Ten years later, Shepherds (Bergers) had been waiting for Sophie Deraspe’s companion piece after her unofficial duology, Nature Reclaims its Rights. As usual, just by glancing at the titles, one can note the parallels Wolves eat sheep. That’s their means of survival in the harsh region they inhabit which in this case is the French Alps alongside the strikingly beautiful, yet brutal world humans live in. Moreover, this parallel is shared through a protagonist who chooses to abandon his contemporary life and embrace a more primal existence.
Numerous people will humorously say Sheep Herders is basically about Reject Modernity, and Embrace Tradition The Movie, which is on the nose in our case. Mathyas’ (Félix-Antoine Duval) is our protagonist and his story is literally about how he one day decides to ditch his career as an advertising executive and out of the blue becomes a shepherd. What kind of rationale is there to support this? Who knows, and quite frankly, who cares? It is the least important detail of the entire film because we catch him in media res, doing everything possible to make sure no one will ever hire him again. In this case, he is ditching his career in Canada to embark on a supposed journey of finding something akin to meaning in life by learning the shepherding trade. Oh, and he might find out what it feels like to actually live, which is an added bonus.
That is not my take on the movie, but what Deraspe mentioned during a post-screening Q and A at the Cinemania Festival in Montreal. One can instantly see it in Mathyas’ eyes (Duval is fantastic throughout the entire movie but is particularly compelling when he becomes ‘innocent’ in the eyes of the people who take him as an apprentice) when he stumbles upon a troupe of adept shepherds around whom he fantasizes himself and expects to learn the art of shepherding. At first, the patrons laugh at him, and predictably so.
Who wants such a job these days? It is a hard enough task on its own, but with the additional strain of a shifting climate, which further complicates life for both sheep and shepherds, it becomes even more challenging. In addition, the wolves are becoming more thirsty as their balance shifts with the environment.
Mathias discovers that herding sheep is no cakewalk and truthfully gets a taste of how solvable it all feels when one’s finances depend on meat and milk their production guarantees. In the case of a catastrophic event, the sheep and humans are equally affected. However, the animals, who do not perhaps know the world they are born into, do exist within a narrative that makes this goal so vexing and unrewarding. Regardless of this, though, his sheer determination helps him master the skill and later involves civil worker and new girlfriend Élise (Solène Rigot) into the mix when he accepts an offer too good to turn down from Cécile (Guilaine Londez), who was desperate for a shepherd.
This is where Deraspe reveals how nature will always claim dominion over human civilization no matter which avenue it takes. The first half of Shepherds illustrates people trying to manipulate nature, with the sheep receiving all sorts of verbal or physical abuse (one man even accidentally crushes a baby sheep after slamming a door). They only see the creatures as a resource monetarily profitable and disrespect their position in nature, to the extent that when part of the herd is unwell, Bruno Raffaelli, the owner, rams his car straight into them.
These scenes are captured and set up through a merciless gaze by Vincent Gonneville (definitely coming up to the top of my list thanks to his work in Annick Blanc’s Hunting Daze and Meryam Joobeur’s Who Do I Belong to?). He never shows the violence directly, but he insinuates it enough that we sense it piercing deeply into Mathyas’ eyes. One such scene contains him witnessing a sheep getting its throat cut, and that is already way too much to bear. Still, he is confronted with the cold and brutal face of humanity. Humans do not consider their sheep to be equals but rather objects to control, sell, and exploit for their own self-serving purposes.
This thesis statement draws to mind Kant’s radical evil, which speaks to the tendency to be evil as something that is natural within human beings who begin to act out of mere self-interest. This was dominant in The Wolves, and it’s now exemplified here, albeit in a different form than in Deraspe’s 2014 film. In The Wolves, Élie (Evelyne Brochu) moving from Montreal to a rural town becomes the punchline of the cruel joke played upon her by the townsfolk who antagonize her, and she shatters the natural order of things, as her succumbing to the darkness of corruption is far worse than she ever wished for.
In Shepherds, Mathyas is left untouched by the corruption, but those around him definitely aren’t. His former boss turns completely bonkers, and his mentor, after killing a perfectly healthy lamb, spirals into an ‘undoable’ state. In The Wolves, and Shepherds, Mathyas, with the coming of experience, clears up some perception he has of himself and his existence here, or rather on this planet. The sad part is that the aforementioned clarity has devastating outcomes on the sheep and their surroundings, as this makes for more terror in climate, culminating in a bravura thunderstorm show whose animated ferocity splendidly underscores the dominance.
Gonneville’s handheld camera places us in the middle of the cataclysm, and the surrounding sound design only amplifies the unadulterated terror that Mathias and his sheep face at the center of the storm. It is Deraspe’s most impressive sequence ever in a film that has none of the long-winded, dialog-heavy scenes (what sunk her last film, Antigone) and instead opts for pure contemplation. I wish she had omitted the voiceover narration that soothes so many of the film’s most visually stunning moments. Shepherds would have been an even better movie than it already is. The film is a more complete picture of the return to tradition and nature than The Wolves.
There is actual engagement with the characters’ space and a willingness to spend time with them without any rudimentary intrigue. In fact, there is no intrigue. It’s all about how the film’s protagonist reconnects with himself in a way where he has a kinder view of his existence as one who used to work for a capitalist machine that has never and will never, provide meaning in any superficial wallet or his mental health.
At the conclusion of Shepherd’s, it’s more than evident that the entire story has depicted how nature will remain the absolute final authority no matter what, never to be subverted. This is true for Deraspe as well. He becomes part of that Quebec cinema, alongside Sébastien Pilote’s Maria Chapdelaine, Guy Édoin’s Mariages, Rafaël Ouellet’s Camion, or more recently Anne Émond’s Lucy Grizzli Sophie, who have all accepted nature as quintessentially part of Quebec. However, it is at this moment when Mathyas understands that he cannot and will not change how things unfold when he experiences a shift. That in itself seems more than enough.
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