Several years ago, a Super Bowl commercial humorously dealt with herding cats, a chaotic way to spend some time. Cats, however, have nothing on sheep, as shown in "Sweetgrass," a documentary that follows a huge herd of sheep for most of a year, from shearing and birthing in the spring to summer in the high country of Montana and Wyoming, and an autumn return to lower altitudes.
It's a fascinating film, with neither narration nor explanation. Most of the sound (or noise, if you prefer) comes from the sheep. Sheepherders John Ahearn and Pat Connolly, whom you could never call shepherds, provide a college-level education in profanity as they, and a large handful of dogs, herd the sheep up hill and down dale. The men, usually on horseback, use the same old words in some new and excellent combinations, sometimes riffing like a soloist in a jazz band. Friends of Lamb Chop, the famous hand puppet of Shari Lewis, may be bothered at the descriptions of sheep.
The dogs, Australian sheepdogs or border collies and a few mixed breeds, are amazing as they work the sheep, responding to vocal commands as if they spoke and understood profane English.
The film begins with shearing, and watching the men work brings amazement. Birth is next, in graphic detail, and with the necessary, if cold-blooded action of working to find babies that the ewes will nurse, and vice versa. When a sheepherder puts a newborn lamb into a sheepskin coat so that a ewe might think the lamb was hers, it's hilarious, but it also makes one root for the lamb, because it's a heartless world out there.
Going into the mountains for the summer is reminiscent of old cowboy movies with pack horses and mules carrying supplies, a large number of riders and tuneless, wordless old songs as company in the dark while watching and protecting the herd. A late-night gunfight, so to speak, with a family of bears breaks the darkness and the silence. Made by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash over a number of years, it's a rare and extremely powerful look into the reality behind "Brokeback Mountain."
"Sweetgrass," opens today at the Winifred Moore Auditorium on the Webster University campus
–Joe