No. 80 (2021) LAMB. OCT. 2nd.

 

Film No. 80 (2021)  October 2nd.  11:00 AM   Cinema 1  LUNA,  Leederville. 

"Happiness ......"(Ingvar's answer to brother Petur's question about what this life he and Maria were living was all about).

Icelandic cinema has made the whole cinema viewing world sit up and take notice, big time, in the last 10 years. UNDER THE TREE, SPARROWS, RAMS, WHITE, WHITE DAY are examples in question. Now LAMB joins the list; all brilliant. Each film portrays life in a world very few people will ever experience in their real lives. Lamb takes that idea to a new level via a genre of its own. 

While the current Danish blockbuster RIDERS OF JUSTICE gives off a Hans Christian Andersson fairy-tale undertone, LAMB brings Iceland's own folk-tale teller Jon Arnason, front and centre, without the terror, in ways that may test your fiction loving limits. 

Make no mistake though, LAMB is a handsome film depicting rural Iceland as only RAMS has done previously. Sheep-breeding as a way of farm life prevails in both, but while both explore family tensions caused by that life, LAMB plays with our minds and the moral compass that guides our thoughts. Dialogue never clutters our expectations here. LAMB is very much an image based film and there is rarely a wasted scene.

Here I am typing a review and by paragraph 4 I've told you nothing of what LAMB is about. Well you needn't know more than the fact that childless married couple Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Gudnason) breed sheep in the heart of windswept Iceland. Something beyond their control interrupts their breeding program. They adapt without really knowing how the extraordinary event happened. Ingvar's brother Petur turns up unexpectedly which adds a complication. Will the conclusion to LAMB turn out to be as bleak as the farm-scape? I found out the answer to that question and I enjoyed every second of the 100 minutes it took to get there. 10GUMS.