2. Dýrið (Lamb)

Welcome to the second episode of The Monochrome Picture Show!Today we delve into the mesmerizing world of Valdimar Jóhannsson's cinematic masterpiece. Join us in a captivating conversation that explores various aspects such as symbology, mythology, narrative structure, and camera work.

Crafted immediately after viewing Lamb, this episode captures the authenticity of a genuine conversation, providing valuable insights and analysis. 

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Transcript

Welcome to episode 2. This is the Monochrome Picture Show. Today we're going to be talking about the 2021 film Lamb, directed by Valdemar Johansson. If you haven't seen the film already, this is a spoiler warning as we will be talking about the story in depth. To summarise the plot, Maria and Ingvar discover a strange creature in their barn and decide to adopt the animal as their own. One day... Ingvar's brother Peter comes to live with them, and the peaceful nature of their seclusion comes under threat. So did anything stand out in the film for you in particular? It was an extremely atmospheric movie. I was expecting something like that. Nordic horror is often very atmospheric. It's actually the complete opposite of Hollywood horror. If you look at it in terms of binaries, right, binary opposites, they are almost the exact opposite to one another. Hollywood is all about jump scares and tense music. This film had no jump scares, no music at all. I think, except from the very end, I think there was music. But it was just very long, slow shots, and the film was very slowly paced as well. But it was very unsettling in some moments. It was extremely unsettling. I think it was contemplative in a sense. So I think it draws a lot of elements from the cinematography of Bergman, all this focus on the landscape, and these medium close-ups. And it wasn't necessarily slow pace, but there wasn't, yeah, as you said, there's not like, there was nothing like the Hollywoodian structure of horror. Yeah. So it's not like something happens and then the protagonists have to overcome a structure. So there's no three act structure in the film. There's a different kind of structure. But there are chapters, and I think there were three chapters. Yes. The requirements for the three-act structure, from what I understand, is the characters have an environment and a reality going on, then something happens that disrupts that. So there's a struggle. And then there's the resolution, which ends the story. Here you know what, I think it just links to mythology. It feels like a myth. And actually, within the film, there's a lot of connections to that. The things they read to her or even the fact that they're watching the movie and they're both not really paying attention to it. And so they mentioned the fact that they're talking about folk tales and they are literally experiencing a real life folk tale. Folk horror, which is pretty on the nose, but it wasn't too obvious. There was Besides the ending, actually, everything felt very vague. The entity, let's just call it that. The entity comes along and kills Ingvar and we see him. We see the entity for the first time. I actually think it would have been more powerful. Have we not seen it? But perhaps they wanted to convey something, either metaphorically or symbolically or just from a narrative perspective, they wanted to convey that. And the best way to do that was to actually show the monster at the end. But I thought that one of the strengths of the film was how it left things unsaid and it left things unseen and it leaves a lot of room and a lot of space to kind of get to know these characters and how they live and just the way that they interact in their day to day lives and you can feel that something's missing and as we find out it's a child. They lost their child. From my perspective they are still very clearly in the grieving process, they haven't quite moved on from it and they use this miracle of the lamb as a means to move on despite the fact that's a terrible idea because you're not moving on, you're just finding a replacement for the thing that you lost and that's not the same thing My god, you're right, they even gave her the same name Yeah Ada And then can you imagine that because as much as she loves Ada the lamb. Maria, she'll never be able to love her as much as she loved her child, because Ada the lamb is through her own name a replacement. Well, yes, for the second part. One could argue that she will even love her more, because she experienced losing her or something like her the first time. Yes, but I think that she isn't necessarily in a fit position to love something in a healthy way, because she's still grieving, she still hasn't moved on, and because of that she isn't appreciating A to the Lime for the miracle that she is, just on her own. It's the miracle that she can get out of it, how it's going to fit into her life and how it's going to benefit her. And that's not to say that she's a bad person for doing so, it's a really human response to losing you'll probably feel like there's a whole lot of existential questions that you feel you need answers to. Why would this happen to me? How could the universe work in such a chaotic way and is everything just based on entropy? And when you find a half human half lamb in the barn, probably suddenly you think, wow, this has happened to me for a reason. You think that there is a higher power that's come around and has established some kind of order for you, that the universe is giving one back for you because you lost something so dear to you. But that's not what's happening. It wasn't her miracle to take. That's what she did. She took it and she slaughtered the mother so that she wasn't reminded of her crime because the mother kept on bleeding outside the window. I think that's not a healthy way to love somebody because you're keeping them away from their natural... environment. I mean, of course, it's not healthy. But she's not in a fit space to love something. You're right. But what you said at the beginning was that she won't love her as much. We were not talking about the healthy value of that love. Actually, I guess the less healthy the more, because then it like dives into obsession and stuff like that. But then obsession isn't love. I guess not. I don't know who are we to say like I don't I honestly don't think the film wants you to reflect in moral terms. I think it leaves actually well it makes you reflect on that but on your own terms it doesn't spoon feed you with a moral. So as the premise which is really subtle is that they lost a child because there's not. like a heartbreaking sequence where we see how it happened and when, like, it would happen in a Hollywoodian kind of hyper coherent structure. We are left to see how they are and how they feel and as we said from the beginning, we can tell that she's not happy and that she's not fine, that she's definitely dealing, struggling with something with herself. So, The movie is not about her mental state, but rather the mental state she has from the beginning is the premise of the story. I agree with the fact that perhaps it would have been more powerful to not show the creature in the end, but I think at the same time that maybe what they wanted to do, and mind that we are talking about this with a very slim theoretical background because we just watched it. So we're not bringing sources or anything like that. This is just a free conversation about it for the sake of it, just because we enjoyed the movie a lot. I think they wanted to play with the anthropomorphism of the whole story. They could have made her, even though she was adorable, they could have made her so much cuter. poof instead of a hand. And the fact that she didn't talk, it would have been different and more anthropomorphized if applied to more canonic narrative devices. But yet they used this kind of eerie aesthetic code. And I think as they kept intact the structure of the child as child and of the lamb as lamb, and they somehow made their function as both. they wanted to do the same with both the mum, which was a normal sheep, but was somehow behaving like a human mother. And with the father. Whatever the fuck that was. I'm still not sure what it was. I actually was wondering, because the film seems to make some commentary on the borders between things. Looking at it, the border between man and nature, or man and animal. So for example, Peter acts on animal instinct and tries to sleep with his brother's wife, despite the fact that would cause a whole host of problems. But the lamb Ada is herself a manifestation of that border because she is neither man nor animal. She's something in between. And I think that the that border is dismissed by Maria and... it's dismissed by Ingvar because they don't want to address it. They would rather just live life as if it was totally normal and what was happening did not result in any potential hiccups or problems along the way. Because the sheep bleating at Maria, or for Ada, her sheep, her daughter, essentially, she's calling attention to the border that's been violated. because the sheep does not belong in the house as simple as it is. It's not their miracle to take. But the entity at the end, it's almost the retribution of nature coming back and punishing man for being so dismissive and so uncaring, unthoughtful. I agree with that. Even though I guess my issue with that is the beginning, because of course you don't see the creature in the beginning and you don't know what kind of encounter they had if it was like forced upon the mother of it was like a consensual encounter you don't know that. And from my perspective it's extremely interesting because you are never forced anybody's or anyone's rather anyone's perspective it's very external and very objective and matter of fact. camera looks very cold as well. Exactly. Yes, yes. And that's also mirrored by the aesthetics of both the barn and the house. The human mother plays mother because it's not her child. But from the beginning, she looks at her says, okay, she looks half human. That's enough for me to claim her, bring her in a house and start to play family with her. The biological mother, let's call does way less, but her mother instinct, it's so sincere and genuine. That was so heartbreaking to me when she actually manages to take her and they are going away somewhere and they're actually just sitting in the grass and she's kind of like hugging her. They do understand each other. Yeah, they use the same code because in the end of the day, they belong together. But that's why I said that I don't think Maria could ever love Ada the lamb as much as she loved Ada her daughter, the one she actually gave birth to. Because that's not her child, and she doesn't have that same mother instinct, like that primal instinct, that the sheep had, because the sheep consistently came back to try and find Ada and then ran off with her. But what happened at the end when the entity takes Ada away and Maria can't find Ada? She doesn't panic, she actually breathes a sigh of relief almost. Because I think in that moment she accepts what she's been doing, she accepts that I have been grieving, I have not, I'm denying myself the truth here because I know that something is actually going on. I, instead of acknowledging the fact that my daughter has died and the impact that that's had on me, I've found a surrogate daughter. But that connection won't be the same because she is a replacement. But for the lamb, for the sheep, rather, that's not a replacement lamb, that's hers. Yeah, of course. I didn't understand it was like a comparative matter. Like the sheep-mutterer. and the human mother I didn't understand you were comparing. Why does it matter which child did Maria love the most? It doesn't necessarily matter, I'm just calling attention to the fact that she is using Ada as a replacement and so she's not loving Ada necessarily for what she is. Okay. I think that she's loving her and she does love Ada, don't get me wrong, but I think she loves her for the wrong reasons. She loves her because It is almost like a gift from the universe that has been given to her. And the place that now has in her life fills a void. So she loves Ada the lamb because she fills a void that was there. So she's not necessarily loving Ada because she's a miracle because she's not her miracle to love. I think that she's loving her because she's filling a void that's clearly there. she's not addressing it. So that's why I think that she could never love Ada as much as she loved her daughter because her daughter was hers, but deep down she knows that Ada doesn't belong to her. Right. And that's why she killed the sheep because it kept on coming back, not just disallowing her from sleeping, but reminding her of her crime and not only the crime of theft, but the blatant cloud of blissful ignorance that she's allowing to form over her eyes because she doesn't want to face the fact that actually this is not my daughter. I do not own this being. A vile stubbornness. She keeps on doing the same thing. She doesn't care. She isn't the biological mom. the sheep. She doesn't, it almost feels redacted to call her the sheep. I'm going to go for the biological mother. I'm going to claim the title back for her. She is so peaceful in her claiming the daughter back. She doesn't do anything violent. She doesn't try to attack them. She doesn't try to break into the house. It's just there. Just staring at the window and focusing on the window and the home space for a moment. I think they played that out extremely well because they are constantly playing with the space and the perception of the space within the house and the question of proximity. So the fact that they put the, how do you call it, the crib so close to their bed and Maria is kind of like constantly looking at her, looking at Ada. So there's this feeling of almost codependency. which is not codependency at all, because then you start seeing how Ada actually is. And she's so small and young, but she's quite independent. She's quite on her own journey, you know what I mean? It doesn't feel like a helpless child. Yeah. I think she's very aware of the fact that she doesn't belong there. So as much as she loves Invar and Maria, she knows that she does not belong in this house. she watches human customs and is almost frightened by them. And that's why when the entity comes along at the end, there's no big fuss. There's no, you know, Ada doesn't break down in tears for Ingvar as much as she, and I do believe that she loved him, but she almost accepts, no, this is the way that it is. I should follow my real father back to where I belong because I don't belong in this house. I agree to some extent in the sense that I also saw acceptance, but then I guess you can dive into a different type of discourse saying is it our parents that decide where we belong, either biological or adoptive? So we are saying she accepts to go with her father because that's where she belongs in air quotes. But my question is, is it up to your parents, both biological and non-biological, to decide where you belong? And if not, that, isn't the state of her as an animal or something in between enough to give her the independency? The choice? Yeah, to decide? Either way. I don't think what I love about her as a character, Ada the lamb, is that she doesn't exist in either field. They don't go off and walk into the barn or start grazing on grass. They are just on the border between man and animal. And obviously man is an animal so they're something in between. And they disappear into the mist and it feels like they're walking off into their own land that probably we're not aware of because we're not invited to go there. some reason, maybe it's because we steal their kids. But she is called to the wild. She looks at a painting and there's sheep on it and we get a slow zoom on the painting and we hear bleating all over the place. It's quite clear that she's being called and she realizes that she doesn't belong here as much as she loves her parents at Maria and Ingvar. It's clear she knows that she doesn't belong here. No, with that I agree. But well, as I mentioned before, we started recording. I didn't love the ending, but because for how much, even though I understand. And to some extent, I agree with your reading of the ending from a point of view of values. I don't love the idea of her being taken from. one reality where she's passive and people decide her role within the family to another reality that seems to be similar simply because of the creature that takes her away has male characteristics. So it's a fatherly figure, which is also like it makes sense because the biological fatherly figure kills Ingvar. So it makes sense that it's one. Is it this shift? Exactly. But I don't love it. I don't love it because this is not what we talk about extensively, but from a gender normative point of view, it reinforces the fact that you belong to your dads and have to bend to your dad's will. Even if your dad didn't do anything to save you, he didn't know where you were. Didn't do anything. And then violently slaughtered. your family. But sure, dad, I'm going to go with you now. The end. I don't love it. I would have loved for her to go on her own. I would have loved that. Simply because now we associate her with a violent force and she's not violent. But probably with a more poetic ending. Her running off. Maybe if she found her father, let's say she went to find him. The thing is that that's not really the genre, is it? It's a folk horror. And I see your point when it comes to... I think you can read it that way, but I don't think that's how it was meant to be read. It was more the idea of world. So the fact that it's a male figure, I don't think necessarily that was important. I think it was more to do with the aesthetics of the two figures on either side. It was to do with the... place we find for ourselves in the world. Ingvar has welcomed Ara into his home, but the entity is her real father. And if we are to read the people here as representative of specific environments, then Ingvar is representative of the human world. The entity is the opposite. And she belongs in the border. She belongs with... the entity back, not with the entity, but she belongs in the same environment as he does. Yes, at the same time, it would have been really nice for me to see a different ending simply because, as I said, this reinforces a patriarchal structure of the family, doesn't matter which kind of family. So as it's an actual topic and it is really present in film. It would have been really, really nice to see a different development. But that's just my subjective point of view and it doesn't take away from the value of the movie in general. I really loved it. I thought it was brilliant. I loved it too and I also thought it was brilliant. One thing I would have gone very happily without as much brother stuff. You probably could have done it without him as a character, but he did introduce some interesting ideas because they are in a little microcosm. right? Ingvar and Maria, they live totally isolated, they're not connected to the outside world at all. He becomes symbolic for the prying outside world, which will judge their relationship with Ada the lamb, because it's quite an odd thing to see you don't see that kind of thing every day. He also comes from the barn. He doesn't come from the barn, he comes from the city, but It looks like he also comes from the barn. You don't know he is Ingvar's brother yet. So you don't know what to expect when he sees him. But the way they played out, they see actually you see them through the barn's window. Yeah, hugging each other or anyway, greeting each other like you know, immediately that they know each other. So it looks like he comes from the barn. It's like just like a narrative choice, I guess. It doesn't mean anything, I guess. It's just a, a leitmotif of external, mysterious things coming from the barn. The emergence of life. Yeah. Which is, it's interesting because it's part of the house, like not part of the house, but part of the house unity. Yeah. It's similar to the basement from a point of view of what it might mean. Yeah. Symbolically. Yeah. So the basement is. room for mystery and darkness and introspection and even denial or violence into a place of transformation related to the animal realm because it's less, it's more rural, it's less as it's set in Iceland, you don't really know how Iceland looks like, like if you haven't been there. G. Yeah, and I haven't. L. No, I haven't either. But it's really cool because it gives you an objective because of all the landscapes and because of the fact that they don't introduce much technology. They give you a really contemplative view of the world. rural life in Iceland. Yeah. It's timeless really. Yeah. Do you have anything else to say about it? Not really. There is one thing that I just thought I might touch on quickly, which is how the camera work at the beginning along with the silences because there's barely any dialogue for the first 10 minutes. I don't think there's any. More than two minutes I'd say. Could be. But I liked how that really gave you an insight into the way that they have just grown accustomed to the loneliness that has surrounded them after the passing of their daughter. Because you could do very forced explanatory exposition which shows you, oh we're both grieving for the loss of our daughter. But actually having it go completely unsaid for me was more powerful than anything else and it felt like the camera work made it feel like there was a presence. lingering in the household because it hasn't moved on or hasn't been allowed to move on by the people living inside it. That's what was brilliant. Oh, it was brilliant. I agree with that. There was definitely a lingering presence, maybe from like a super symbolic point of view. Do you think that, oh, this is going to sound a little bit silly, but the spirit of the dead daughter looking at her parents' lives after her? It could have been totally. But that's the thing, it's definitely... There was definitely a force inside the house, just by how the camera moved and lingered on things. It felt like something was trapped almost. Yeah, I agree with that. But that's what I mean with what I said before, the camera playing around with space. Also because that scene where we briefly see Ada's room... We don't really see it. We see just a drawer with like little toys and a little wooden house. But the thing that was striking to me is that we see the door opening from inside. Like there's someone waiting for the door to open from inside and then you see them taking something or bringing other lamp in or something. I don't remember. It's something really short. But then the door closes again and the camera stays in the room. So visual hints, an invisible presence trapped in the house. Do you have anything else you'd like to say about the film? Oh, well it starts as a Christmas tale. Like, okay, it's a Christmas film, if you will. If we start with the assumption that a Christmas film is, actually can be defined as such if it's set on Christmas time. Yeah. It starts as a Christmas. So it's absolutely not a Christmas film. It doesn't look like a Christmas film, but it's a special beginning of the film, just the fact that it's set on Christmas also because of the inherent significance of Christmas's birth, which in this case is actually conception. Yeah. Wow, I like that. Yeah, and especially... It makes you read the entity in a different light when at the end of the story he comes along as almost like a god-like figure because he's clearly not of the human realm. Pan, almost. Even though his legs are normal. Makes you read it almost as like God coming back and claiming Jesus as his son so that it's not tampered by the humans. Or defiled. Yeah. At the same time, they do make him look like a god, but the fact that he has to use human weapons to kill both the father and the dog puts him back in a different realm again, which is more in between. Because he doesn't eat clothes. We don't see him eat or anything else. We just see him existing, which is a very god-like thing to do. in a film. It's funny I thought the same. But then he needs an actual weapon to kill other people or other animals. That did strike me as peculiar because why would he? Why would he pick up a human gun and kill a human with it? Unless it's... I think because they don't want him to be a god. They want him to be somehow connected to the material realm and they want to divide... him from the human realm and from the God realm. So they don't want it to be paranormal. Again, I think what they're doing is still playing with the anthropomorphic qualities of both Ada and him, but what they are doing also is keeping the form, so the Morphé, as it is. So it's not a God that can kill you by its own will, but he actually has to interact with the material, pick up a shotgun. and use it against you if you want to do something like that. It's really good because it sets it aside from a paranormal horror. It's a different thing. Yeah. So it's like a genre differentiation, I suppose. It's one of my favorite folk horrors I think that I've seen definitely recently. Obviously it reminds me of Midsummer, but it was much more spare. It was slower, more methodical, I suppose less. less conventional, I would say. I liked it a lot. I loved it. Yeah, it wasn't conventional at all. I think it was pretty innovative. So you mentioned Midsommar. Do you have any other film that might be enjoyable for people who watch this? I would say The Wicker Man. Though they're very, very different films, but there's the scene where Maria is putting flowers on. Ada in the field and she's saying how beautiful she is. And obviously that is very reminiscent of Midsummer. But it also reminded me of The Wicker Man. And that film deals more with themes that look at our relationship with nature, religion, higher powers, our placement in the world, but all very subtly. I think for that reason, if you like lamb, you'll probably like the Wicker Man, though it's a completely different story and told very differently as well. Just similar themes and the way that they explore them is quite similar. I agree. Well, there's definitely the Nordic aesthetics and all the links with their mythology and pagan religion, pagan gods. Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to get at, but I didn't quite manage. Yet the folk aspect of it and the folk tales is definitely very, very present in both films. Yeah, it's a lovely cinematic tradition that doesn't get the recognition that it should. I think it deserves more credit. Yes, absolutely. I think the amongst... the most atmospheric of ours and it's a genre that hasn't been explored as dutifully as it probably should have been. Hopefully though with directors like Ari Aster, Robert Eggers, Waldemar Johansson who directed this film, hopefully it'll be explored a bit more I think. Eggers's new film, The Norseman, is coming out soon so hopefully it'll be another look at the tradition of folk horror. Amazing. If you want to know more about this episode, why don't you check our website? No compulsion though, only if you feel like doing it, really. I don't mind if you don't. So this was... You can visit us at them Just what he said.