Bless Their Little Hearts

Bless Their Little Hearts represents the closure and pinnacle of a neorealist strand within the LA Rebellion, which began with Charles Burnett’s Several Friends (screening April 29). Billy Woodberry’s film chronicles the devastating effects of underemployment on a family in the same Los Angeles community depicted in Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1977), and it pays witness to the ravages of time in the short years since its predecessor. Nate Hardman and Kaycee Moore deliver gut-wrenching performances as the couple whose family is torn apart by events beyond their control. If salvation remains, it's in the sensitive depiction of everyday life, which persists throughout. Whereas Burnett’s original scenario placed emphasis on the spiritual crisis of Hardman’s Charlie Banks, Woodberry, alongside Moore and Hardman, further developed the domestic relationships within the film and articulated the depiction of a family struggling to stay alive in a world of rapidly vanishing prospects.