Sweetgrass

I've been toying with the idea of making a documentary and I found some real inspiration yesterday. I watched the subtle and striking film Sweetgrass, made over the last eight years by anthropologists from Harvard, Ilisha Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor.

Hailed as an "unsentimental elegy to the American West," it follows the last sheep herding cowboys as they take their flock to Montana's Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture.

I found this a remarkable work of salvage anthropology and actually incredibly sentimental. There is no commentary nor music, which takes the first twenty minutes or so to get used to and readjust any expectations of the film. The cinematography is so refreshing, that an hour or more of sheep doesn't get old. You are in with them, hustling for food, being herded by dogs, frolicking in the sharp mountain air.

The people and families in the film are shown in the sometimes uncomfortable realities of farm life. But all in all, they show great concern and care for their animals, making sure every baby has enough milk and no one gets left behind during the drive.

Sweetgrass is an epic and sweeping portrait of the last and truly wild American West. It is exactly the kind of film I aspire to make someday. A story that visually speaks its own narrative, without much help at all.