Rams (2015)
When Reagan and Gorbachev met to thaw the Cold War, the venue was an unassuming house overlooking the sea in Reykjavik, Iceland. Hölfōi House had been previously occupied by the poet Einar Benediktsson, who once wrote, "Take notice of the past if you would achieve originality.” Whatever else Einar meant, at this house, the necessity of learning from history is impossible to ignorable.
It is easier to imagine today's enemies talking once you've seen the house. You see, it's not the Avengers' home base or one of those underground lairs favored by James Bond villains. It's just a house surrounded by the typical trappings of a small city—business headquarters, cafes, supermarkets. The Icelandic government uses it today for social gatherings. It's just a house. And what happened in it thirty years ago was at heart two people communicating with a shared goal that transcended them both.
The notion of enemies sitting down and talking with each other is also at the heart of the magnificent new Icelandic film Rams, which I saw in a cinema about a five-minute walk from Hölfōi. Two sheep-farming brothers live and work beside each other, but haven't spoken for four decades. A family shadow has driven them apart, one of those decisions made by parents seeking the best for their children but not knowing how to arrive there. So, separately, they endure twice the hardships and experience only half the blessings of life amid this most exquisite landscape. Success is ignored by the other or serves as an occasion for jealousy rather than celebration; Christmas is spent alone, no one to share the feast; and Icelandic winters are hardest of all.
Rams is dominated by a gorgeously naturalistic central performance by Siguròur Sigurjónsson as Gummi, the younger brother burdened by his father's legacy. First appearing to act from envy, when he discovers sheep belonging to his brother, Kiddi, may have been infected with a disease that will force wholesale slaughter of the neighboring flocks, a world-weary commitment to doing what's right takes over. The disease and the brothers' desire to salvage something good from their broken family history provides the kind of opportunity for change that could have seemed contrived, but in Grímur Hákonarson's script and direction are so compelling that you may find yourself hoping that such an intervention awaits you on departing the cinema. I know that Rams made me think not only of the need for reconciliation between (and within) nations, but about the people from whom I feel distant, or who may feel distant from me, and to ask myself what steps we can take toward sitting down, looking at each other, and communicating.