‘Sheep Detectives’ Made Me Cry?
Two years ago I was on a light hike at the San Mateo Coyote Point Recreation Area with a few friends. The San Mateo Coyote Point Recreation Area is a very lovely park. You give the Park Man five dollars and he grants you entry into a serene and beautiful landscape. You might be dissuaded by the fact that you have to pay five dollars to see what this park has to offer, but this is in fact the deal of the century. Candidly I would have paid up to twenty. At gunpoint, maybe even fifty. But don’t tell this to the Park Man. He will hear about it and he will come for the rest of my money.
At the San Mateo Coyote Point Recreation Area we ran into a woman with her dog (whose name I don't remember but for the purposes of this story will be named Mildred. I am a firm believer that animals should only be given old people names or named after items on the Taco Bell menu). Mildred possessed the size and bearing of a midsize SUV, the calmness of a river, the beauty of a prize-winning heifer. We chatted with Mildred's owner who told us that Mildred had an older sister, recently put down, and that she had brought Mildred to the vet to watch her sister be euthanized.
My first reaction was shock, but after talking it through with my vet friend, I realized it was an act of mercy. It was the first time it really clicked for me that animals understand death. Mildred's owner had decided to give her dog the gift of closure about grief, on purpose, as a kindness. She had chosen for Mildred to be a mourner instead of a watchman. She had chosen to give Mildred closure. She allowed Mildred to watch so that Mildred would not be confused about where her sister had gone. So that Mildred could grieve, in whatever way a dog grieves, instead of becoming the lifelong mayor of the front door, waiting for a sister who was never coming back. I think about that a lot, because making the conscious choice to look at death instead of waiting blindly by the door is essentially what I use movies for. If you’ve read anything I’ve written you’ll know that my relationship with film is almost entirely synonymous with my relationship with grief (e.g. here, here, here, and basically every other thing I have written for this website).
Enter The Sheep Detectives. I want to be honest about the spirit in which I went into this movie, which was that I wanted to watch it so that I could do a bit. This bit was going to be airtight. It was going to be the best bit . I decided I was going to make The Sheep Detectives, with its hysterical premise, my personality. I would corner everyone I knew at parties for the next eight months and explain, with the devotion of a priest delivering a sermon to devout followers, that the Hugh Jackman sheep movie is our gift from above to mankind. I would only refer to it as the best film of the decade. I would say things like “the cinematography reminded me of Tarkovsky,” and when pressed for which Tarkovsky, I would say "all of them." I was going to terrorize everyone I knew with a fake obsession with a silly film.
Unfortunately I must confess, the sheep won. If you know anything about me, you know that I will stop at nothing to commit to a bit. I had the perfect bit lined up, but I ended up genuinely liking the film too much to turn my love for it into a bit.
The Sheep Detectives, as the name suggests, is a film about (the titular) Sheep who also happen to be detectives (as is mentioned in the title). Hugh Jackman plays a shepherd in the English countryside who reads detective novels aloud to his sheep every night. He assumes they cannot understand. but (surprisingly) they can. After he goes to sleep, his sleep argue about whodunit for hours. This prepares them for what’s to come; the shepherd is found dead in the field, and his sheep, led by Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a Shetland ewe named Lily, decide to solve the murder. Nicholas Braun plays a local buffoonish cop who pratfalls his way through the same investigation at half (if we’re being generous) of their speed.
This is all standard plot for any film. Perfectly normal. The part of the film that moved me, lay in its exploration of mortality. In the world of The Sheep Detectives, sheep have no understanding of death. When one of them dies, the rest of the flock decides, collectively, that the dead sheep has turned into a cloud. You can see her up there. The flock also has access to a a social technology/superpower where they are able to will themselves into forgetting any unpleasant memory, sloughing off grief the way they slough off wool. It is a beautiful system. It works perfectly. Death can not be sad, if it is not real. Ignorance is bliss. There is one exception. Mopple (voiced by Chris O'Dowd) does not have access to this superpower. Poor Mopple has to pretend to forget and carry every loss the rest of the flock has experienced. If we’re to get poetic with it, he is the librarian of the dead. All of Mopple’s friends get to wave at the clouds and smile. Mopple does not get to wave. Mopple knows the clouds are only clouds. Mopple does not understand the water cycle but he understands that clouds are not happy sheep.
To solve their shepherd’s murder, the sheep need to abandon their mechanism of forgetting. Their love for the shepherd cannot be allowed to evaporate because they loved him too specifically. So, for the first time in their lived experience, they refuse the cloud and actively walk towards the knowledge of death. The alternative would be letting him disappear, and in their love, they refuse to let him disappear. This is the same blessing (?) that Mildred's sister was given, except that Mildred had grief delivered to her by someone who loved her enough to spare her the worse fate of confusion. In contrast, the sheep are given the opportunity to deliver it to themselves. They are their own merciful owner at the vet.
Last year I convinced my friend Sam to adopt a second cat. Her first cat, Alexander, hates me. With a passion, even. Alexander is the only cat I have ever met who has taken such an intense personal dislike to me. He hates me with the precision and care, so much so to the point where I have to respect it. On rare occasions he allows me to pet him without hissing, and on those days I walk through the world feeling four inches taller. I leave much better tips, I forgive my enemies, I can dunk. If I wanted to give myself an excuse for his hatred, maybe it’s because he usually interacts with me when Sam is gone. I am his designated catsitter. From his perspective I am the angel of Samlessness, and I herald the empty apartment as the patron saint of nobody coming home. Fair enough. I would also hiss. I too don’t like being abandoned.
In an attempt to gain his forgiveness, I told Sam she should get him a brother. My own brother had adopted two cats, and watching them coexist is been one of the great joys of my recent life. Sam, generously, agreed. Enter Root Beer Float (Float).
Float is a Siamese or Siberian engine of pure and dedicated chaos, a long-haired demolition contractor. He has a knack for finding the most expensive object in any given room. Once he finds his target, he finds a way to destroy it. He once knocked a potted plant off the top of a fridge to get my attention with such intention that I had to consider whether he was actually a human being. Float, unlike Alexander, loves me. Perhaps, he understands on some cellular level that I am the reason he has been given a home. Perhaps it is the tubes of Churu that I bribe him with. Or perhaps (and I hope this is the main reason) it is because I have a good vibe. Float greets me at the door like one of those videos of a soldier returning from the war to his children. I also greet him in the same fashion.
When they first met, Alexander hated Float. Alexander hates all things. That is his job. He has been very consistent in his ability to be a hater. But within a month Float was able to crack his exterior. Alexander now grooms (in the cat way, not the pervert way) Float with so much care and affection. Alexander has even softened, very slightly, toward me, which I can only assume is because Float has been putting in a good word, telling Alexander in whatever language they share that I am not so bad, that I bring the sticks of Churu. The angel of Samlessness might also be the angel of Float, and that those are perhaps the same angel. Whatever Float said, it worked. I owe Float a lot.
Float might one day outlive Alexander. Cats are not sheep. They have no cloud mythology to fall back on. There is no Mopple in the corner of the apartment carrying the burden so the rest of the flock can live ignorantly in bliss. When Alexander passes, Float will look. Float will wait by the door in the same way that Mildred would have waited if her owner had not made that decision. Float will be confused first, and then he will be sad, and then, on some longer timeline, he will be grateful, for all of the memories. He will be grateful for the grooming, for the warmth, and above all for the older brother who finally accepted him after a month of considering it.
I was really excited to jokingly obsess over The Sheep Detectives and couldn’t wait to turn it into a bit. I am sad to announce that The bit has been taken from me by a flock of computer-generated sheep who looked up at the sky where they used to put their dead, and decided it wasn't enough. The Sheep Detectives is the film of the year. I am being deadly serious, which, as I mentioned at the top, is the worst part.
Of course, none of this matters, because Float and Alexander will live forever.