Addict­ed to Sheep

The biggest strength and biggest weak­ness of Addict­ed to Sheep – the debut doc­u­men­tary by Mag­a­li Pet­ti­er – is the same thing: a lack of ambi­tion. She beds in with a Tees­dale farm­ing fam­i­ly, the Hutchin­sons, chron­i­cling days, weeks and months in their lives in a style that swings from charm­ing­ly ambling to tedious­ly slight.

There is a sooth­ing qual­i­ty to the hard-work­ing, good-natured folk that Pet­ti­er cap­tures with her cam­era. Loca­tions flit from their hill­side ten­ant farm to the vil­lage school to rur­al sites ded­i­cat­ed to sheep scan­ning and shear­ing. The appeal is the nat­ur­al curios­i­ty of peo­ple-watch­ing, and the pace is always com­pa­ra­ble to this slow-mov­ing pastime.

Any type of doc­u­men­tary that aims to demys­ti­fy a par­tic­u­lar way of life needs to locate dra­ma or oper­ate from an orig­i­nal point of view. Lucien Cas­taing-Tay­lor and Véré­na Paravel’s Leviathan from 2012 worked so well because it immersed the view­er in the squelchy, slip­pery grind of deep-sea fish­ers and their prey. Addict­ed to Sheep reflects its four-legged sub­jects in its placid­i­ty and dis­in­ter­est in move­ment. Pet­ti­er is con­tent to sim­ply place a cam­era in front of her sub­jects, film­ing snatch­es of life and char­ac­ter until there is enough to fill 85 min­utes of run-time.

It is a cred­it to her sub­jects – Mr and Mrs Hutchin­son and their three young chil­dren – that the film is as sweet as it is. The stark­est moments fea­ture kids star­ing bale­ful­ly at dead sheep before dad cheer­ful­ly lugs off the car­cass­es, claim­ing that all sheep have one goal: to die. The cir­cle of life is sto­ical­ly accept­ed from a young age in this cor­ner of the North Pennines.

The Hutchin­sons’ ease with sheep-han­dling is impres­sive and they are appeal­ing in the way that watch­ing any expert nav­i­gat­ing their field is appeal­ing. Addict­ed to Sheep is the type of film that one remem­bers snatch­es off, as an alter­na­tive lifestyle point of ref­er­ence. It is a trib­ute to the sub­jects and their old-fash­ioned liveli­hood. This is Pettier’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion over and above sophis­ti­cat­ed sto­ry­telling goals.