Cast:
Henry G. Sanders (Stan), Kaycee Moore (Stan's wife), Charles Bracy (Bracy), Angela Burnett (Stan's daughter), Eugene Cherry (Eugene), and Jack Drummond (Stan's son) Directed, Written, and Produced by Charles Burnett.
Review:
"What people are really struggling for is to endure, to survive, to become adults and maintain some sort of moral compass."
The story of Charles Burnett when it comes to looking at filmmakers beyond the usual names comes with finding how one got themselves to become a director. Burnett was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi in the early 1940s, but the family (a nurse's aide and a military father) moved to Watts, a neighborhood in the southern region of Los Angeles, California; his experiences in Watts, which included transplants from the South just like him, influenced him deeply. He first studied electrical engineering at Los Angeles City College before taking a class in writing that convinced him to explore ambitions in that field. He went off to study at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1967, where he studied writing and languages before moving onto the university's film school. One of his instructors and a key influence on him was documentarian Basil Wright, who lent "a certain humanism to my way of seeing things." Burnett first shot films in 1969 with his Super 8 graduation film for UCLA in "Several Friends". The movie was shot in 1972 and 1973 that Burnett shot as his Master of Fine Arts thesis, although the film was not screened for the public until 1978. In addition to serving as director, writer, and producer, he also shot and edited the film, which was shot with friends and colleagues for a cast with a handheld camera. It premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art in late 1978, and while the movie did ride the festival circuit for a time, there was no general release of the film until 2007 due to Burnett not being able to secure rights to the music (which included music from famous names such as Dinah Washington) that was present in the film. Hell, the Library of Congress preserved the film in their United States National Film Registry over a decade before anyone could see it on home video. Finally, in 2007, the music rights were purchased to help clear the way for the film, which had a limited release and DVD release that year thanks to the help of people such as Ross Lipman (preservationist at UCLA Film & Television Archive) and Steven Soderbergh, who made a considerable donation with the effort to turn 16mm prints into 35mm restored prints that could be on DVD. A fierce independent filmmaker, he has completed over a half-century of filmmaking with varying levels of attention, which has included films such as To Sleep with Anger (1990) and Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation (2007).
In a way, the details of what the film is in a nutshell is both a blessing and curse. If one is here for escapism in their film, one should look elsewhere, because the plot of the film is best described as "nothing happens if you only look on the most basic levels". But, if one really is into films that remind them of their times spent in the neighborhood or are connoisseurs of movies that remind them of Italian neorealism, this may very well be the movie right up your alley. To look further into a movie filmed and set in Watts, California with little vignettes that are loosely connected with one other is to find life in the most cut-and-dry sense. That could be haunting in bleakness or joyful depending on what one sees in the film, which never seems ultra-cheap or exploitative, because you are too busy focusing on the seams that tie these people together rather than cheap seams. It is a movie about a man who is trying to keep his dignity while his sensitivity is slowly slipping away from him, which reflects upon the family around him (since Burnett got his sense that the most important thing was to survive from his experiences in the community). You see this through the eyes of Sanders, an Army veteran-turned-actor (in his first major role in a career filled with character roles) that we see the movie from when it comes to the depiction of life. His anguish (such as his degrading sense of self from the long hours as, well, a "killer of sheep") is our anguish and his attempts to see joy in the small things is our joy, which works out to generally interesting moments in the human condition. Moore is no slouch of course, because she braces him and the withering sense of self that comes from trying to maintain order is not a one-way street, which results in dutiful timing. The movie wanders wherever it feels the need to go, whether that involves kids being kids (read: unpredictable in cruelty or other emotions) or vignettes such as trying to carry a heavy part to a location that goes about how one expects it to go. The movie begins and ends essentially at the same place: adrift without easy resolutions or ideas but always ready with questions. As a whole, it isn't the easiest sit at 80 minutes, but it is a worthwhile film that manages to hit most of the marks it wants to accomplish in telling a story with Black Americans that should merit at least one conversation about why it still means so much to those who saw it or lived through what the film wants to show.
Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.
Next Time: She's Gotta Have It.
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