Sweetgrass

Sweetgrass memorably captures a dying way of American life, a marvelously untrammeled American landscape and at least two animals — men and sheep — that despite their millennia-long domestic relationship still have a spark of wildness in them.

Sweetgrass reminds us of the stupefying magnificence of its setting—beautiful for spacious skies and mountain majesties—while never letting us forget its formidable perils.

Sweetgrass is an unexpectedly intoxicating documentary, unexpected because it blends high artistic standards with the grueling reality of one of the toughest, most exhausting of work environments.

Sweetgrass achieves a borderline abstract splendor that's furthered by the directors' avoidance of delving deeply into its human subjects, whose backstories and general circumstances are only alluded to through fly-on-wall scraps.

The filmmakers wisely avoid the temptation to be cutesy (remember that penguin movie?) and sentimental.

An anthropological marvel and an animal-drive movie that belongs beside the classics of the genre - Red River and Lonesome Dove.

It’s a powerful testimonial to a fading way of life.