Missoula News

Montana Movie Debut

High Praise for New Film About Montana Shepherds

By Amy Linn, 1-06-10

Scene and herd. Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild.

This story has been updated.

It’s not every day that a made-in-Montana documentary gets exalted by the New York Times, or that filmmakers spend eight years finishing a movie about aging cowboys driving sheep to an alpine summer pasture.

But Sweetgrass, debuting today in New York, manages to win in both categories, portraying the hardships and beauty involved in moving 3,000 sheep into the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains—one last time. Times reviewer Manohla Dargis calls Sweetgrass “the first essential movie of this young year” and describes it as “wonderful,” “astonishingly beautiful,” and “a graceful and often moving meditation on a disappearing way of life.”

The loving product of husband-and-wife filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor—who both work at Harvard University—the movie features Montana rancher Lawrence Allested, “the last cowboy” to drive sheep into the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness area on a federal grazing permit, the Times says.

The 200-mile journey has some harrowing moments (think: bear) and heavenly panoramas, if the movie trailer is any indication. Castaing-Taylor and Barbash spent three summers capturing that blend while filming a crusty trio of herders, Allested, John Ahern and Pat Connolly. Even the sheep get acting kudos.

“The movie truly belongs to the sheep, which turn out to be fascinating, almost hypnotic subjects for the camera, whether they’re comically bleating at one another like rush-hour subway riders or swarming across the range like a single organism,” says the Times.

When can Montanans see the film in a local theater? It will have its Montana premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival at Missoula’s Wilma Theatre, February 12-21. (For more festival information, click here.)

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