Lamb (2021)

 Score: 3 / 5

One of the strangest movies this year, Lamb is finally out in what seems to be a limited release. The Icelandic entry for the Oscar race this year, it showcases the remarkable skills of veteran actress Noomi Rapace (The Millennium series, The Drop, Prometheus, Child 44) and those of debuting director Valdimar Johannsson. Johannsson's work here feels like someone who just graduated film school and got a sizable budget right away; that's not a bad thing, but it often feels like a student film in its measured pace and bizarre premise. Its weighty themes, too, of parenthood, loss, and family ties pale in comparison with its downright ballsy exploration of nature vs. nurture in child-rearing. I see these elements all as compliments. It's a fascinating movie, and will surely be studied closely in the coming months.

Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) and Maria (Rapace) are a young-ish couple working on their remote farm in Iceland. Partners in all aspects, they share the necessary work to keep things running with almost no words passed between them. They deliver lambs, plow fields, brand sheep, fix tractors in stony silence; we almost never even see them smile or glance at each other. Their muscular drudgery might be guarding something, but it's not clear what: perhaps a loveless marriage, or some unspoken and unseen loss? We hear Christmas music on their radio -- the only obvious link the couple has to any entertainment in their solitude -- but this is not a festive household. When one of their ewes gives birth to an unusual lamb, however, things start to change. We don't see the newborn for quite a while, and so we're not quite sure why this one is different. Perhaps it's a little deformed, maybe an ugly duckling kind of situation, and so Maria brings it into their house to care for. Maybe this couple will come back together while caring for new life, a blessing in sheep's wool, so to speak. How lovely.

At least, that might be the primary theme, if not for the opening scene, which puts us seemingly in the perspective of a mysterious entity, huffing animalistically as it stalks a herd of horses in a cold field. Once they flee, it turns to Maria and Ingvar's sheep-filled barn and enters. We don't see it, but we can tell the other sheep are nervous around it. At one point, a sheep with wild eyes slowly stumbles out of its pen and collapses on the wooden ground; the camera cuts to a close-up of its belly, implying that it might be pregnant, though that bit was a little lost on me. Could our POV character be a monster that rapes sheep? Sure, why not? And...is it still hiding out in the barn?

Now, I don't really want to spoil things here. If you've seen the trailer, you know what the child is, more or less. Attempting to describe her is a bit futile, and much more so because of the pains by which Johannsson goes to slowly reveal her oddness to his audience. To identify her would only cheapen the effect; I would guess that seeing this movie with absolutely no foreknowledge would be best, if you're willing to get on its weird frequency. It's shocking but also funny -- as indicated by no small amount of deadpan comedy in this film -- despite my intense efforts to stifle any chuckling or uncomfortable guffaws. But that's not to say it's all absurdist humor, because almost none of it is. Instead, Johannsson wisely -- and with brave commitment -- plays it for heartwarming family drama. Maria and Ingvar sweetly adopt Ada, their new ward, as if she were their own.

Seeing their familial efforts is really lovely, and makes a strong case for parental nurturing as the formative developmental vehicle. Nature can only do so much, the film suggests, and often messes up; a loving family can do so much more. Even when Uncle Petur shows up, his initial bewilderment and horror transforms into -- well, let's just say that dynamic shift is very sweet to witness. Less sweet is the extent to which these now-happy people will go to protect their newfound bliss. You might say that Maria in particular wants to have her lamb and eat it too; the film's first scene of real violence, enacted fully within the frame, is utterly horrific. With this in mind, I suddenly wonder, too: Could there be a macro-theme of humanity attempting to dominate nature to maintain its greedy status quo? Maybe, but is there enough evidence for that? It would be a dangerous stretch.

All that said, throughout most of its run time, Lamb curiously feels like it knows a little too well the A24 methodology. Actually, more than once, I caught myself drifting a bit and wondering if this film was meant to be a sort of parody of earlier, now "classic" A24 films. It feels a little too pretentious, especially in context of its subject matter and grotesque title character. Its lugubrious pace notwithstanding, it takes as its defining aesthetic focus not the barn or flock, not the lonely house or its sad inhabitants, nor even of whatever supernatural events are going on in this farm. Rather, it relies almost solely on beautiful wide shots of mountainous landscape to convey -- well, what, exactly? Unlike the repeated landscape shots of Ex Machina, for example, which seem to counterpoint Romantic notions of humanity and whatever "god" humans will face in or from the titular machine, the landscapes here only serve, in my mind, to hammer home the isolation of this young family. Which we get loud and clear in the opening sequence.

Its daylit but dreary atmosphere was effective in making me feel cool and damp, too, though it offered almost none of the chills of broad daylight in Midsommar nor the icy terror of The Witch. Moreover, its creepily nihilistic ending reminded me a fair bit of The Dark and the Wicked, compounded with the farm setting and theme of family undoing, though Lamb doesn't come anywhere close to matching that devilish experience in terms of unadulterated horror. So where does that leave us? I suppose with a unique enough experience that fits oddly with family-invader and/or child tragedy dramas like Birth or Rabbit Hole, but where those focus on the psychological and emotional strain on bereaved parents, this movie conspicuously avoids humanizing or complicating any of the characters except Ada. The closest it comes is an uncomfortable forced rivalry between the brothers for Ingvar's wife, which she deftly handles on her own. One has to wonder why there is such shallowness, and that's a question for which I have few possible answers, and no satisfying ones.