Charles Burnett: Interviews

Charles Burnett

134 Charles Burnett Doug Cummings/2003 From Film Journey (filmjourney.org), November 13, 2003. Doug Cummings is a writer on film who lives in Los Angeles. Reprinted by permission. Tuesday night, filmmaker Charles Burnett was invited to screen his new documentary, Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property, for a class here at Caltech and facilitate a Q&A afterward. A graduate of UCLA, Burnett is one of the most highly esteemed filmmakers currently working in the U.S. and he continues to be active in independent and black filmmaking circles. Although he has taken a less mainstream—and more ideologically nuanced—approach to his career than popular names like Spike Lee or Larry Clark, Burnett’s films (including 1977’s Killer of Sheep, 1990’s To Sleep with Anger, and 1996’s Nightjohn) are visually strong works with vivid characters and complex undertones. As Nelson Kim writes in Senses of Cinema: Charles Burnett is the epitome of a cult hero—almost famous for not being famous. On the rare occasion his work attracts any notice in the mainstream press, the article will be sure to mention how little attention his work receives in the mainstream press. Despite the public acclaim of critics and fellow filmmakers, the festival awards and retrospectives, the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, the Library of Congress’ selection of Killer of Sheep for its National Film Registry—despite his legendary status among a small cohort of cinephiles, Burnett goes unrecognized by the larger culture , the pop marketplace. His films are known to few. But among those few they’re loved by many. Nat Turner (1800–1831) was a notorious plantation slave in Virginia who organized the only “successful” revolt in American slavery, forming a loose band of marauders who killed fifty-nine people in plan- doug cummings / 2003 135 tation homes before they were captured and executed. A physician named Thomas Gray interviewed Turner in jail and subsequently published The Confessions of Nat Turner, but historians now question its accuracy. In 1967, novelist William Styron fictionalized the events of the rebellion—as well as Turner’s private life—and won a Pulitzer Prize for his efforts. While Styron’s novel was widely praised in white literary and popular circles, it was criticized in the black community for framing Turner’s actions in the context of a disturbed sexuality and his illicit love for a white plantation woman. Instead of viewing Turner as a folk hero who retaliated against his oppressors, Styron’s novel suggested Turner was a psychologically disturbed murderer. Burnett’s documentary intercuts talking heads (historians, activists , and commentators) with beautifully filmed reenactments of the various images of Nat Turner through the years, from such sources as Gray’s interview to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred (1856), Randolph Edmonds ’ 1935 theatrical production, and Styron’s novel. The resulting Rashomon-like narrative structure presents various images and points of view allowing the viewer to come to his or her own conclusions. It’s a provocative mosaic which moves from drama to reflection to exposition and back again with remarkable fluidity. After the screening, the soft-spoken Burnett talked about his own conflicting thoughts regarding the film. In a refreshing way, he seemed as critical toward his film as any other viewer and commented on how difficult it was to find the funding for the project (a five-year process) and how the final product was a compromise in length (initially conceived at two hours, the film now runs a PBS-friendly fifty-eight minutes ) and emphasis (instead of focusing on Turner’s position as a folk hero, Styron and his novel are prominently featured). Burnett claims he could never obtain the financing to do the film he would really like to make, a feature about Turner’s courage in the face of oppression and his heroic efforts to strike back. This conception of Turner would be impossible to promote, Burnett suggested, in a white-dominated culture that perpetually emphasizes the deaths of the plantation families rather than the horrifying realities of slavery. It was at this point that several members of the audience—mostly young, white college students—began to openly question Burnett’s perspective . “How can you call him a ‘hero’ if he killed so many people?” they asked. “We’re talking about oppressed people,” Burnett explained. “Sure, Turner’s group killed about sixty people, but what is that com- 136 charles burnett: inter views pared to the...