Sweetgrass

Saw Sweetgrass, a documentary about the doings of a sheep farm. We begin with a hypnotic scene of sheep being endlessly shorn of their winter coats. One after another, the sheep are rolled into position and the shearer's clippers produce a coat of wool from them. Then, alien-headed and groaning, they're sent back out to pasture and the next sheep is loaded into position. Nothing much is happening, but we're seeing how it's really done. More than the technique, we feel the endless Zen calm of it. We then explore the disgusting mysteries of birth and death in the lambing season. This again is a warts-and-all depiction of the event. One orphaned lamb is rubbed into the afterbirth of a ewe who gave birth to one lamb only. Hopefully she can be fooled into thinking she had twins. Disgusting and amazing.

We then pivot into the herding part of the film, where the sheep are taken to graze in the mountains. This is the first time we hear the humans speaking and they are a taciturn and placid bunch. Their frustration is a source of simple comedy as they swear at the stove, the sheep, at each other, at their horses and dogs. At one point the sheep sneak up into rocky hills which it will be tricky to extract them from. The herders unleash a torrent of profanity, calling the sheep cocksuckers, motherfuckers, and sneaky whores. Later in the film the ranchers hunt bears which are picking off stray sheep.

This sounds interesting and it is of course, but it's terribly slow and frankly dull. If I were more alert, I would call it hypnotic, but as it is I was struggling to stay awake. It's a sort of a wall-paper film, good to have in the background and talk over. It's too slow and contemplative to give one's whole attention to. Perhaps if I'd been in a more creative mindset I could have drawn some philosophy out of it. I don't know, perhaps the farmers can be regarded as animal, as being noble brutes as the sheep and dogs are. A serene and sleepy film with moments of hilarious swearing.