Telluride at Dartmouth: Rams
Aging bachelor farmers, their beloved sheep and breathtaking Icelandic vistas clash in this funny and thrilling tale.
While living next door to one another, two aging brothers, locked in some unnamed, decades-long feud, go to dryly comical extremes to avoid communication with each other. Gummi (Sigurour Sigurjónsson) is shy, quiet but essentially decent, while Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson) is a bombastic, misanthropic drunk. But they share their passionate love for the sheep to whom they’ve each dedicated their lives and land. When one of their sheep contracts a contagious disease, the livelihood of the brothers and their neighbors is threatened. Writer-director Grímur Hákonarson, a master of mournful wordless comic set-pieces, with cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, makes maximum expressive use of the bleakly beautiful Icelandic mountain landscapes. But it’s the almost wordless performances of Siggurson and Juliusson that lead to an unexpectedly passionate resolution. Who could have expected Iceland, sheep and septuagenarian bachelors to be this funny, and this thrilling? (Iceland, subtitled, 2015, 93m) Courtesy of Cohen Media
