Hrútar

Love and hate have many things in common. Each, wrote Hawthorne, "leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object." In the remote landscape of distant Iceland two neighbors, Gummi and Kiddi, nurse a fervent hatred. It has simmered for forty years running and despite the many things they have in common. Like many Icelanders, where there are more sheep (800,000) than people (300,000), they share a passion for sheep. Not THAT passionate! The calling to raise sheep is intertwined with their nature. The discovery of scrapie among the sheep, a lethal and highly contagious disease, should draw Gummi and Kiddi closer together. With the lengths they go to avoid each other, it is hard to see how much further they could be apart. Yet with true Icelandic spirit they try their best to maintain their independence and go their separate ways. The results are both hilarious and tragic.

The film is a typical Icelandic mix of darkness and light. The line is blurred between independence and isolation. The director maintains it is based on personal experience and real life situations. The themes of love and hate, as well as seclusion and self-reliance, really resonate with me. The two main characters are unique and intriguing as the film, and their parts are played well. Someone asked the director how hard it was to direct sheep and he replied that it was easier casting and directing sheep than people. Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015.

In an age of digital marketing saturation, social media domination and notifications of the latest Disney blockbuster being sent to you while you're sat on the loo, it's always refreshing to have a film sneak up unannounced and give you that warm fuzzy hidden gem feeling. Resembling its Icelandic counterparts, Rams is like finding a Sigur Ros in a big bag of Coldplays.

Rams follows two brothers who reside next door to each other in a remote sheep farming community in the Icelandic countryside. Having not spoken to each other for 40 years, Gummi (Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Júlíusson) are finally forced to deal with their strained relationship after a rare disease triggers the slaughter of their entire valleys flock. Each brother deals with the situation in his own way; Gummi having the functioning sibling role; calm and calculating with his understated intelligence and Kiddi with drink induced anger and violence.

As you would expect from a film based on the hillsides of Iceland, the scenery is stunning but is never used to build the crew's cinematography portfolio. In fact, it only adds to the evident toughness of the people's lives there, surviving a challenging livelihood with the backdrop of such natural splendour. The relationship between the farmers and their animals and how it intrinsically represents, and is inherently tied to, the entire history of their family is at times both heart-warming and heart- breaking.

What is most surprising about Rams is how it creeps up on you; how you find yourself sincerely caring for its characters towards the end of the film. You genuinely feel for the brother's relationship yet the script is so subtle in its depiction of the association between the two that the feeling comes as a real surprise when it finally hits. This is made even more remarkable considering how much of a slog the first thirty minutes are to get through.

There are sweet little comedy moments too. The brothers use a sheep dog to deliver notes to each other and at one point Gummi delivers a drunken Kiddi to the local A&E in the bucket of a digger, but these moments are infrequent and never feel like forced slapstick. The humour is always believable and acts as a nice break from the melancholy of the primary story.

Rams is a lovely surprise, a film that intentionally builds up slowly and is so understated in the development of its main characters that by the end of the film, you forget about almost everything else but the affection you have subconsciously developed for the two brothers. A sneaky little treasure of a movie whose ending will stay with you for a long time.

this is a movie for people who love movies. Iceland is always a great background for a movie and here, like in other Icelandic movies, it is a main character. the others are two brothers who have not spoken for 40 years. they raise sheep and must deal with the devastation that comes when disease arrives and infects the rams. in many situations like this, blood is thicker than water. that's the case here. we don't learn what happened to drive the brothers apart and they only communicate through dog express. (a little too cute for my taste). loneliness, both literally and figuratively, is on display. but the movie is not depressing. others might quibble with me about that. a movie for grown ups. Oscar worthy in my opinion.

I had no idea what this film would actually be about. I imagined that it would be some sort of comedy (how wrong I was). I was not prepared for what I got. The narrative revolves around sheep and the consequences of an infection that is going around that could kill them. The film goes beyond that to really share the emotional bond of two brothers, one that they thought was broken for the longest but that may actually still reside underneath. The performances are exquisite, and everyone involved with this needs to be commended for sticking with a film with such an odd plot line and allowing it to fully blossom. Not sure if I would recommend this to just anyone, but sticking with it will be something that some viewers will absolutely be grateful for.

Rams is an Icelandic saga of the highest order, not of Kings, but of the Icelandic sheep farmer. There are battles, but the opponents are nature, the struggles of human relationship, and the hardships of life. It is a saga of and for the working man, expressed and pared down like a working man's haiku, and it is breathtaking. Beyond the story, it is a visual feast. The Icelandic landscape - seen in both its green glory and its stark white glory - literally made me gasp at first. The sound of the howling, relentless winter wind touched a primal nerve in me. And as someone who has co-existed with animals for much of my life, and who has worked on farms for years, I was touched by the aphorism that you can love - truly love - your animals, and then kill them and eat them. Killing something you love is not an easy thing to do of course, but Rams is a blast of reality in that way. Sustenance and survival in the real world, people. It's not always pretty, and never packaged. Rams is harshness and it is beauty, contrasting, colliding, and intermingling, like an Icelandic landscape and an Icelandic sheep farmer's life. Ten out of ten stars.