How much do you really know about sheep? You probably haven’t even thought about sheep all day today, right?
Did you know, for instance, that prizes for “best sheep” awards can come down to a question of the size of the sheep’s back muscle? We learn this in the first 10 minutes of “Rams,” and there’s much more to come after that.
This Icelandic film focuses on a long-simmering rivalry between two brothers. Their sheep ranches are side by side, but the siblings won’t speak to each other despite their proximity.
This year’s competition was decided by the aforementioned back muscle. The losing brother, Gummi (Sigurdur Sigurjonsson), thinks something is fishy, and so he decides to look closer.
Nobody cheated, as it turns out. But Gummi does discover something wrong with his brother’s sheep, namely the presence of the easily communicable disease scapie.
This means not only the herd belonging to Kiddi (Teodor Juliusson) will have to be destroyed, but so will Gummi’s sheep. The local sheep-farming community has rules about these things, and they are ruthless when it comes to halting the possible spread of the disease.
What follows is an odd little fable. We don’t know at first why the brothers — both bachelors, and set in their ways — are at odds, and “Rams” is going to take its time about giving us the revelations. All we know is they hate each other. But now they have to work together in some way because of this crisis.
Director Grimur Hakonarson plays this with some of the dark humor we’ve seen in other Icelandic films, but perhaps with a more serious edge. The locations are eye-filling, as usual with movies from Iceland, and the tenderness with which the farmers treat their sheep is endearing.
What takes this movie from a quirky little slice of rural life to something more special is the final 20 minutes of the film. That’s when it moves from the realistic to the near-mythical.
It’s a curious ending. But it’s the kind of story you could imagine being told a hundred years later, when villagers reflect on the eccentric ancestors of this remote area and tell tales of the time the two estranged brothers tried to save their flocks.
“Rams” (3 stars)
A curious fable from Iceland, about two bitterly estranged brothers who must join forces when their flocks of sheep are threatened by a virus. The film has less of the dark humor Icelandic films are known for, and an ending that elevates the material. In Icelandic, with English subtitles.
Rating: R, for nudity
Showing: Seven Gables
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