An affecting time capsule, captured on film 30 years ago, is opened

When you saw The Silence of the Lambs for the first time, did the title click for you?

During one of the memorable scenes of “quid pro quo” dialogue between FBI agent Clarice Starling and incarcerated murderer Hannibal Lecter, Starling fretfully indulges Lecter with a story from her childhood that also explains the movie’s title. Sent to live with distant relatives after the death of her father, Starling was troubled in the night by the screaming of lambs being slaughtered. She raced from her bed and stole one lamb away, desperate to save it, but she was soon caught and the lamb was returned to the slaughter. Lecter taunts Starling, claiming the young agent is still trying to silence the screaming lambs by rescuing other innocent victims.

In Killer of Sheep, there is no ambiguity in the title, no deep, image-laden story waiting to be explained. It is the view from inside the slaughterhouse, both literally and figuratively. No one is coming to rescue the innocents.

More than 30 years ago, young filmmaker Charles Burnett created Killer of Sheep. It was filmmaking on the proverbial shoestring: He scraped together about $10,000, pulled in people he knew as actors and crew and filmed it on weekends near his family’s home in Los Angeles’ Watts district. After considerable time editing and cutting in the soundtrack, Burnett submitted it as his thesis project at UCLA’s film school in 1977. And after that, it all but disappeared into legend. Unless you were a film student or a member of that secret cabal of filmmakers that seems to pass around untamed reels of art never meant for consumption by the masses, you wouldn’t have seen it.

And yet, somehow, enough of the right people did see it. It won the critics’ award at the 1981 Berlin International Film Festival. It made the National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films of All Time list. And it was one of the first 50 films placed into the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.

All this for a little student film, not even 90 minutes long, that never saw a box office dime. At long last, that’s changing. A collaboration between Milestone Films (the rights), UCLA Film and Television Archive (the restored print) and Steven Soderbergh plus various foundations (to underwrite expenses, including the major one of securing the rights to the songs on the soundtrack) has brought Killer of Sheep out of murmur-filled screening rooms and released it to the general public, like the unearthing of a time capsule that’s been buried under the hard soil of Watts for 30 years.

Henry Gayle Sanders plays Stan, the titular slaughterhouse worker whose days are awash in blood and offal and the piercing bleats of sheep about to die. The job is methodical and brutal and leaves him spent. He comes home to a wife desperate for his attention and children who have played at violence all day, and he has nothing left for them.

Critics and film scholars have picked apart Burnett’s work, citing the influence of many classic directors – Federico Fellini, Jean Renoir, Robert Altman and Stanley Kubrick, to name a few. I won’t dispute those opinions. But since this release is all about demystifying Killer of Sheep, I’ve got a less pretentious comparison about the film as
a whole.

The vignettes of the movie depict Stan wrestling with his life, trying to exploit a glimmer of hope, to no avail. The promise of a “sure bet” at the racetrack is crushed because of a flat tire. A used engine that Stan and a friend have bought to fix up a car falls and cracks when they fail to secure it. Through it all, Stan clings to his pride and denies his poverty: “We’re not poor. You can’t donate nothin’ to the Salvation Army if you’re poor.”

In different circumstances, in a different director’s hands, these scenes could all be played for laughs, the kind of “instant money” schemes that have perpetuated the plots of sitcoms since The Honeymooners. Around the same time Burnett was making Killer of Sheep, a very different kind of sitcom was showing on TV every week: Good Times. And while Good Times often revolved around the shortest path to getting its star, standup comedian Jimmie Walker, to bellow his signature “Dy-no-mite!” line, the premise was about a black family just above the poverty line, living in the projects, wondering each day how they would make ends meet.

Killer of Sheep is Good Times without the laugh track or catchphrases. It’s the situation without the comedy; it’s pathos, not humor. The film ends with Stan back at the slaughterhouse, herding more sheep to their grisly end. It’s a fatalistic view; like the lambs, Stan is being pushed along without hope or escape. He couldn’t save them if he wanted to, nor can he save himself. That hope, that silence, is not his to find.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Killer of Sheep inadvertently causes some temporary – or even permanent – conversions to a vegetarian diet after its run until July 5 at the Tivoli Theatre. Burnett is visceral in his imagery; if anything, the black-and-white film makes the scenes within the slaughterhouse even more vivid.

Satisfy your appetite free of guilt by picking up a portabella sandwich (vegan, if you so choose) at OR Juice and Smoothies. As the name implies, a good chunk of the menu consists of blended fruits, juices, veggies and supplements. A helpful wall menu suggests pairings for maximum nutrition and flavor – a crisp and delicious salmon spring roll with an Açai Bomb power smoothie, for example. Even the house salad dressing is formulated with TLC. You’ll walk away with the feeling that someone is watching out for you.