Regrettably, you may have missed one of his very best performances, that of a reserved yet stoic sheep herder estranged from his brother and up against insurmountable forces of nature. It's regrettable because, although this may not be as famous as his other work, it's a master class of superb acting from him. He may not say much, but he carries so much weight in his body language and facial expressions, simultaneously communicating pages of history to his audience without being a bit didactic about it. Certain scenes here, particularly when his character, Col, is at his lowest, are among his very best.
The film is called Rams, the Australian remake directed by Jeremy Sims based on the Icelandic drama from 2015 directed by Grimur Hakonarson. Ditching the icy mountains of rural Iceland for hot, rugged Western Australia, Col raises sheep on his ranch right next to his older brother, Les (Michael Caton). Col may be a reticent (even muted) member of the community, but he's a stable presence, peacefully raising sheep descended from his family's bloodline and minding his own business. He's even part of the community's firefighting brigade and goes out for a pint with the others. Les, however, is more erratic. He may also go out, but he eats by himself. Like Col, he's reclusive but also very temperamental and prone to drink too much, even to the point where he resorts to violence against his younger brother. The thing is, something happened between the two long ago, and they now despise each other. If they need to communicate, finger-pointing will do (without looking the other in the eye); if it's absolutely necessary, they might write short notes to each other and have Col's dog, Kip (whom Les calls Flossie) rush them over. When Les receives one of these notes, he curses, crumples up the paper, and throws it away.
Things are about to become a whole lot more complicated between them. After losing to Les in a ram competition, Col notices that Les's prize ram has symptoms of Ovine John's Disease (OJD), a condition that causes the lining of the bowel to thicken and reduces the absorption of food until the sheep wastes away. The Department of Agriculture is called in, and there's no other solution but to terminate every sheep in every herd. This strains the relationship between the brothers even further (it was Col, after all, who first discovered the OJD symptoms showing on Les's ram), but it also puts a strain on the struggling rural community, who rely on these rams for a living.
That is, unfortunately, one troubling element of the film. It's one that is harmless on the surface but rather disturbing deeper in the weeds: the lionization of farmers against pesky bureaucrats. The villain of the story, if there is one, is an employee of the Department of Agriculture played by Leon Ford who descends upon their community to collect and destroy their sheep once the outbreak occurs. His name (De Vries) is even foreign compared to the others. (Dutch Australians make up one of the largest groups of the Dutch diaspora outside of the Netherlands but are only about 1.5 percent of the Australian population.) I have no problem with the hero of the film being a local farmer--a man of the land--while the bad guy is a sniveling government employee, but given that Rams was released in 2020 during the the COVID-19 pandemic when many people around the world grew heated toward government regulations and lockdowns, the film may actually have fanned the flames or reopen old wounds for its newer viewers.
The other discreet political ingredient that creeps into the film, however, is its powerful reminder of the devastating effects of global warming. Wildfires decimate the land Col, Les, and the others use for their farms, bringing all sorts of terrible danger. (The day after I watched the film, the wildfires of Canada and possibly Minnesota began to tarnish the air quality of Michigan, where I was visiting.) Its most terrifying moments involve a nasty wildfire engulfing the lands and pushing the community to the brink. I enjoyed last year's Oscar-nominated flick The Lost Bus, a thriller about local Californians struggling against wildfires, a lot more than practically everyone else, yet it's fair to say that Rams captures the tragedy of global warming in a more honest way.
Rams can be a little downbeat from time to time, but it has an Australian sunny disposition and joviality less prevalent in the original film, which took place in freezing rural Iceland. Audiences and critics ended up responding to it quite well, with a worldwide gross of over four million dollars, a host of nominations at the AACTA Awards (Australia's Oscars), and a Rotten Tomatoes score of ninety-one percent, one of Neill's highest. (He was nominated for Best Actor for his performance here.) Watching Rams is kind of like discovering or re-discovering treasure that much of the world is unaware of. If you've loved all those videos of him with animals on his rescue farm, you'll surely enjoy watching him care for his sheep here, calling them beautiful, washing them, keeping them safe, and trying to find some sort of internal peace along the way. Weaker actors would have had a much more difficult time trying to accomplish such a task, or at the very least they'd prefer to tell you everything the character was thinking. Not so with Sam Neill, who just has to move his eyes in a certain direction from time to time, and you've got all the information you need. He will sorely be missed.
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