Sometimes a story is best told by not telling much at all. The new documentary "Bitterbrush" is a perfect example.
In the film, director Emelie Mahdavian follows Colie Moline and Hollyn Patterson, itinerant cattle herders in rural Idaho. Mahdavian's camera brings us into the world of these young cattlewomen and creates an intimate, quietly poetic portrait of a friendship on the cusp of change.
It's an observational film, with little exposition. There are no talking heads to tell us about the history of female ranch hands, no statistics on the fate of small farmers in the West, no old friends of the pair telling us how they were as kids; it's just Hollyn and Colie doing their work with their horses and dogs amid the gorgeous Idaho landscape. The only other person in the film is Hollyn's boyfriend, Elijah, who shows up briefly in a few scenes.
"Bitterbrush," which is available for streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV and other services, opens with Hollyn trying to load her horse into a trailer, but the horse is having none of it and bucks and snorts violently. The scene gives us an idea of the dangers involved in this line of work, but also shows the skills required as Hollyn calmly deals with the skittish animal.
The two friends will spend four months in a cramped, 100-year-old cabin far off the grid as they round up cattle and do other ranch work. Working in the elements, they are shown driving cattle over ridges, mending fences and roping calves. In one scene, Colie slowly guides a sickly cow up a steep ridge to rejoin the herd, though she knows it will die soon.
The women are surrounded by animals, from the cattle that provides them their livelihood to the horses and trained cattle dogs they use in their work.
One of the most intense sequences shows Hollyn patiently breaking a horse. She chews a piece of gum as she slowly earns the horse's trust, loses it, then earns it back, finally saddling the animal -- she named it Marilyn -- and riding it. It's a fascinating process, especially when Hollyn is shown on Marilyn later in the film searching for cattle in a blinding snowstorm, which provides the documentary with one its most striking images.
Along the way, the two friends talk and joke and tease. Three weeks after breaking Marilyn, Hollyn learns that she is pregnant and her range-riding days are probably numbered.
While Hollyn comes across as playful and a little laid back, Colie, at least in how she is presented here, seems the more open of the two. She speaks emotionally of her mother's death from an aneurysm, and ponders the thought of going to work on her father's farm, though there may be an issue with her brother.
What the future has in store for the two friends looms over the film. It's not unlike the story of so many young people working paycheck to paycheck in gig economies and dealing with what life sends their way. The thing with Hollyn and Colie, though, is that they are doing jobs we Americans have long romanticised. Seeing them on their horses riding across the stunning Western landscape is impressive, and tugs at that part of us that might yearn for a similar kind of freedom.
It's not really freedom, though, and things are going to change. Hollyn and Elijah, also a ranch hand, will soon be parents, and this will be her last summer with Colie.
"I can live with barely anything, you know," Hollyn says. "I don't need that much stuff, but I've only lived for myself. Having somebody else, a baby, to live for and take care of, you can't live like I live."
Mahdavian, who was eight months pregnant when filming began, doesn't address anything more or less in "Bitterbrush" than a snapshot from a few months in the lives of these two women. She's not worried about greater issues or themes or solving some societal ill. It's this restraint and faith in her subjects and audience that helps make the film so powerful and poignant. Colie and Hollyn will stay with us for a long time.