from his job, killing sheep. (He also very obviously is one of those sheep headed to slaughter, even if this is not happening in any fast-paced way, even if it will be decades before he gets there.)
Not only is he depressed, but he’s also misunderstood. He tries to tell his friend that the steam from his coffee cup feels like the breath of the other person when you’re making love, and he’s so tender in his explanation, in his point, that it seems he just might emerge from his funk, except then his friend laughs heartily in his face and instead he retreats back into himself.
He’s depressed and he’s misunderstood, but his wife likely isn’t the reason. She is absolutely lovely in this film. Neither soft and pandering nor hard and humiliating, she is both strong and tender. At one point, she tells these men who are trying to get her husband to help with a robbery that there are other ways to be a man than to be so rough and tumble, so tough and impossible to talk to. She asks them if they know how to talk to people—that that makes you a man as much anything. She is strong, firm, but later in the film, when she’s trying, yet again, to get her husband out of his funk, she slow dances with him and the way she holds him is so full of love and desire without becoming dependent or subservient. I don’t know how I didn’t know about her—about Burnett’s ability to make women characters like this, who are complete and capable on their own and also loving and lovable. Yes, maybe this is still a rare thing: portrayals of women—Black women especially—who can have both stability in and of themselves and also reach outward, bring love in.
I love the tender moodiness of this man, and I love the stable vulnerability of his wife, and I love the shots of the children throughout, how they’re wrestling each other and tough with each other, but also how they stop when someone starts to cry, check to see if they’re okay. Their roughness is laced with love in this way, and this too combines things that are usually only portrayed as either-or. Instead of I’ll push you down because I don’t care about you, these kids seem to say, I’ll push you down but not to hurt you—it’s just the only way I know how to relate. Everyone in this film seems to be like these kids, ready to face things head on one minute, finding it overwhelming the next, in need of someone to look them in their eyes and ask why they’re crying, for petty violence to somehow transform into care.
Even though I liked the film the first time I saw it, I’m closer to loving it this time. Sure, it still has its mysteries, but in the context of the other ‘70s films that I’ve seen, I appreciate Killer of Sheep for its tenderness, for its humor, and especially for its ability to keep both bravado and care, both sadness and love, within reach.
Image: Charles Burnett
