Rams

DRAMA; 1hr 33min

STARRING: Sigurður SigurjónssonTheodór Júlíusson


Wild thing: Sethi

Farming brothers Gummi (Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Júlíusson) haven't spoken in 40 years and love their sheep as much as they dislike each other. This is beyond awkward since the two live cheek by jowl in Iceland where diversions are like gold dust. Why the hirsute rivals have fallen out is initially unclear. But the seam of resentment between them is poisonous and deepens explosively after younger brother Gummi's reporting of incurable brain and spinal-cord disease in Kiddi's prize-winning ram leads to all the sheep in their valley being put down. Kiddi is furious and core-shaken, and it is wrenching, for the witless animals are the heartbeat of the bachelor brothers' unwelcoming world.

 

The taciturn pair's interlinked lives — Gummi's so orderly, Kiddi's so wildly self-endangering — seem meagre in their prescriptive solitude. But the life of the mind knows no such boundaries in writer-director Grímur Hákonarson's contemplative slow reveal of a rediscovered bond. These men don't go much on conversation because, as it happens, they don't need to. Their shared understanding runs as deep as a history at its most moving in the spaces between words.