Firmly tongue-in-cheek, the short film The Herd cutely poses a farmer's dilemma: what to do about the little deer who hangs out with his herd of cows.
Besides the evocative shots of the deer bonding with its fellow creatures, the sort of stuff one sees frequently on "happy news" segments of local newscasts, the film consists of interviews with the farmer and his mum, both presumably relatives of director Ken Wardrop (given their identical surnames).
The gentle strain of black humor comes from the implication that if push-comes-to-shove, our farmer will shoot the deer, once it interferes with management of his herd. Mum keeps chiming in how her son "couldn't hurt a fly", but in the usual editing gimmick so beloved by documentary filmmakers, their verbal admonitions are constantly contradicting each other.
Certainly a trifle, it makes a good lead-in for a feature film - in my case in NYC as the short playing before Jacques Rivette's latest.
