Sweetgrass

Sweetgrass

101 Minutes








While films such as Brokeback Mountain have colored our perception of the cowboy, the idea still exists that he herds animals, rides horses, sleeps under the stars and has no use for psychotherapy, Prozac or tears. As the idea of the mythic West and its denizens erode into history, there still exist men (and women) who subscribe to the "talk low, talk slow and don't say too much" way of life.

More a revelation than documentary, Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's Sweetgrass is the chronicle of this moribund style of life. Rather than fill in the empty spaces with voiceover and interviews, the directors just let the cameras roll and allow us to witness the final drive of sheep over Montana's Beartooth mountains.

Mixing shots of pristine, rugged beauty with the mundane and grueling preparation and journey, Sweetgrass is an elegy to a lifestyle brought to extinction by modernization and the factory farm. But there is no narrative about gay cowboys or symbolization of a culture replaced by a world now accustomed to creature comforts and pampering. Instead, Sweetgrass is an anthropological study of a tradition that dates back to the 1800s that is no more. It is a way of life, handed down through the generations, that no longer has a place in this world.

Sweetgrass' strength comes in its collection of indelible images. A river of wool fills the thoroughfare of a small town as the army of sheep marches by, the cowboys put the skin of a dead lamb over a live one so the mother will be tricked into accepting it as her own, a trio of bear run into the tree line to escape the gunshots of the cowboys.

While we are not provided backstories for the cowboys, Sweetgrass is an epitaph for the men who once drove the herd over the mountain. While the older Joe, laconic and gentle, speaks lovingly to the sheep, a younger cowboy looks out over an amazing vista, crying to his mother on a cell phone about achy knees, injured dogs and uncooperative sheep. When he finally breaks down and punches his horse in the face, it is not only cruel but a symbol of the cowboy turning on the beast that defined him. It's a fitting ending for the type of man many of us dream to be, play at as children, but are too afraid to desert our cars, apartments and toys to truly become.

by David Harris