Iceland

LAMB: dark fable of karma

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Photo caption: Ingvar Hilmir Snær and Noomi Rapace in LAMB. Courtesy of A24.

The very quiet drama Lamb is one of the most gripping films of the year, and one of the most unsettling. I’ve seen Lamb described as a horror film, but it is very unlike most of today’s horror films. I would rather label it as a dark, cautionary fable of karma with some supernatural elements.

It’s difficult to imagine a more pastoral setting than Lamb’s remote Icelandic sheep farm. Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) run the farm with studied competence, caring for the sheep and maintaining their tractor. No neighbors are in sight. Neither the routine nor the isolation burdens them; they are comfortable with and enjoy each other’s company.

One of their routine tasks is birthing lambs. We see that Maria and Ingvar have an established division of labor and confidence. We think we know what to expect until a lamb is birthed and Maria and Ingvar’s reaction shows that this newborn is anything but normal.

It’s remarkable that the two never debate what to do or consult experts. They both immediately fall into behaving in complete alignment. But we suspect that they are not behaving as most people would.

Writer-director Valdimar Jóhannsson is such an able story-teller, that he doesn’t show us the lamb’s body right away, and we have to surmise what’s going on by the reactions of the characters. When Ingvar’s nogoodnik bother Petur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson) shows up uninvited, he brings with fresh eyes and asks WTF?

Jóhannsson uses the starkly beautiful but menacing Icelandic landscape to fill us with foreboding. Something is not right here. And there will come a reckoning.

Lamb drove me to the dictionary to review the meanings of the word monster. In Lamb, there is a creature who fits under the definition, but which is pure and sweet. Another creature is the terrifying kind of monster. And a human takes an action that is normal from a human point of view, but from a monster’s perspective is, well, monstrous.

The cast (and this is really a three-hander) is excellent. You may recognize Rapace as the pierced-and-inked Lisbeth Salander in the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo franchise.

Lamb is the first feature for Valdimar Jóhannsson – and it is a superb debut. You haven’t seen anything like this movie before.

EVERYTHING IN THE END: accepting the inevitable

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EVERYTHING IN THE END

The “End” in the title Everything in the End means, literally, the end of the world. Set in a future where climate change has made human extinction certain and imminent, the story imagines how people would react as they understand that they have only a few days left.

A young man, Paolo (Hugo de Souza), whose mother has died, decides to meet his fate in Iceland, the land of the father he has never met. Paolo meets one stranger after another, each of whom is contemplating the situation in their own way. By now, everyone is beyond the shock, denial, anger and bargaining.

What Paolo doe NOT find is overt rage or a paroxysm of hedonism. One guy swigs from a bottle of booze, but in a half-hearted way.It’s too late for political or commercial exploitation. And this is not a disaster action movie, so heroism does not take the form of battles or chases. More profound than grim, End of Everything takes the sensationalism out of the apocalypse and leaves the humanity.

Lilja Þórisdóttir is especially good as a local who greets Paolo with with kindness and wisdom.

This is the first feature from writer-director Mylissa Fitzsimmons, and it’s a remarkable showcase for the intelligence of her writing and her eye for landscapes. Without her clarity of mission, the story could have easily veered into a downer or an overwrought disaster saga. Fitzsimmons does let us glimpse the actual apocalypse, but in just the perfect number of seconds.

Set in the stark beauty of Iceland, this is a visual stunner. The cinematographer is Todd Hickey.

Everything at the End is a powerful think piece and made my Best of Cinequest 2021; you can stream it during the festival for only $3.99 at Cinequest’s online Cinejoy.

THE DEEP – true life survival

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THE DEEP

The compelling The Deep tells the fact-based survival story of a shipwrecked Icelandic fisherman’s ordeal in frigid waters.   Amazingly, all of the footage was shot in the ocean (no tanks) without stunt professionals.  The lead actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson makes the protagonist endearing, and he must be a hell of a good sport to spend all that time in icy water. 

Writer-director Baltasar Kormákur made the unconventional and successful choice not to end the movie with a climactic rescue, but to instead explore the impact of the incident and the attempts to explain how it was possible.

Kormákur also wrote and directed a very different and even better 2006 film, the very dark neo-noir police procedural Jar City, available on DVD and streaming.

I saw The Deep at the 2013 Cinequest. You can stream The Deep on Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Cinequest: The Deep

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The compelling The Deep tells the fact-based survival story of a shipwrecked Icelandic fisherman’s ordeal in frigid waters.   Amazingly, all of the footage was shot in the ocean (no tanks) without stunt professionals.  The lead actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson makes the protagonist endearing, and he must be a hell of a good sport to spend all that time in icy water.  Writer-director Baltasar Kormákur made the unconventional and successful choice not to end the movie with a climactic rescue, but to instead explore the impact of the incident and the attempts to explain how it was possible.

Kormákur also wrote and directed a very different and even better 2006 film, the very dark neo-noir police procedural Jar City, available on DVD and streaming.

The Deep plays again at Cinequest on March 3 and 4.