Hollywood’s voracious consumption of other countries’ IP has made it easy to identify when a film has been Americanised, but what do we expect when a film transfers from Iceland to Australia? Grímur Hákonarson’s 2015 film Rams was voted the second-best Icelandic film of all time by the Icelandic website Kjarninn – it certainly has more of an international profile than Kjarninn’s number one, 1984’s When the Raven Flies. It’s also one of the most Icelandic films, blending stated inspirations like There Will Be Blood and the films of Aki Kaurismäki into a piece of terse, witty, brooding deadpan that feels utterly characteristic of its nation’s cinema. Director Jeremy Sims, therefore, has his work cut out in this remake, released on digital platforms by Signature Entertainment, but fortunately, he has plenty of strategies to make this story feel native to his country.
As anyone who’s seen Mark Lewis’s Cane Toads documentaries knows, there is a particular reason for Australians to feel unease at an invasive species or virus. It adds a little extra weight to the story’s inciting incident, as Michael Caton’s Les sees his prize ram diagnosed with a rare, highly infectious illness. The order goes out for the region’s goats to be destroyed before it spreads, which understandably enrages Les. His brother Colin opts for a different tactic, choosing to hide some of his animals in his house. What ensues is not just the expected clash with the authorities but a clash between the two brothers, who have been estranged for years.
There’s some good gags in Jules Duncan’s script, but nothing cuts to the heart of the film quite like Colin’s disgust at seeing a builder’s offer to install a shed – “not build it, install it!” Hákonarson’s film plays with Western iconography, but the abrasive independence and anti-authoritarianism of his story makes new sense in a country whose founding folk hero is Ned Kelly.
rams
Colin is played by Sam Neill, whose current wave of popularity is built equally on his roles in superb films like Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Sweet Country and on his endearing social media presence. No actual influencer has made me envy their lifestyle as much as Neill, with his winery and menagerie of farm animals named after people he’s worked with. Colin’s farming life is rather less idyllic than Neill’s, but the role fits nicely into his late-career pantheon of irritable loners who slowly reveal their sympathetic sides. Caton might be less well-known to international audiences, but he’s no less impressive. A lot of the pain and sadness that Colin can’t acknowledge in himself surfaces in Les, although he still gets a fair share of laugh lines. I have a particular soft spot for Caton’s delivery of “Shot your boot!”
There’s some good gags in Jules Duncan’s script, but nothing cuts to the heart of the film quite like Colin’s disgust at seeing a builder’s offer to install a shed – “not build it, install it!” Hákonarson’s film plays with Western iconography, but the abrasive independence and anti-authoritarianism of his story makes new sense in a country whose founding folk hero is Ned Kelly. By the third act it could be accused of going a little too far with this; there are about three set-pieces which feel like Colin and Les’s final confrontation, and the restrained, dry sadness that colours the early scenes is stretched out into sentimentality. It has to be noted that Sims’s version of Rams is roughly half an hour longer than Hákonarson’s, and it doesn’t always justify that extra time.
Still, there’s plenty of incidental pleasures along the way, and towards the end it even turns into a kind of environmental parable without losing the essential delicacy of touch it started with. Special mention has to be given to Miranda Richardson, whose red-haired vet Kat is constantly described as “the Pommy” but whose accent subtly suggests a bit of her adopted homeland has rubbed off on her. Much as it has the film as a whole.
RAMS IS OUT NOW ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS
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Thank you for reading Graham’s Review of RAMS (2020)
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