Borrowing formal bits from Tarkovsky, Polanski, and Lynch, Małgorzata Szumowska’s The Other Lamb is a surreal and cerebral exploration of internalized patriarchal subservience and systematic abuse. It’s a heavy load to bear, and it sometimes gets away from the filmmaker, but the film’s haunting beauty and righteous anger manage to reign in most shortcomings. Excellently acted and shot, The Other Lamb supposes the fury capable in women when pushed to the brink, and makes no apologies for it.
In the isolation of an unnamed wilderness lives an enigmatic leader and his harem of wives and daughters. The two groups are differentiated by the colors they wear – the wives in dour plum-colored dresses and the daughters in teal-blue ones. The women all wear their hair in tight braids atop their heads and perform all the physical tasks required to keep their little camp running.
Their patriarch and only male member of the community (Michiel Huisman) is known only as Shepherd. To us, he’s clearly a huckster, but to the women – especially the daughters, who, presumably, were all born there – he’s a messianic figure who doles out “blessings” like safely-guarded candy. He’s a creep, and from the outset, it’s hard not to want to see him get what’s coming to him.
We witness this bleak lifestyle through the eyes of Selah (Raffey Cassidy), a devout daughter who begins to see the manipulation for what it is, even if she can’t exactly articulate it or understand what to do about it. In what could be premonitions, dreams, or collective memory, Selah’s worldview is altered as she comes to terms with notions of freedom and choice, and it’s in these moments that the film falters to an extent.
It isn’t that these surreal and often nightmarish sequences are poorly executed – they unnerve as they should – it’s that they are typical, even rote. Rotting animal carcasses and silent screams have become such staples of “atmospheric horror” that they’ve lost all luster. Thankfully, Szumowska doesn’t go overboard and manages to pepper in some truly unique visuals (the dream/memory moments of Selah in the back of the car is among my favorites of the film) on top of the film’s unmistakable biblical allegory, microcosmic politics, and rally against stigma.
Often, The Other Lamb tries too hard to compete with The Witch (2015) in atmosphere and tone, and while it doesn’t wholly fail at achieving its own sense of foreboding desperation, it can’t sustain the pressure. The final release is satisfying enough, but after the hardships endured I wanted more deliverance than what’s given. That’s not to say that the journey isn’t worthwhile – because it is – but the finale may leave more to the imagination that some may prefer, especially considering the undertaking we’ve just undergone.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.