Mark Reviews Movies: LAMB (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 7, 2021

It takes a while before the central gimmick of Lamb is revealed. To be honest, it might have been a better idea to delay it even longer. Even better than that, screenwriters Sjón and director Valdimar Jóhannsson could have scrapped the entire concept and come up with something a little less ridiculous.

The core of this story, which is set on a remote farm in Iceland, is a melancholy one—about a married couple stuck in an emotional rut of grief. They're mostly quiet, only talking about the business of the farm and having a random conversation about the possibility of time travel (The husband doesn't see any use in traveling to the future, since he's fine with the here and now, but the wife, tellingly, suggests that it would also be possible to return to the past).

The movie watches Maria (Noomi Rapace) and Ingvar (Hilmir Snær Guðnason) as they feed sheep in the barn, tend to the fields in the farm's unreliable tractor, and aid in the births of new lambs. Their relative silence in these tasks, framed within the isolation and chilled air of the countryside, doesn't say much about them as people, but it does say everything we need to know about them and the desolation of this place, their inner lives, and whatever has become of their relationship. It's not that the married couple is unhappy. It's simply that happiness seems to have left them some time ago, with little hope of returning.

All of this is fine, and beneath of the surface of this domestic gloom, Jóhannsson establishes an unseen and unknown threat by way of an eerie prologue. From the perspective of someone or something, the camera lingers on the barn and those sheep, with a deep breathing, which almost sounds like growling, filling up the soundtrack as the person or, more likely, the thing gets closer and does whatever it's planning to do.

This isn't a horror story or a thriller, per se, especially since the man or beast hinted at in the prologue doesn't return until the third act. It's almost like a free pass for the screenwriters when they've finally admitted there's nowhere else for this story to go. In reality, that moment arrives much sooner than the filmmakers realize.

Anyway, Maria and Ingvar go through their sad routines, and while assisting in the birth of one lamb, the two are rendered even more speechless than usual. There's something about this particular animal.

Maria wraps it up in a blanket, carefully carries it to house, and sets up a makeshift bed for it in a metal tub. Ingvar grabs an old crib from the shed, and there is, of course, only one reason this couple would have a crib in storage but no child on the farm. It's surprising how subtle Jóhannsson can be in establishing such a tragedy for these characters, considering how blatant and silly the central idea and image of this story turns out to be.

Once it's revealed that the lamb, which the couple names Ada, is only partially an animal and rendered with some awkward visual effects, the rest of the movie becomes a war between the sincerity of its intentions and the unfortunate comedy of constantly having to see Ada. There are other unintentionally funny moments, such as when Maria has had enough of the lamb's mother and shuts the dog in house, as if she's trying to prevent there from being any witnesses to her intended crime. There's also the introduction of Ingvar's brother Pétur (Björn Hlynur Haraldsson), who seems completely and quite admirably unfazed by the unthinkable aberration that his brother and sister-in-law treat as their own daughter.

Maria and Ingvar treating Ada as their child is the whole point, and there's little more to this story or these characters to justify this silly image being used as a metaphor of such earnestness. Challenges are absent, since the couple accept Ada immediately and even Pétur goes from thoughts of euthanasia to tenderness in a single cut, although the heavily breathing thing from the prologue certainly does make a sudden and anticlimactically final return. The performances are filled with genuine and restrained emotion (commendable under the circumstances), but even that quality becomes amusing in the face of Ada.

Jóhannsson knows exactly what he wants to do with Lamb, and that's a major part the problem. While the approach of this movie is clear, how it's told is a joke, and why it's being told remains a mystery.

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