It was a stunning revelation to see Charles Burnett’s first feature, “Killer of Sheep,” in 2007—thirty years after it was made and several weeks before its first commercial release. David Denby wrote about it in the magazine, and mentioned that it was delayed by questions concerning music rights. Burnett’s choice of music is indeed exquisite, and central to the film, which lacks what would usually be called movie music: Dinah Washington, Elmore James, Paul Robeson, and Rachmaninoff all enrich the texture of the film with what ought to be called lived music. As I discuss in the clip above, the movie has the feel of a blues ballad, in that the sorrows it depicts nonetheless rise to a cinematic exultation, a joy in existence itself. And, like a jazz musician, Burnett makes use of all sorts of sources—popular and formal, old and new—as the basis for his spontaneous yet complex visual lyricism. And the rich emotional life he evokes with those methods is mercurial—the depth of mood yields up surprising, iridescent details, like bubbles and shimmers of feeling, that conjure a vast span of inner life from the film’s straightforward particulars. “Killer of Sheep” is one of the great débuts in the history of cinema; though this treasure is now restored to its rightful place in history, the decades can’t be remade, and the gap in the world of filmmaking—and in the world as such—that the movie’s unavailability represented can never be made good.
Goings On
What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week, online, in N.Y.C., and beyond. Paid subscribers also receive book picks.
The Front Row
The Best Bio-Pics Ever Made
The genre presents very particular artistic challenges, but here are thirty-three films that transcend them.
By Richard Brody
Musical Events
The Escher Quartet and Igor Levit Test Musical Limits
The chamber ensemble played all six of Bartók’s string quartets, and the pianist played devilishly difficult transcriptions of symphonic scores by Mahler and Beethoven.
By Alex Ross
Books
How an Enthusiast of Soviet Socialism Fell Afoul of the Authorities
Andrei Platonov’s “Chevengur” depicts a Communist utopia, but Stalin loathed his writing, calling the author “scum.”
By Benjamin Kunkel
The Front Row
The Oscars Are More Barbie Than They’ll Admit
The show wasn’t bad, but a shortsighted Academy was hard on this year’s best movies.
By Richard Brody