Killer of Sheep
…was a pretty powerful movie.
The first scene could sum up the movie but every other scene tops it or drives the message in even further or both. The father is trying to get his son to realize that their isnt any room for petty crap like that in their lives as they are. Their family is struggling for survival and its taking toll on them.
Stan’s working in the slaughterhouse, a job nobody wants. Not just killing sheep, but killing himself. You can see how dead he is when he gets home every night and is practically unresponsive to anything. The slaughterhouse’s metaphor for the Watts ghetto is pretty powerful as well.
Meanwhile the kids are just sitting in the trainyard waiting to inherit all that their parents dont have. Its almost like they are waiting for their turn. When they arent trying to create some new game in the train yard or having a dirt clod war they’re trying to dodge criminals and make sense of the chaos around them.
