The new 4K restoration of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep is essential viewing for any lover of American cinema. Burnett’s debut feature was selected as one of the fifty films to initially be preserved by the Library of Congress. It has been lauded by critics as historically and aesthetically significant since its premiere in 1978. However, like many of Burnett’s films, it struggled to find distribution due to his extensive use of jazz and blues standards culled from his family’s record collection. Unable to pay the copyright claims for the music, the film was unfortunately trapped in limbo for decades. Killer of Sheep is not solely important for its portrayal of life in Watts County, Los Angeles, during the 1970s, but also for Burnett’s communal approach to production. His aim was to empower his community to represent and express themselves. The extras in one scene would hold boom mics or lighting equipment in others. Adopting these strategies and methods from Italian Neorealists like Robertio Rossalini, Burnett treated filmmaking as a tool for social change. Rossalini’s films like Rome, Open City, and Paisan were shot on location in the streets, used non-actors, and displayed scenes of the struggles facing working class people in post-fascist Italy. Killer of Sheep emerged from the same impulse nearly two decades later. Burnett’s juggernaut debut feature film is just as relevant today as it was in the 1970s.

        Killer of Sheep has an elliptical structure which primarily follows Stan, his wife, his teenage son, and his young daughter. Their stories are interspersed with vignettes of neighbors, friends, and other community members. Overall, it paints a portrait of the people and places Burnett grew up alongside. He cut through to the reality of their situation by juxtaposing the strain of adulthood with fun, chaotic, and lackadaisical depictions of childhood.

        The film opens with a flashback of an elder son being chastised by his parents for not defending his younger brother. The camera lingers on the boy’s weeping face (a running motif throughout the film). This culminates in a stern slap delivered from the father and he instructs his son that once he and his mother die, his brother will be the only person left for him in the world. It is a stark introduction in its unflinching honesty and establishes the central thesis of the movie: family is the only thing you really have in life.

        Burnett transitions to a shot of Stan drinking coffee in his kitchen, unable to sleep due to increasing anxiety and depression. Stan trudges through life in a daze. In contrast to everyone around him who is expressive and vibrant, Stan is muted and restrained in his actions and speech. His wife laments that he used to smile and be vivacious. He hasn’t been the same since taking his current job at the abattoir. The grueling work certainly might be wearing him down, but really it seems like society itself is grinding him down to the bone.

        Stan’s weakening resolve drags everyone around him further down, as we see his wife desperately attempt to connect with her husband again. Their most romantic interaction of the film is the most revealing and tragic. In the darkened living room, husband and wife slow dance together. No dialogue is uttered between the two, only unreciprocated glances and awkwardly loving touches. You can feel the chemistry and understanding in their familiarity with each other’s bodies. Yet, the gestures of romances are executed mechanically like a routine. There is no more passion. These two are grasping at the memories of their love. It is heartbreaking.

        Killer of Sheep portrays numerous perspectives of adult life. Some people like Stan work hard while others consider work to be a sucker’s bet. Instead, they are willing to do anything to survive and get ahead. In one instance, we see Stan approached by some acquaintances who proposition him to take part in a robbery. Stan rejects their advances until his wife angrily interrupts them. She chastises them for their duplicity. The two men counter that they live in a duplicitous society. They aren’t bad men; they are just ahead of the curve; they’ve adapted to their environment. Who are we to judge how another person survives in America? This cutthroat attitude towards life doesn’t emerge out of a vacuum. It is a lesson learned in childhood–which Burnett reveals throughout the film as well.

        The most iconic scene of adolescence shows some children leaping overhead from one roof to the next. They soar above it all, seemingly not weighed down like the adults around them. Killer of Sheep documents childhood as a time of great joy, pain, and boredom. Proof positive is a moment when the boys build up a tower from discarded planks pulled off an abandoned building. The boys sit on a wall and hurl rocks at their construction as music swells and a turn of the twentieth-century jazz standard proudly sings “That’s America, to me!” This fleeting moment displays Burnett’s mastery of film editing as it puts into stark contrast the work ethic and initiative the boys show in their casual recreation with the desolate future they face growing up in the United States.

        The boys find all manner of ways to pass the time, fighting, biking around aimlessly, and participating in poorly judged and ill-conceived handstand contests. At times, fun gives way to fear or pain such as a moment early on when a group of boys have a battle in an abandoned lot. The scene opens with the frame cut in half by a rotted wooden board, an errant hand gripping it in place. A mischievous face peeks out, ducking the rocks hurled at him. Other boys join in a makeshift formation and advance forward. Protected from the rocks, the boys overcome the gravel hill and strike back at their attackers. However, their victory is undermined when the youngest is thrown to the ground and begins to cry in distress. Everyone stops and pulls the boy up. He is told to stop his crying and toughen up. It is a lesson that young boys learn, still to this day. The group of boys pull him up from the dirt and they all move on, looking for something else to do. Burnett doesn’t romanticize suffering nor reduces his characters to mere symbols of suffering. Suffering is a fact of life; Burnett is interested in how people survive their suffering. His character’s desire to live is hopeful at the end of the day. They find reasons to continue forging on in spite of their suffering.

        Burnett reveals fragments of the butchering routine of the sheep across the entire film. Each fragment unveils more of the bloody, sweaty work required to put meat into supermarkets—notably ones which our protagonist cannot afford. In Burnett’s film, personal problems spiral out into societal ones. The film ends with the actual killing of the sheep. The killing is industrial, detached, and cold. The sheep are corralled in a tight, tapered pen where they march, single file to be killed by a hammer blow to the head. This moment isn’t about moral posturing. Rather, it is a critique of the cruelty of industrial capitalism which treats both people and sheep as completely disposable commodities. Both sacrifice their bodies for the sake of production. This ending really is remarkable as Burnett seamlessly weaves poverty, alienation, race, industrial farming, and so many more social issues within the United States into a fragmented portrait of a community.

 John Thomure is a performance artist and writer currently based in Chicago. His performance and writing practices fixate on local art history, ecology, and exploring underappreciated artists and their archives.