Digital Review – Rams (2020)

There are times when films get lost in translation. Foreign titles are fair game for re-makes in English, but something can get lost along the way. Think Downhill, with Will Ferrell and Julia Louis Dreyfus attempting to re-create the critical success of Sweden’s Force Majeure, or The Upside, which saw the combined talents of Brian Cranston and Kevin Hart falling well behind the French original, Intouchables. Perhaps it was just as well the much-publicised English re-make of Toni Erdmann fell by the wayside.

Rams first appeared as an Icelandic film in 2015, the story of two sheep farming brothers who hadn’t spoken to each other for years. Its deadpan humour turned it into an unexpected hit, winning the Un Certain Regard award at that year’s Cannes. This time, though, it’s not Hollywood that’s taken a movie under its filmmaking wing, but Australia, with director Jeremy Sims attempting to re-locate the story. Or grab the ram by the horns, if you like. Not that he’s changed it a great deal. Brothers Colin (Sam Neill) and Les (Michael Caton) still haven’t spoken to each other for forty years, they’re still sheep farmers and Les’s herd contracts a highly contagious disease, forcing all the flocks in the valley to be killed, threatening the entire community. But despite being the more sociable of the two, and the more likely to comply with authority, Colin finds a way round the situation ….

The tone, however, differs noticeably from the original. The humour is still there, but this time in the dry, Australian style but while its predecessor had a flinty core, this is altogether softer hearted. Despite whatever’s happened between the two grumpy old men, there’s always a hint that something will bring them back together again. There’s a hint of potential romance for one of them in the shape of Miranda Richardson’s “Pommie vet” and a strong sense of community, with everybody coming together in the face of adversity, firstly when the disease hits and later when the town is faced with the kind of bush fires that decimated swathes of Australia last year. Not that such warmth is ill-judged: even if it feels like an ode to small farming towns, there are still individuals keeping the communal feet on the ground.

The bulk of the story, however, concentrates on the two brothers. Living in facing farmhouses, as if their wooden walls were confronting each other, they compete, do petty things to annoy each other but never exchange a word. They don’t need to. If looks could kill …… But they do share one thing. A sheepdog, who splits its time between the two of them and is something of a canine go-between, with notes tucked underneath its collar. Some of the best humour in the film comes from the collie with split loyalties, but there’s other moments that are pure joy – Colin’s bizarre house conversion for one, and the moment when he takes his drunken brother to hospital by tractor. In the bucket attachment.

It isn’t all about the laughs, though. There’s a vein of tragi-comedy running through the film, a genuine sadness that comes with the prospect of the town having no future once the sheep have all disappeared, the intrusion by government officials with no understanding of their lifestyle and a single line from one of the characters that will chime with everybody in the current climate. But Sims has pulled off something of a rarity: an English language re-make that retains some of the strengths of the original but is enough of its own film to stand up by itself. It doesn’t happen very often.

★★★1/2

Drama, Comedy | Cert: 12 | Digital | Signature Entertainment | 5 February 2021 | Dir. Jeremy Sims | Sam Neill, Michael Caton, Miranda Richardson, Wayne Blair.