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*Lamb*, review full of spoilers

TC

Marginal Revolution

Oct 16, 2021

Egads, what a film, Icelandic too. It starts in a manger, on Christmas day, and indeed there is a new birth that represents an incarnation of some sort. But of what kind? It turns out an apparently half-human, half-lamb creature has been born, and it is adopted by a rural Icelandic family that lost their young daughter several years ago. Yes, this is Girardian substitution, but it turns out the creature is not Shakespeare's Puck. Most of the movie toys with the notion that, if push came to shove, we could not distinguish a second incarnation from the arrival of a demon. Then Abraham and Isaac parallels run rampant. It is hard to imagine a more theological movie. But everything is overturned by the ending, when we realize the religious parallels were our illusion, the worlds of humans and of animals are fundamentally unified, the sacrifices will be done in reverse of the Biblical vision, and paganism finally reigns. Yes, this is indeed an Icelandic movie. Recommended, especially on a large screen.

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