Sweetgrass

At one point in this wonderful work, the camera is high in the Montana Beartooths above the cowboys with their 3000 sheep coming up the mountain for some good-weather grazing. The woolies are getting to be all over the place and you see a lone cowboy in the saddle with the help of a few sheepdogs corraling the herd purely by the way he moves his horse around and by the calls he makes. Gracefully and neatly he tightens up the herd and turns it in the direction he wants the little bleaters to go. He creates a fence invisible 'round his woolies.

It's that kind of skill, no, art that is so evident in these guys: keeping order in the herd, whittling rough branches for the spines of their tents, sleeping with one ear open for sounds of bear and wolverine, sharpshooting in the night aided only by lamp. These guys do it all and well. They can also midwife a ewe in the crisis of giving birth, find an udder for an orphaned lamb and cleanly, expertly fleece these critters when the wool is heavy.

These cowboys never get rich inspite of a bagful of skills and talents that leave the viewer in respectful admiration. Watching the travail of these guys makes you realize you have never in your life known the true meaning of "hard work."

This is a documentary without any taped-on background music and without any warm-toned narrator telling you what you're seeing. Not even Morgan Freeman. The footage tells the story without extraneous aids. The absence of other noise is welcome. This piece is awesome but it's also funny, not just in the humanity of the cowboys. There's some real comic talent among those woolies, too. Jim Smith

A documentary on the life of Montana sheepherders, "Sweetgrass" looks for all the world as if it had been strung together from a series of "Brokeback Mountain" outtakes. I guess that's inevitable given the subject matter and setting, but this seems almost like a nonfiction version of that movie - minus the movie stars and gay romance, that is (and it's not as beautifully filmed).

What most distinguishes "Sweetgrass" from other documentaries is that there is no voice-over narration to explain or analyze what's going on. And the individuals who appear in the film are every bit as taciturn and tight-lipped as one would expect the people in this particular setting to be. The movie simply chronicles the day-to-day task of raising, herding and shearing sheep without feeling the need to comment on what it's showing us. The drawback is that we never get to know much about the rugged men and women involved in the business, what makes them tick (indeed, they talk to their animals more than they do each other). At some point, however, we do begin to understand the toll all this loneliness, physical exertion and exposure to the elements begins to take on the people who do this job.

The result is an admittedly repetitive and frequently tedious exercise in filmmaking that also casts a strangely hypnotic spell over its audience. Perhaps it's the fact that movies rarely just show us people working at their professions that makes this film compelling in its uniqueness. And the image of hundreds of sheep crowding down the main street of town on their way to pasture is bound to stick with you despite any doubts you might have as to whether they are truly fit subjects for a full-length feature.

In Montana, ranchers are caring for their sheep. They get sheared. They get fed. There are births. After the winter, the ranchers take the herd through the summer pasteurs on public lands in the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains. It is 2003 and it is the last band of sheep.

This is a little zen. It brings the audience into the sheep ranch. It takes us into the herd. I don't even want to have the ranchers talk. The main drawback is that it is not necessarily a 100 minutes worth of attention. I got antsy by the midway point. It would be a better hour-long TV show. The scenery is epic. It has beautiful vast vistas and also the gritty small pictures.

The reviewer Brian criticizes this movie for not having a plot. That is like criticizing shoes for not being useful as a hat. Brian, you are a fool. This is a fantastic documentary. Yes, it does not have a plot. OK. It is not supposed to have a plot. But it does provide a view of the interplay between sheep, herders, and terrain that you will never see anywhere else without actually doing herding yourself. Highly recommended (unless you want a movie with a plot, in which case you should seek one out to watch instead of watching this).

My children keep demanding to see this movie over and over again. I wish there were more documentaries like this about other things we sometimes hear about but never see.

This is like slipping into a pastoral dream. The wind. The constant braying of sheep. The idle bits of conversation between the mostly stoic herders. The crack of guns at hungry bears in the middle of the night. That's all the soundtrack offers. These things bleed together and lay over one stunning image after another, meticulously documenting every stage of the caring for and herding of sheep. From birthing new ones to sheering to feeding and then, eventually, to herding a seaming ocean of the creatures across an epic, punishing mountain range. Through it all we witness the exchange between man and animal as horse, dog, bear, sheep and human play out a slow symbiotic struggle to be and do. In its execution and honesty it's literally on a par with the Maysles Grey Gardens. A true document, artfully done and completely free of artifice.