“This is what the Lord my God says: ‘Shepherd the flock marked for slaughter.’ ” — Zechariah 11:4
Writer-director Christopher Anderson’s brutal and unforgiving and sometimes almost cruelly funny “Bring Them Down” is like a biblical tale brought to life. There are times when this rural west Ireland fable makes “The Banshees of Inisherin” feel like a soft-pedaled buddy comedy. It’s that bleak, and nearly as searing and memorable.
“Bring Them Down” is set in present day, but other than the occasional appearance of a cell phone, it creates a world that seems firmly rooted in the past, with director Anderson and cinematographer Nick Cooke capturing the timeless and stunning beauty but also the often harsh conditions of the coastal Ireland farmland, with its rolling hills and solemn skies.
After a brutal and tragic pre-credits prologue that sets the table for the violent struggles to come, the story moves years ahead, where Christopher Abbott’s Michael is living with his miserable old cuss of a father, Ray (the great Colm Meaney), who never moves from his kitchen chair because his knees are shot, and who is always barking at Michael for not working hard enough on their ram farm, even though Michael toils from dawn to long past dark. (Dublin native Meaney speaks nearly his entire part in Gaelic, while the Connecticut-born Abbott does an impressive job with Irish-accented English as well as Gaelic for the scenes when he is conversing with his father.)
Michael’s sister Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) lives down the road on a sheep farm with her alcoholic and abusive husband Gary (Paul Ready) and their grown son Jack (Barry Keoghan), who seems uncomfortable in his own skin and just a bit…off. (It’s a little confusing at first to figure out the relationships between the main characters, seeing as how Paul Ready is 48 and Nora-Jane Noone is 40 and Barry Keoghan is 32, and they all pretty much look their ages. But OK, that’s their son. We go with it.)
When two prized rams from Michael’s farm turn up dead on Gary’s property, it sets off a feud that escalates beyond the point of madness. Knives are pulled, guns are fired, cars are crashed, sheep are mutilated, and when the raging but physically helpless Ray commands his son to bring him the head of their enemy, he’s not speaking metaphorically. (Whether or not that actually happens will be left for you to discover.)
Everyone in “Bring Them Down” is a tragic figure. Michael, his father and his sister are connected to a life-shattering event from their past from which none has ever recovered. Gary is deeply in debt and resorting to desperate measures to save the farm — and that still might not be enough to hang on to Caroline, who has taken a job in the city and is on the verge of leaving Gary forever. As for Jack, he is clearly damaged from having grown up in a deeply unhappy home, and he has become both a coward and a monster.
With magnificent performances from the ensemble and a “Rashomon” technique that tells this horrific and hauntingly vicious story from two sides, “Bring Them Down” is one of those “one-off” movies in that you owe it to yourself to see once, but I’m not sure you’d want to take the trip ever again.