SYNOPSICS
Hrútar (2015) is a Icelandic movie. Grímur Hákonarson has directed this movie. Sigurður Sigurjónsson,Theodór Júlíusson,Charlotte Bøving,Jón Benónýsson are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2015. Hrútar (2015) is considered one of the best Comedy,Drama movie in India and around the world.
In a secluded valley in Iceland, Gummi and Kiddi live side by side, tending to their sheep. Their ancestral sheep-stock is considered one of the country's best and the two brothers are repeatedly awarded for their prized rams who carry an ancient lineage. Although they share the land and a way of life, Gummi and Kiddi have not spoken to each other in four decades. When a lethal disease suddenly infects Kiddi's sheep, the entire valley comes under threat. The authorities decide to cull all the animals in the area to contain the outbreak. This is a near death sentence for the farmers, whose sheep are their main source of income, and many abandon their land. But Gummi and Kiddi don't give up so easily - and each brother tries to stave off the disaster in his own fashion: Kiddi by using his rifle and Gummi by using his wits. As the authorities close in the brothers will need to come together to save the special breed passed down for generations, and themselves, from extinction.
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Hrútar (2015) Reviews
Sheep and stubborn men
'Rams' is a delightful film, for several reasons. First, it shows the traditional way of living at the remote Icelandic countryside, a harsh environment where only sheep and stubborn bearded men seem to be able to survive. The beautiful landscape and the traditional farming community are a wonderful setting for this film. Secondly, it tells a story with so much nice little details, that it's hard not to like it. It's about two brothers who live a few hundred meters from each other but haven't spoken to each other for 40 years. They communicate, if necessary, by writing letters which are carried from one house to the other by a sheepdog. When their flocks of expertly bred sheep are diagnosed with a deadly disease, their lives are turned upside down. Thirdly, it is a bittersweet drama with a very positive feeling to it. There are many funny moments, filled with the typical deadpan Scandinavian humour. When one of the brothers finds the other lying motionless in the snow, drunk and possibly freezing to death, he picks him up with a large mechanical shovel, deposits him in front of a nearby hospital, and leaves without even getting out of his machine. But as much as they detest each other, the circumstances make an emotional cease-fire inevitable. This is one of those little gems that deserve to make it to the final selections of the foreign language Oscars. 'Rams' was submitted by Iceland, but not selected for the final shortlist. What a pity.
Icelandic Mix of Darkness and Light
Love and hate have many things in common. Each, wrote Hawthorne, "leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object." In the remote landscape of distant Iceland two neighbors, Gummi and Kiddi, nurse a fervent hatred. It has simmered for forty years running and despite the many things they have in common. Like many Icelanders, where there are more sheep (800,000) than people (300,000), they share a passion for sheep. Not THAT passionate! The calling to raise sheep is intertwined with their nature. The discovery of scrapie among the sheep, a lethal and highly contagious disease, should draw Gummi and Kiddi closer together. With the lengths they go to avoid each other, it is hard to see how much further they could be apart. Yet with true Icelandic spirit they try their best to maintain their independence and go their separate ways. The results are both hilarious and tragic. The film is a typical Icelandic mix of darkness and light. The line is blurred between independence and isolation. The director maintains it is based on personal experience and real life situations. The themes of love and hate, as well as seclusion and self-reliance, really resonate with me. The two main characters are unique and intriguing as the film, and their parts are played well. Someone asked the director how hard it was to direct sheep and he replied that it was easier casting and directing sheep than people. Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015.
Breathtaking
Rams is an Icelandic saga of the highest order, not of Kings, but of the Icelandic sheep farmer. There are battles, but the opponents are nature, the struggles of human relationship, and the hardships of life. It is a saga of and for the working man, expressed and pared down like a working man's haiku, and it is breathtaking. Beyond the story, it is a visual feast. The Icelandic landscape - seen in both its green glory and its stark white glory - literally made me gasp at first. The sound of the howling, relentless winter wind touched a primal nerve in me. And as someone who has co-existed with animals for much of my life, and who has worked on farms for years, I was touched by the aphorism that you can love - truly love - your animals, and then kill them and eat them. Killing something you love is not an easy thing to do of course, but Rams is a blast of reality in that way. Sustenance and survival in the real world, people. It's not always pretty, and never packaged. Rams is harshness and it is beauty, contrasting, colliding, and intermingling, like an Icelandic landscape and an Icelandic sheep farmer's life. Ten out of ten stars.
Shear fascinating enigma (or: an impassive, primal baaaaaaallad)
You don't have to have been to Iceland to appreciate Rams, but it certainly helps explicate the film's grizzled, deadpan sense of humour, or the mysterious, beguiling power resonating from their vast, otherworldly landscapes. Writer/director Grímur Hákonarson crafts a skeletally simple tale of a community of farmers caring for their sheep whose livelihood is threatened by an outbreak of Scrapie, and employs it as a parable for changing with the times, or the creative, belligerent lengths some will go to to avoid doing so. Framed against the unyielding, jaw-dropping vistas of the Icelandic countryside, the (unexplained) conflict between the central two farmers, the spectacularly named Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson), feels equally mythic and etched in fiery stone, with all communication done by note, or the occasional drunken gunshot. It's sometimes difficult to tell what's meant to be funny or sombre in their antics in coping with their isolation and the pending slaughter of their sheep, but Hákonarson embraces the intersection, allowing their impassive, tentative emotional ambiguity and unapologetic wackiness to tease out the tension between amusingly petulant actions and the hard life that's spawned them. In fact, the film's main criticism is an increasing suspicion that the awe-inspiring impassivity of its stony plains and narrative alike overly inflates the sense of profundity therein. There's a primal elegance to the simplicity of Rams, but its scenario and central conflict are somewhat too familiar to not supplant with further scripting or characterization. Hákonarson's glacial pace, at first hypnotic and appropriate for the unyielding consistency of the farmers, becomes restless over time, making the film begin to feel sleepier when it should evidence an elegiac crescendo. Things perk up with a stormy and unexpectedly tender climax, but there's a larger breadth of untapped subtext which leaves the film feeling thoroughly pleasant, but flimsier than it should amidst such steadfast a landscape. If nothing else, the film should be commended for the abilities of its cast to convey so much largely through solemn staring into the distance. Sigurður Sigurjónsson brings a craggy affability to protagonist Gummi, the crinkles of affection crawling across his normally desolate features as he caresses the wool of his prized sheep making it all the more moving as he comes to terms with the heartbreaking of their pending slaughter. As the crabbier estranged brother, Theodór Júlíusson tempers comedic blustering and haphazard nudity with an undercurrent of real hurt and loss. Both are so odd it's easy to understand how they'd connect so much easier with their sheep, but also the ferocious indignation with which they'll protect not only their individual animals, but their livelihood, lifestyle, and family legacy. Rams, in its deliberate primal simplicity, may not offer all the answers to the questions it evokes, but in the hands of such raw,capable performers and the stunning, plaintive Icelandic vistas that Hákonarson films with such reverence, it's a deceptively engaging curiosity, and one worth weathering alongside its farmers. Just keep your clothes on, if at a public screening. -7/10
Iceland, countryside and brothers
I had the chance to watch Hrútar / Rams in a cinema in Reykjavik after traveling for 11 days in Iceland. Watching this movie was the highlight of our 2 day long stay in Reykjavik. During the story we get to know a world that coexists with our modern Western world and of which we know nothing: elderly brothers taking care of and working with sheep. While one shouldn't expect a Rambo-style Hollywood action movie, the pace is good, there are dramatic and comic scenes following each other in an easily-watchable way with nice shots and great acting (one doesn't think that he watches actors but real life). I would have loved to have more insights on the life of shepherds and know more of the antecedents but the story told in the movie is a dramatic, full story while the movie is a very well done independent-type European movie.