Sweetgrass

Who knew sheep could be so fascinating?

Beginning in late winter at a farm in Big Timber, Mon., Sweetgrass follows a set of cowboys who guide a few thousand sheep across the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. Their 2001 trip, deemed “the last ride of the American cowboy” because of newly installed grazing permit laws, begins once the cowboys shear their bleating beasts, shaving off their wool like corn from the cob. The newly near-naked sheep shiver in the snow but are soon rounded up by their owners and a pack of Herding and Maremma sheepdogs. From there, the group traverses across the terrain, storming through the main streets of small Montana towns and cautiously tip-toeing (hooving?) down dangerous mountainsides.

Visually, the film is astounding. The filmmakers, Harvard-employed Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash, bestow their baa-ing subjects with surprising levels of complexity by capturing them in an array of activities. Their personalities shift from quiet and cooperative to excruiciatingly loud and frantic. The film also offers astonishing insights into the handling of sheep. Watching a cowboy pull a lamb by the hoof out of its mother’s belly leaves one open-mouthed; the newborn’s first steps, interactions with its mother and acceptance into the sheep community are equally affecting.

The time spent with the cowboys, the two unoffocial heroes of the film, achieves a sense of realism by capturing the varying pace of their lifestyle. This can be long, aggravating work, comicly expressed in one of the cowboy’s two-minute expletive-ridden rants as he futilely guides the herd up a mountain. This contrasts with the quieter, extended moments of their plentiful downtime, which though insightful do eventually bore the viewer.

Gorgeous wide shots of the sheep up against the Montana mountains remind the viewer of the beauty and vastness of their surroundings. The chaos of sheep crossing a river seems more hectic than the subway at rush hour from up close, but it’s a mere speck on the countryside from afar.