On the surface, as simple film about sheep-farming brothers in Iceland, but there’s a whole iceberg-worth of other stuff going on. The brothers haven’t spoken for 40 years, but the threat of scrapie in their herds precipitates a crisis, and they have to confront one another. There are so many lovely subtle touches in this film: the decor of Gummi’s house, the way he trims his toenails (watched through my fingers), the way the brothers use a sheepdog as a postman to deliver passive-aggressive notes to one another.
There are moments of very dark comedy, but this is quite a bleak and tragic film. The last scene really broke my heart.
