Rams

Dear Mark,

The Anglo-Americanisation of world cinema is a disappointing aspect of the film industry. The 2016 Icelandic film Rams is an absurdly dark portrayal of two disgruntled sheep-farming brothers who are honouring a forty year rift in silence. So much resentment is communicated through their silence, with the dark comedy of a rural Icelandic community providing an impressively minimalist, frozen backdrop.

The 2021 Australian remake, therefore, can only be approached with a quizzical sense of why exactly this film needs to exist. The film is a 'hot' version of its Icelandic predecessor, with bush fires and dust replacing blizzards and icicles. The narrative arc of the trauma of disease-ridden livestock and the subsequent devastation for a farming community is almost identical, but the Australian version is over-acted and heavy-handedly stereotypical. The whipper-snapper urbanite public health officer's dissociation from the rural community is cartoonish as he prowls around in a sharp suit trying to find cell phone reception. The rift between the brothers is more easily recovered, and there is a sense of Hollywood-hope at the end of the film which the Icelandic version refrains from, again highlighting the unnecessary atmospheric shift from refined, well-made world cinema into palatable Anglo-American consumerism.

The Australian Rams is benign and warm-hearted, but if anybody out there enjoys it, I implore you to seek out the original and support well-made, original craftsmanship.