Mark Reviews Movies: RAMS (2021)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 4, 2021

The two men live and work on neighboring farms, but there's a hard silence, as well as a fence, between them. Things become more complicated when each one leaves his farm at the same time, and we note that the farms, separated by adjoining gates, share one older gate to get on to the country road. The two farms are part of the same property.

When the men arrive at their shared destination in town, the problem becomes even deeper. They're both shepherds, raising a rare species of sheep that is unique to Australia in the Southern Hemisphere, and they're both the final two contestants in a competition judging the best sheep in the region. That's when we hear Colin (Sam Neill, in a charming and layered performance) and Les (Michael Caton) share a last name. They're brothers, and they can't even show each other the same courtesy or basic decency one might display toward a complete stranger.

Rams, a remake of the 2015 Icelandic movie of the same name (written and directed by Grímur Hákonarson), is about this long-standing feud between two brothers, but it's also, on a deeper level, about the mindset that would bring about such a decades-long quarrel. We don't really learn why the brothers won't speak to each other, although we definitely come to understand what prompted the lengthy silence, unbroken for 40 years by Colin's account.

It was a matter of inheritance. The men's father left the farm to Colin. That's it. We could understand Les' frustration with the old man and maybe sympathize with his resentment toward his sibling, but then there's the current arrangement, in which the two men share the same property, evenly divided between the two of them.

Why would Les still hold a grudge with such a seemingly generous peace offering? Does he think Colin is simply being patronizing toward him? Is he just angry that the farm doesn't belong entirely to him following the father's death? Does he see the splitting of the land as adding insult to injury? The old man clearly didn't want much or anything to do with Les, and in making the farm into two, Colin's gift surely could be looked at as the brother announcing he doesn't want much or anything to do with Les, either?

We'd never know, and in fact, we never do learn, because neither man tells that part of the story. It happened—whatever it is that actually happened. That's all there is to it, and that's all anyone needs to know.

This film, written by Jules Duncan and directed Jeremy Sims, is a comedy about the complications of raising sheep under the watchful eyes of nosy neighbors and government bureaucracy, although we have to get through a lot of suffering before the laughs come. Even they do arrive, there's still a lot of suffering in this story, because these men let it happen. They won't talk to each other. They won't really talk to anyone else about what's troubling them. They can barely admit to themselves that there's something wrong—that they're sad and miserable and, because they won't say a single word about those feelings, unable to figure out a way to move past it or even forward with their lives.

The plot begins shortly after the competition when Colin, having lost to his brothers, inspects the sheep that beat his prized one. He notices signs of a rare, deadly, and highly contagious bacterial infection on Les' ram.

Fearing for his own sheep and the others in the region, Colin alerts the local veterinarian Kat (Miranda Richardson), recently arrived from the UK. She tests Les' sheep, confirms Colin's fears, and calls the government's Department of Agriculture. They, represented by a sniveling and apathetic agent (played by Leon Ford), want to stop the spread of the disease before it moves beyond this valley region and into the more financially beneficial parts of they country. Every sheep in the region has to be slaughtered.

In the aftermath of the decree, there's mourning (Of the few words Les speaks throughout the entire film, the ones that hit hardest are him begging for his sheep to be spared), resentment (In addition to almost everyone in the area being put out of work, Les blames Colin for what has happened), and horror (Colin, wanting his flock to buried on his land, does the killing himself). There doesn't seem to be any hope, but in the months following the mass slaughter, Colin has been clandestinely raising four sheep in his house. He has to keep the secret from his brother, his friends, the government, and Kat, who stops by for company and conversation that Colin is even more hesitant to get into now.

It's amusing, to be sure, especially in seeing the lengths to which Colin has gone to in order to keep the sheep fed, comfortable, and, hopefully, procreating. The screenplay provides plenty of obstacles, both comedic (the obtrusive bureaucrat) and more severe (wildfires threaten the town later). Beneath these elements, Duncan is more interested in and concerned with the ways in which Colin's desperation to keep doing what he knows, Les' alcoholism, and the brotherly feud are symptoms of some deeper, unspoken, and barely understood pain and the inability to speak of anything about those feelings.

Rams understands this mindset, sympathizes with it, and even mourns it to a degree. These are hard men, yes, surviving for generations in tough conditions. When one setback—as traumatic and damaging as it may be—stops their lives completely, though, what has that survival really gotten them?

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