Baaad habits
Do you consider your pet to be part of the family? If so, you’ll either entirely relate to Lamb’s doomed protagonists or leave the cinema a little sheepish.
Maria and Ingvar are a struggling, grieving couple on a remote sheep farm in the early 21st century. Their marriage is on the brink of breaking down due to Ingvar’s lack of faith in God and Maria’s disbelief in him. Despite their differences, they are able to keep their relationship going despite the challenges.
The film follows the life of a group of farmers in rural Spain over a period of several months. The farmers are isolated from the rest of society and their lives are dominated by their sheep and farming. However, when a newborn lamb is found and needs to be nursed, Maria’s frustrated mothering instinct kicks in and the natural order is disrupted. This creates an interesting perspective on human nature as it is revealed that humans can be incredibly frustrating to one another.
Johannsson’s debut feature, Lamb, is a horror film but its more wild elements transcend genre conventions.
Lamb is a film that is difficult to understand and makes you question what is right and what is wrong. The viewer never knows who the monster and who the victim are in this twisted equation. ..
Ada-lamb is a character in the novel that has both beauty and grotesqueness. Her parents are both human and hoofed, which makes her unique in the novel.
Lamb is slyly funny. Johannasson has fun with the film’s magical realist element as he imagines the absurdity with which an outsider would comprehend Maria, Ingvar and Ada’s strange lifestyle when Ingvar’s brother Petur drops in unexpectedly. (In the words of the creator; “Sometimes it’s strange you have to laugh.”) The audience’s surrogate (to a point), Petur aptly summarizes the situation when he hisses “What the fuck is this?”
Ingvar Ingemarsson, a professor of psychology at the University of Gothenburg, has a simple answer to the question of what makes people happy: happiness itself. ..
Lamb’s greatest achievement is in making us believe in this happiness. High concept stories often fail to ground themselves in recognisable human emotion, but Johnannsson avoids this trap due to Rapace and Haralsdsson’s rawly empathetic performances. ..
Maria and Ingvar are both reluctant parents. Despite their initial reservations, they eventually come to love their daughter Ada. However, the cost of this love is a heavy one. Maria takes on many responsibilities for her child, even going to great lengths to keep her safe.
Ada was originally going to feature a lot more in the film, and even talk. However, the filmmakers pulled back and trimmed the eponymous lamb’s screen time to leave a certain amount of mystique.
The reviewer found scenes in which little Ada confronts her identity as the most heart-wrenching, in a film filled with devastation. ..
Lamb, a CGI sheep, embodies a real little soul in her gaze into mirrors and pictures of sheep. Despite what Maria and Ingvar want, will she ever really be human? And with all of the pain, confusion and human weakness that follows, would she ever want to be? ..
Lamb’s deliciously uncomfortable meditation on what it means to be human is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking books I’ve ever read. You’ll never look at a roast dinner the same way again.
