NOW Toronto: Sweetgrass

originally posted at NOW Toronto:

Sweetgrass: As Ewe Like It

Editorial Rating: NNN (out of 5)

by Susan G. Cole

Is there such a thing as an ethnography of animals? If there is, Sweetgrass qualifies. It tracks a mammoth flock of sheep as they’re herded through the mountains of Montana in 2003 – the last such trek ever undertaken – and it’s directed by two anthropologists who let the beasts take the spotlight.

The film begins with a near-one-minute shot of a sheep snacking on grass and then bleating for the camera. Except for a fascinating early sequence in which the sheep get shorn, industrial-style, and a few lambs are birthed, that opening reflects what you can expect from this doc. The sheep are, well, sheep – eating, nursing and following the sometimes not so clear trail.

One thing about a visual art like film: it can’t convey how much that flock must have reeked. Not that filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor worry about such things. They’re only slightly interested in the experience of the herders, a fairly dim crew with apparently no personal relationships except with their dogs, which really do all the work.

Sweetgrass is a hypnotically gorgeous thing, though. The mountains are spectacular and the wide shots of the flock superb. Too bad there’s a little dip in the last half-hour even though it features the film’s only tense moment – the appearance of hungry bears.