An Icelandic couple live with their herd of sheep on a beautiful but remote farm. When they discover a mysterious newborn on their land, they decide to keep it and raise it as their own. This unexpected development and the prospects of a new family brings them much joy before ultimately destroying them.
- Released: 2021-08-12
- Runtime: 106 minutes
- Genre: Drama, Horror, Mystery
- Stars: Noomi Rapace, Hilmir Snær Guðnason, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Ester Bibi, Sigurður Elvar Viðarson, Theodór Ingi Ólafsson, Arnþruður Dögg Sigurðardóttir, Gunnar Þor Karlsson, Lára Björk Hall
- Director: Valdimar Jóhannsson
Comments
- dearoceanfilms - 10 April 2024
loved the premise but...
The movie is unique, slow paced and the story itself is so intriguing and fun to watch but the ending is not so fulfilling to me... why do i feel it ended in the middle of nowhere... feel like there should be a more meaningful or bizarre ending... maybe cos i've got brainwashed by typical American films... Great performance, I didn't get bored even though there weren't many dialogues.
But who's fault though...The human or the human lamb... this type of movie always making me thinking a lot and reflecting and debriefing about being a human.
Really hope to see the sequel in the near future. There's a look in Maria's last glimpse. - jmbovan-47-160173 - 26 November 2023
Icelandic film of folklore and grief
Lamb is an Icelandic film, and I'm assuming speaks to the quiet isolation of the Icelandic rural farmland. (I haven't traveled there so can only assume from other films ive seen.) Beautiful scenery is captured, and the pacing is engaging without requiring the trappings of tension building in most American films.
A farming couple raise sheep. And one day, an ewe gives birth to a lamb-human hybrid. The husband hands this to his wife, and she swaddles this being as her own. They raise this being as Ada and appear happy in this new life.
There are obvious signs of grief working in this film, but also a sense of supernatural that brings this film tonally to that of folklore. But, this isn't the sanitized version of a Grimm tale.
I watched this largely for Noomi Rapace, and I was pleased with her and the film overall. Contemplative and sorrowful, Lamb questions how we can love and how our actions reverberate in our lives. Some suspension of belief is needed for thr premise, but this isn't difficult to suspend given the emotions portrayed by the actors. - evening1 - 16 April 2023
What a strange tale!
This movie exudes apprehension, and it's unclear where it's heading till beyond the final credits. Yet it never loses interest.
I have a love of Iceland, and the guidebooks say locals believe in the like of elves, probably because the geography is so starkly enigmatic, with volcanic cliffs and clouds that roll in from the fjords. Sheep are the traditional lifeblood of Iceland, providing food and clothing -- everything necessary to make human life possible in a forbidding environment. I'm guessing the villain in this tale is an antichrist-like denizen of the hills bent on taking revenge on his brethren's eternal predator.
There's a good performance here from Noomi Rapace as the highly alienated Maria, whose only child died, apparently through her negligence, and she's gone mad from grief. Her husband Ingvar is a simple-minded sort who will do anything to help her find joy again. I will say I didn't think that Ms. Rapace's sex scene needed to be that graphic; it adds nothing to the peculiar storyline. Her character keeps you guessing throughout -- from her uncharacteristically joyful bathtub scene to a drive with her brother-in-law Petur, which prompts a "Jules et Jim"-type sense of foreboding.
This movie features some incredible landscape shots and snippets of Icelandic that even a language student like me can understand (i.e., Eg er ad farin}. Lovely, yet this is one exceedingly odd experience. - Harthacnut - 31 October 2022
Impossible to connect with these people
Ok, we know, this is pure fantasy and could never happen in the real world. But people are people even in fantasy films and if we are to be carried along with the story they must at least credibly behave like people. What, no reaction of horror at the sight of the monster child? No frenzied discussions of what to do with it, hide it, Petur's unexplained change of attitude etc... I know this is Iceland, but there are other people around in that valley. And I know Icelanders might not be the most talkative of folk... but they do string more than a couple of sentences together from time to time. I also know that valley to be very beautiful, but does nearly every shot (even window reflections) have to show those same jagged peaks. I almost gave up, but pursued doggedly to the end, which dramatically brought some sort of resolution. All rather pointless though, (what was that sex scene for?) and I would not have regretted missing it. Dreadful acting from Noomi Rapace. Not all her fault, maybe it was just bad casting. - danybur - 10 August 2022
A new beginning
Summary
Upsetting and original debut film by the Icelandic Valdimar Jóhannsson, a fable that shines with its combination of genres and the delicacy in handling the bizarre in a (in principle) rural drama with parenthood, the relationship with animals and the arbitrariness of the look in the center of the scene.
Review
A couple of childless Icelandic farmers carry out a particular adoption that will change their lives.
After an enigmatic prelude, the film shows us, in a very naturalistic way, the day-to-day agricultural work (sheep farming and crops) of María (Noomi Rapace, in a role tailored to her) and her husband Ingvar (Hilmir Snaer Gudnason), a couple resigned to routine and loneliness on a remote farm in the mountains of Iceland (isolation will be a key factor in the plot and it is notable how silence dominates part of the film's opening footage). It will be the identity of the newborn that both of them adopt by mutual agreement (and suddenly) that will imprint a change in their lives and generate the intrigue of the viewer.
This daring debut film by Valdimar Jóhannsson successfully manages to combine a set of genres, as it reveals information to us through an excellent use of framing, off-screen and the appearance of objects. Lamb is above all a rural family drama that incorporates, depending on how it is interpreted, elements of horror and fantasy (although I do not agree with framing the film within folk horror as some critics do) and where the remarkable and delicate handling of the bizarre stands out.
It is a story with parenthood at the center of its plot and how love determines the gaze on the loved one, which becomes a source of happiness and the opportunity for a new beginning for the couple (for various reasons, the film reminded me Lucía Puenzo's remarkable XXY). Another central dimension is the approach to the relationship between humans and animals, loaded with meanings, with its elements of appropriation, submission and violence.
The apparently peaceful and deliberately slow climate of the film (which is divided into chapters) coexists with the disconcerting and the ominous and gives way in several sections to tension, anguish and eventually violence. - xxturnipxx - 13 July 2022
This movie garbage ash
The movie was very slow and boring and the only interesting part was the end. I hate the lamb child thing and i hope that its mom or dad lamb thing kills it eventually. If the dads brother killed the lamp baby it would have made the movie so much better or if the dad got cucked by his brother.
