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Bet MacArthur writes:

"       Only after he is certain the sheep is dead does Gombo give it to his

wife to dress (skin, clean, and butcher). Moments later the fresh meat is in

the stewpot. The family's respect for the sheep, and for their houseguest,

builds all the way through."

 

Though I haven't seen the film in question, it is notable how often the

 virtually

sacrificial death of an animal pops up in stories centered on peasant or tribal

life: there are pigs killed in films like TREE OF THE WOODEN CLOGS and (if

 memory

serves) Bertolucci's 1900, for example.  As a simple fact of rural peasant life,

such scenes are to be expected--sometimes they almost seem obligatory.  With the

hope that all due efforts were made to mimimize suffering of the actual animal,

such films do serve (at least) to remind us were those nicely shrink-wrapped

packages in the supermarket came from (a point made rather bluntly by Nicholas

Roeg in WALKABOUT).

 

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)