From Southeast Asia’s “The Medium” to Hollywood’s “Old” to this “Lamb”(Dýrið) Icelandic movie, the horror films that received much attention in 2021 have failed at the box office one after another.
“Lamb” was also nominated for a category of focus at the Cannes Film Festival, but the viewing process was extremely hypnotic. Even with 1.5x speed, it is still a powerful sleep aid artifact.
Except for the idea of a half-human, half-sheeped child, which is relatively new, “Lamb” is insignificant in other respects.
If you have severe insomnia, it is recommended to use this movie instead of sleeping pills and hot milk.
Related Post: The suspenseful horror film “Dýrið” released the official trailer.
The story of “Lamb” is not complicated:
At the beginning of the movie, an unrevealed monster raped the ewe No. 3115 of a remote farmer and herder in Iceland.
Later, when Maria and Ingvar, the farmer and herder couple, were delivering the birthing ewe, they discovered that it had given birth to a cub that was half human and half sheep.
The couple was not scared, but started raising this little monster as if they were their own daughter.
Before they waited for the mother sheep to take a look at their child, they took it away from the real mother, the ewe number 3115.
Maria and Ingvar immediately regarded half-human and half lamb as their children because they had a child named Ada before, but he died.
After the bereavement, the relationship between the husband and wife was very cold, and the arrival of this half-human and half lamb filled the psychological emptiness of the two.
They regarded it as a gift from God and still named it after their lost daughter Ada.
As the husband and wife took care of Ada, Ada’s real mother, the ewe No. 3115, kept wailing.
It also ran out of the sheepfold and stood at the door, wanting to get back his children.
This ewe irritated Maria by doing this several times. As a herder, the ewe No. 3115 is just one of the many sheep she raised.
She is a human being, and it is just a sheep. Maria shot and killed the 3115 ewe without hesitation.
Unexpectedly, in the face of reproduction and nurturing instincts, such an ordinary woman would also be driven by her own desires to kill.
In the scene of Maria killing the ewe, there is a small detail, that is, the position where she shot the ewe with the gun is at the center of the eyebrow.
And when Maria was washing away the blood from this massacre, there was also a strange blood stain on her brow.
Although I don’t know if this detail is intentional.
But according to common sense, Maria shot and killed a sheep, and then buried the sheep, it is unlikely that there will be blood on the forehead.
The movie gave this shot of blood in the same position for a long time, which seemed to hint at Maria’s own destiny.
If she loses her child, she will eventually be killed by a stronger force.
Maria’s killing of the ewe happened to be seen by Pétur, the uncle (husband Ingvar’s brother) who came back to borrow secretly.
Her husband’s brother Pétur used to be a rock musician and flirted with Maria many times. And from the lines, the audience can also infer that the two have actually had a relationship before.
The settings of the husband’s brother Pétur and Pan are similar
Many interpretations compare the role of Pétur to Pan, who appeared at the end of the movie.
Because Pan is a shepherd, a flock of sheep and a shepherd, he is characterized by lust and good at music.
This explanation is reasonable, but it is a pity that “Lamb” did not dig into the role of Pétur.
Apart from showing that he and his sister-in-law Maria have an affair, there is nothing else to interpret.
With the arrival of Ada and Pétur, and the mutual acceptance between the two (sheep), it brought popularity to this previously deserted home.
There was a long-lost excitement at home. Everyone watched a football game, drank, and laughed constantly.
Maria and her husband also had a long-lost passion.
The family gradually became lively
But the good times didn’t last long. Her husband’s brother Pétur couldn’t always live here, and he and Maria had an affair.
Just as Maria sent Pétur away in a bus, the half-human and half-goat monster in front of him who did not show his image, that is, Ada’s real biological father, also shot her husband Ingvar to death.
The image of this half-human half-goat monster is like Pan in Western mythology.
“Lamb” has thus formed this ending:
That is, the human adoptive mother killed the natural biological mother of the lamb, and the natural biological father retaliated by killing the adoptive father of the lamb, making Maria lose everything.
At the end of the movie, Maria lost her husband and her child Ada again, as well as her affair, Pétur, alone.
The movie ends.
This film is director Valdimar Jóhannsson’s feature film debut, and of course there are many issues that are common to feature film debuts.
The shot of “Lamb” is indeed beautiful, but its story is as thin as the air in Iceland. There are almost no lines in the film, and the language is unclear.
After watching “Lamb”, the audience will have their own interpretation of the sheep symbol, the symbol represented by Pétur, and the final Pan image.
In fact, it doesn’t matter if the movie is not understandable, because the director mentioned the ending in the interview and didn’t give a clear explanation.
If forced to interpret, from the current information given by “Lamb”, it can be seen that this is a work that combines Western religious folklore, folklore, and the director’s own worldview and self-expression.
First of all, judging from the heroine’s name Maria and one of the posters, the heroine obviously represents the image of the Virgin.
The left side of the picture below is the famous “Sistine Madonna” portrait, and the right side is the poster of “Lamb”.
There is no need to discuss the image of the lamb. As long as you know a little bit of Christian customs, you will know that one of the meanings of the lamb represents Jesus.
The image of the lamb is very important and very complicated in Christianity. It represents a lot of things, as far as the film has a virgin and child relationship.
Regarding what the movie wants to express, there is a small word on the poster. The word “Mother” is written in the front, and the word “Nature” is written in reverse.
Some people simply interpret “Nature” here as “natural”, but this explanation may not be comprehensive.
The movie not only promotes the so-called concept of environmental protection, but “Nature” itself also has the meaning of nature and character. It is more of a thinking about the relationship between man and nature.
The director and heroine Noomi Rapace explained in the interview that what “Lamb” actually wants to express is human beings’ looting of nature (Maria robbed the lamb as her own child) and killed the lamb’s birth mother.
However, nature actually has a stronger power. It retaliates against Maria who wants to be a mother, who is the master of everything.
At the same time, Maria, as the mother of God, actually represents the entire human race.
Of course, this is also based on an explanation obtained by the director and the lead actor. I believe that every audience will have their own understanding after watching “Lamb”.
