The film is about cruel life of ram breeders in Iceland. The life is cruel due to coldness of feelings, conflicts over ram breeding and lonelines of existence. The director has shown that lack of communication creates alienation for people of the small village, conflicts for brothers. The following themes are explored: human relationship, the way of solving problems in the family and the sacrifice for your favorite activity. The plot is interesting to watch, though it has been developed slowly. The vast landscapes of the country, windy days are shown. The end of the film is unusual and quite sad. The soundtrack of the film is quite sad and melancholic.

I had no idea what this film would actually be about. I imagined that it would be some sort of comedy (how wrong I was). I was not prepared for what I got. The narrative revolves around sheep and the consequences of an infection that is going around that could kill them. The film goes beyond that to really share the emotional bond of two brothers, one that they thought was broken for the longest but that may actually still reside underneath. The performances are exquisite, and everyone involved with this needs to be commended for sticking with a film with such an odd plot line and allowing it to fully blossom. Not sure if I would recommend this to just anyone, but sticking with it will be something that some viewers will absolutely be grateful for.

I will not disagree with the substance of the reviews my fellow unpaid reviewers of IMDb have written; this is in fact, a touching film about stubborn men. I do however dispute that such a film has any place outside an art festival.Rams is the story of two icelandic brothers, Gummi and Kiddi (i kiddi you not), who have not spoke to each other for 40 years; the film makes it plenty clear that they resent each other (for whatever unknown reason), even going as far as one of the two shooting the other's windows out with a shotgun.After a yearly sheep pageant, with Kiddi's ram taking first prize, the jealous Gummi goes to inspect the ram, and he finds it has scrapie, a deadly disease similar to Mad Cow disease.Most of the rest of the film is the community's struggle with the impending loss of their sheep, which is understandable since sheep represent their only reason of living. During this struggle, there are attempts at reconciliation between the two brothers, which finally culminate in a brief ending where human emotion prevails.Right;I find this cookie cutter script to be far below my standard for Un Certain Regard prize material, and even though the film is reasonably well executed, there is not much to make it interesting enough to tie up one and a half hours of runtime. Sadly, it falls victim to the trailer test: cut off the film's ending, attach it to the trailer, and voilà' - you have most of the film's content in 3 minutes.I would not recommend Hrútar (Rams); the bland icelandic vistas are sure to impress the millionaires who preside of the Cannes festival, but are nothing special if you've been outside of the city in these last 30 years. The characters are simple, the plot is minimalistic, with nothing to fill in. If you are looking for a burst of human emotion, you'll have to sit through an entire film of 90 minutes for what you could have gotten from a spoilered review.Not surreal, not touching, not visionary, my final vote for Rams : 5/10

In an age of digital marketing saturation, social media domination and notifications of the latest Disney blockbuster being sent to you while you're sat on the loo, it's always refreshing to have a film sneak up unannounced and give you that warm fuzzy hidden gem feeling. Resembling its Icelandic counterparts, Rams is like finding a Sigur Ros in a big bag of Coldplays.Rams follows two brothers who reside next door to each other in a remote sheep farming community in the Icelandic countryside. Having not spoken to each other for 40 years, Gummi (Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Júlíusson) are finally forced to deal with their strained relationship after a rare disease triggers the slaughter of their entire valleys flock. Each brother deals with the situation in his own way; Gummi having the functioning sibling role; calm and calculating with his understated intelligence and Kiddi with drink induced anger and violence.As you would expect from a film based on the hillsides of Iceland, the scenery is stunning but is never used to build the crew's cinematography portfolio. In fact, it only adds to the evident toughness of the people's lives there, surviving a challenging livelihood with the backdrop of such natural splendour. The relationship between the farmers and their animals and how it intrinsically represents, and is inherently tied to, the entire history of their family is at times both heart-warming and heart- breaking.What is most surprising about Rams is how it creeps up on you; how you find yourself sincerely caring for its characters towards the end of the film. You genuinely feel for the brother's relationship yet the script is so subtle in its depiction of the association between the two that the feeling comes as a real surprise when it finally hits. This is made even more remarkable considering how much of a slog the first thirty minutes are to get through.There are sweet little comedy moments too. The brothers use a sheep dog to deliver notes to each other and at one point Gummi delivers a drunken Kiddi to the local A&E in the bucket of a digger, but these moments are infrequent and never feel like forced slapstick. The humour is always believable and acts as a nice break from the melancholy of the primary story.Rams is a lovely surprise, a film that intentionally builds up slowly and is so understated in the development of its main characters that by the end of the film, you forget about almost everything else but the affection you have subconsciously developed for the two brothers. A sneaky little treasure of a movie whose ending will stay with you for a long time.