Lamb: The Controversy of Vulnerability

In a landscape where the court of public opinion is ruled by sensationalism, where there is a reward for snap judgments and “thumbs down” reactions, it is imperative that we continue to train ourselves in the art of nuance and ambiguity. Some things aren’t easily classified as one thing or another, as good or bad, and they reveal limitations within our individual and collective perspective. When we choose to accept contradictions, we give ourselves an advantage over the part of us that might shirk from complexity and peculiarity. 

Which brings me today’s subject, Lamb, a film that dives head-first into controversial waters.

Based on the novel by Bonnie Nadzam, and directed by Ross Partridge, the film finds a despondent 47-year-old man, David Lamb (played by Partridge himself), who strikes up a friendship with a neglected 11-year-old girl named Tommie. Their relationship is a sort of act of defiance in a world abounding with indifference, but when Lamb invites Tommie to come with him halfway across the country to his family’s ranch, the innocence of their relationship is tested in ways neither of them could have anticipated. I spotlight this film in this space because it is one of those movies that is actively, knowingly, controversial.

It's worth noting that the film itself was well-received within indie-film circles. Most critics seemed to understand the intention of the filmmaker and the difference between representation and advocacy. Justin Chang of Variety wrote, 

“Sporting a title that can be read two ways, ‘Lamb’ is ultimately a cautious, sensitive, admirably unresolved attempt to dramatize a relationship for which society makes no allowance and offers no definition. That the characters’ connection should be morally rejected doesn’t entirely account for the bittersweet resonance of their final encounter — one that you watch with a sense of relief that their time together has come to an end, but also a strange and equally undeniable gratitude that they had it to begin with.”

    It seems to be only when mainstream viewers accidentally stumble upon the film that we see the exclamation points. See: this snapshot of the comments under the film’s trailer on YouTube. I feel like people who react with such righteous fury misunderstand the film, or indeed misunderstand the nature of representation. Displaying a certain behavior onscreen is not always an endorsement of said behavior. (See: basically any Martin Scorsese film.) It can sometimes feel that way, but acknowledging that the human psyche is subject to certain kinds of mistakes is not advocacy for humans to make those mistakes. Sometimes it’s just there to remind us that the human experience is full of contradictions.

In the case of Lamb, the film is exploring how neglect and apathy can have lingering effects on a person. Still, even in indie-circles, the morally gray field that Lamb plows isn’t well-trod, and I think it’s worth exploring why that is. I think it’s also worth asking why audiences can embrace a morally ambiguous character like Michael Corleone, who is complicit in the death of multiple people including his own brother, where a character like David Lamb can make them so squirrely.

            Ross Partridge has also said,

"The problem lies in people’s own interpretation of it. It’s like a Rorschach test. A lot of people want to say he’s this and he’s that and he’s a monster and he’s all those things. He’s not a lot of the things that people want him to be and that’s really hard for people to hold on to. But for the most part, people have sought out the other parts of this story that make them uncomfortable but also makes them really have to think and exercise part of their heart that they’re not used to exercising.”

Again, that’s not to say that we shouldn’t dissect the ethics of the actions within the film or how the film presents it. Indeed, the film is hoping we will, and that’s what we’re here to do.

Right at the start, I want to get a few things on the table: this is probably my most challenging essay yet as it deconstructs a film that chooses to engage with a very thorny topic. In my larger tradition of film analysis, I am going to take the film on its own terms, but unlike my essay on Passengers, I’m not so interested in converting audiences to one reading or defending the decisions of the filmmaker or character. I see this as a space to explore 1. why a storyteller would be motivated to put such a testing narrative out into the world, 2. how the delivery of said story affects how the viewer receives it, and 3. how it compares to other films of similar mindsets.

Much like how onscreen representation is not the same as endorsement, talking about the film here is not the same as giving it a free pass. I will say upfront that I really admire this film, but that is not saying that I find this film a pleasant watch or that I don’t find the main character’s actions unsettling or that I recommend it to everyone. Be forewarned: the film, and this essay with it, deals with some heavy topics including the potential for abuse of minors. If this is content you don’t wish to engage with, that’s understandable. Consider this your exit.

 

Once More, For the Record

To give an accurate base of comparison, I will now give a scene-by-scene description of what transpires in Ross Partridge’s Lamb:

    Lamb and Tommie are two disenfranchised souls living in the city. Lamb and Tommie meet when she approaches him in a parking lot asking him for a cigarette. With little prompting, she admits that her friends, watching from the store, dared her to ask the strange man for a cigarette. Lamb derides her friends for making her do something so reckless, and to prove his point, he says they’re going to play a prank on her friends by staging a kidnapping. Tommie goes along with it, though she looks uneasy as Lamb escorts her to his car. They drive off, and Lamb reprimands her for doing something so stupid. “I’m not a bad guy, but I could have been.” Tommie muses that her friends probably didn’t even care to call the police. Lamb drops her off at her house.

We learn that Lamb’s wife has kicked him out and he is currently having an affair with his coworker, Linnie, which is creating a stir in his office. Attributing it all to the death of Lamb’s dad, his boss insists that he take some time off from work. Tommie comes home to a mother and her mother’s boyfriend, who barely acknowledge her entrance except to reprimand her for coming home late.

The next day, Tommie finds Lamb again at the same parking lot. To apologize for scaring her, Lamb buys her lunch. Tommie asks Lamb his name, and he tells her “Gary,” and they bond over the bleakness of their individual lives. They continue to spend time together over the next several days. Lamb tells Tommie about the ranch where he grew up on the other side of the country deep in the mountain heartland, and Tommie is excited hearing about a place where horses get to run wild. At one point, Lamb tells Tommie they should stop seeing each other because their relationship is “weird,” but they continue to see each other anyway.

   Lamb tells Tommie that he is going away to his family’s ranch for a week, and he asks her if she’d like to come with him. She quickly agrees. They check into a hotel where Lamb tells Tommie that he is going out to gather supplies for their trip. He advises Tommie to think long and hard about whether she wants to go through with their trip because their situation will look like a kidnapping to some people. He leaves her a small amount of change for a cab ride home, and tells her that if she doesn’t feel good, then she can take a car home while he’s gone, and he’ll understand. Lamb leaves to meet up with Linnie, asking her to come meet him at his ranch at a later time. Lamb comes back to an empty room and assumes that Tommie has left after all, but she jumps out from the corner playfully.

They spend the next day driving and rehearsing what they would say if someone asks about their relationship. Tommie has the idea of calling her mother to let her know she’s okay, but Lamb convinces her that this will only make her worry more. The next day, we see Tommie at a gas station crying. A woman named Melissa approaches her and asks if she is feeling okay. Lamb swoops in and tells Melissa that his “daughter” is fine.

That night, Tommie spills a hot drink all over herself. Worried about her getting burned, Lamb carries Tommie into the bathroom and places her in the tub. All the while, Tommie is screaming at him to “go away.” He draws the curtain around the bath and turns on the water, telling her to undress and wash herself while he waits on the other side. Tommie sobs that she wants to go home, and Lamb looks conflicted. The next day, Tommie reprimands Lamb for treating her like a child, insisting she didn’t need a bath. He apologizes and convinces her to go through with their trip after all.

    They arrive at the ranch, and Tommie is enamored to see wide open fields for the first time.  They spend some time aimlessly savoring the mountains and the fields and making small talk. Tommie asks him, “Will you miss me when you take me back?” and he replies, "No hard questions.” While lounging by the creek, they are seen by a neighboring farmer. He seems to buy Lamb’s story that Tommie is his niece, but Lamb is still uneasy, which he remarks upon to Tommie later. Lamb asks Tommie to fetch his beer for him, saying she can sip the top of it when she asks. The neighbor finds Tommie holding Lamb’s beer, and Lamb reprimands her in front of him, later justifying that he had to act angry so the neighbor wouldn’t get suspicious about his “niece” drinking beer. The next day, Lamb finally takes Tommie to see the horses.

            A car approaches the house, and Lamb hides Tommie in the shed. Lamb sees that Linnie has come early. They spend a day romancing while Tommie stays confined to her quarters. Lamb assures Tommie that he doesn’t love this woman and that she won’t be staying long. At night, Lamb confesses to Linnie that he thinks he might be a bad person. Linnie tries assuring him, having no idea of Tommie’s presence. Tommie wanders outside and through the window sees Lamb making love to Linnie as she looks on feeling betrayed. The next morning, Tommie walks in on Lamb and Linnie as they’re sleeping. Linnie is frightened to see her there, and she drives away. Lamb decides it’s time to take Tommie home.

On their last night, Lamb dedicates a fencepost to her, telling her that when he is dead, this ranch will belong to her. “It may even be more yours than it was ever mine.” She tells him, “I don’t want to go home.” On the last night of their return trip, Lamb pleads with Tommie that if she ever decides that she hates him, she’ll find him, even if he’s old and in a wheelchair, and beat him up. He then breaks down in tears as Tommie confusedly tries to comfort him.

            They arrive back in the city and Lamb pulls over to drop her off. He implores Tommie to never forget the things they’ve seen together. She sobs and tells him she doesn’t want to leave. He tells her that they can never see each other again or speak about each other. They share a tearful final embrace, then Tommie gets out of the car and Lamb drives off. Tommie drops her backpack and chases after his car. The final shot of the film sees the backpack lying abandoned on the sidewalk.

            So let’s address the big question first: 

 

Whyyyyyyy?

            I don’t think there’s any insight to be had in stating that, yes, Lamb showing dangerously poor judgment in taking an eleven-year-old girl he met last week on an illegal camping trip without telling anyone. Watching the film makes for a very uncomfortable experience.

So why bother wading into the quicksand to begin with?

Mainstream vs Counter-Current

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

    A lot of the dialogue guiding film discussion is its function as a form of catharsis or wish-fulfillment for the masses, but storytelling also provides a neutral middle ground to explore the ambiguities of life. This puts it somewhat at odds with film’s function as a capitalist product that exists to serve a market. You don’t want to put out a product that will alienate large swaths of buyers.

But Lamb is an independently financed and produced film, existing far outside the bubble of superheroes and dinosaurs. They generally have their premieres at exclusive film festivals before finding a streaming service to land on, and usually skip chain theaters altogether. Because indie-film lovers are already more proactive in their approach, these viewers are generally more receptive to open-ended filmmaking that defies the default aesthetics and questions posed by large studios. This audience might accept a film where the main character is so clearly wrong-headed because this audience expects to be challenged, and this turns the indie-film world into an exciting place for audiences and filmmakers who want to experience something truly fresh, novel, or even alarming. 

It is reductive to say that mainstream film can never court its viewers with deeper questions, as many elitist voices have, but there is an incentive to keep as many ticket-buyers as possible content with the degree to which they are pushed. In that same fashion, independent film doesn’t necessarily get a blank check to say whatever—you’ve still got a shop for a film festival willing to showcase your film--but it’s worth acknowledging that the thresholds are different.

Detachment (2011)

    Independent film is in theory a perfect venue to explore something like the eroding power of loneliness. Many well-made indie-films have done just that. Yet even in independent film circles, you still don’t often see films centered on people who cope with their solitude through such drastic actions as Lamb. Usually the endgame is just to illustrate that loneliness exists and is probably an inevitable byproduct of capitalism and then force your audience to marinate in their despair. I obviously can’t speak for every piece of art made on this very broad topic, but even so, I think the craziest thing a sympathetic person has done onscreen in the name of loneliness was that one time Joaquin Phoenix fell in love with his computer.

The Passengers controversy is a really good case study of how the mainstream reacts to these kinds of questions. The film was slated as a star vehicle for both Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, whose hefty paychecks ($20 M and $12 M respectively) forecasted major box office returns. That film hinged on a character condemned to a life of eternal solitude when his hibernation pod malfunctions. When presented with an opportunity, he chooses to end his suffering by awakening someone else, even though that means she will face the same isolation. The internal effects that this choice has on both characters becomes the centerpiece of the film, opening the doors for discussion on human connectivity as a basic necessity, but that is not a discussion a lot of people wanted to have. Passengers received ravenous reviews upon release, and I still occasionally see the film weaponized against both Pratt and Lawrence.

This is revealing to me given that mainstream audiences have shown they can embrace hard questions in something like Joker (still palatable enough to accrue a Best Picture nomination and a worldwide gross of a billion dollars) where something like Passengers elicits such vitriol within the mainstream audience. It’s not that viewers can’t appreciate the contradictions and complexity of the human experience, it’s just that we’re very specific in where we are willing to confront it.

            By comparison, Breaking Bad is arguably the most acclaimed television series in history, and it poses questions about the nature of character sympathy. But questioning whether you’d be willing to become a master in the drug/crime underworld to provide for your family plays into the fantasy of living outside the law. (Walt himself eventually acknowledges that even as he rationalized he was doing all this for his family, in truth he played this game simply because it made him feel powerful.) We’re willing to participate in Walter’s murdering and lying and blackmailing knowing that it might reveal something about how the human responds to extreme circumstances. Meanwhile, a film like Passengers probes the human need for interaction under the same pretense and is met with significantly more pushback. 

        I’m not meaning to imply that no one should question how Passengers approaches its central question. That is, after all, the point of controversy and in a lot of ways the point of storytelling. It should inspire reflection on part of the audience, and it’s natural that not everyone within the audience should have the same reaction to the film. That’s part of the appeal of Breaking Bad, everyone has a different perspective on when exactly Walter crosses the line from well-meaning to villainous.  But even as different viewers will latch onto different interpretations, no one is questioning whether Breaking Bad should have been made, and it somehow doesn’t even feel wrong to root for Walter’s happiness. (Again, this guy is willing to kill many people if it means he won’t have to accept his college buddy's offer to pay for his cancer treatment.)

    Meanwhile, there was no ambiguity or discussion to the questions Passengers posed about human nature. No conversation was afforded to the dire circumstances in which Jim makes the choice to awaken Aurora from hibernation, and dialogue entertaining whether such a person could ever be empathized with was labeled wrongheaded and immoral. I even saw a few viewers who reacted saying that in his situation, he should have done the "responsible" thing and just let himself get sucked into space ... This is the difference between how the public reacts to the controversy of breaking the law versus the controversy of feeling alone. This isn't necessarily to say that Lamb is de facto best way to approach this conversation, but curious is the society that feels more at ease debating the morality of a murder than a hug.

 

            The Controversy of Vulnerability

Lost in Translation (2003)

            In light of things like the global shutdown of 2020, we’ve seen an increase in the discourse around loneliness and isolation, but the conversation around the elusive need for human interaction has been around for a while. 

    We know, for example, that the long-term effects of isolation can impact a person’s health just as much as obesity or smoking. There is also a lot of discussion concerning whether loneliness is more prevalent within collectivist or individualist societies (like the United States). Members of individualistic societies tend to report higher degrees of loneliness, though it's debated how best to objectively measure this item across differing cultures. Sociologist Michael Kimmel attributes a part of loneliness in the U.S. to how “The American Dream” sets people, particularly men, in competition with one another. The social network that we depend upon privileges work relationships as the most crucial to survival, while at the same time not doing much to foster meaningful connection through these relationships. In his book, “Manhood in America: A Cultural History,” he says:

The Apartment (1960)

“Although industrialization pushed more men together in the workplace, it also increased the distance they each felt from one another. Gone were the casual intimacies of boyhood. Gone too was a view that other men—coworkers and friends—could act as moral constraints on excessive behavior. Instead, other men were potential economic rivals.”

I recall an experience from my own life wherein I became good friends with a coworker during college when we were both working at the same food service establishment. We bonded over some mutual interests, as well as the mundanity of our work and how our dishwasher always smelt like armpit. Some time after we both left this job, I happened upon this person while we were both walking to a mutual church-sponsored activity. I was happy to come across them again, but I found they were strangely unreceptive to my bids for communication. Eventually, this person offered a sympathetic but somewhat patronizing expression, like they were about to tell me my zipper was undone, and told me that we were friends at one point, "but that was a long time ago." (It had been maybe three years.) I exited that interaction feeling not hurt but definitely puzzled at the arbitrary expiration date that apparently been assigned to our friendship, such that striking up a conversation while we were both heading to the same event was some embarrassing violation of an unspoken social contract. It was like our interaction had zero utility once we had no professional obligation to one another. 

    In the world of Lamb, our two main characters are victims of a magnified version of this phenomenon. The early scenes are full of wide shots of the gray cityscape where people walk along the sidewalk without looking up. The film’s first scene has Lamb’s dad refusing to validate his son’s bid for any kind of emotional vulnerability, even knowing that he is dying, and it’s suggested that Lamb is the only one who even showed up to his dad’s funeral service. This isolation is even more overt with Tommie, whose mother sends her off to bed without even looking at her or sitting up from the couch.

Basically, Lamb the film turns Ross Partridge into the Walter White of apathy, interrogating the systems that block potential friendships that can literally extend your life while also forcing the audience to ask how far they would go to feel connected to another person. Lamb sees his mission to save Tommie from her own solitude as a token of one’s responsibility to save the rising generation from society’s self-perpetuating cycle of indifference. And this is where we can start to examine the gaps between Lamb's intentions, society's sensitivities, and the reality of what he is doing. 

 

World’s Worst Roadtrip

Part of the film's potency comes from the fact that even though the audience is meant to spend much of the film cringing, it's hard to ignore that there is a measurable degree of genuine love between Lamb and Tommie. You start to resent that these two didn't get to meet under more acceptable circumstances because you have the feeling that, in a more appropriate venue, these two could have been unambiguously good for each other. 

    The pushback against this film centers on the potential for Lamb to abuse Tommie, but statistically, kids like Tommie have much more to fear from adults their family knows and trusts, even their own parents, than total strangers. There’s little suggesting that Tommie’s mother is literally abusing her, but her situation runs parallel to the questions inherent in these issues. Tommie needs some kind of saving.

Again, David Lamb is not the textbook example of how to combat this issue. He is a very flawed individual impaired by his own judgment. Yet if Lamb had left Tommie to wither away, she would have been subject to all sorts of issues that follow children from neglectful households including a general inability to adjust to adulthood, increased anxiety, and a heightened risk for teenage delinquency and substance abuse. Plus, all the other wounds inflicted by a life of never feeling seen, wounds that aren’t so easily named. It’s ironic that in many ways, Lamb would have been perceived as more sympathetic if he had just minded his own business and left Tommie to rot. Sometimes indifference is just safer, and that is the attitude this film probes.

    From Lamb’s end, we never do see anything suggesting that Lamb has sexual designs on Tommie. We never see Lamb peeking on her in the bathroom or undressing in front of her or anything of that nature. And while I almost feel bad for how often I dunk on this film ... this also isn't an American Beauty situation where the film literally displays a middle-aged man's perverted fantasies of an underage girl, all while insisting that it doesn't endorse the character's lewdness. From everything we see onscreen, it does seem like all Lamb really wanted to do with Tommie on their forbidden road trip was take her to see some mountains and some horses—to see real beauty in the world. The internet comments calling for Ross Partridge’s arrest are protesting something that doesn’t actually happen. 

At the same time, there is more than one way for Lamb to potentially hurt Tommie. While the film seems to go out of its way to stress that Lamb does not have sexual feelings for Tommie, it’s not a far cry to assume that she is developing these feelings for him, and that Lamb may be, even unintentionally, nurturing a fixation on him. 

    After all, Tommie is approaching sexual maturity, and even the fact that a lot of the gestures of affection happen on her terms (e.g. Tommie dancing with Lamb to the radio music) points to Tommie wanting Lamb in a grown-up way, even if she doesn’t fully comprehend what that means. When Tommie has a tantrum after seeing Lamb romantically involved with Linnie, the implication is that Tommie is jealous that Lamb is choosing another woman over her. Lamb may be sincere in his hope to redeem Tommie from a life of apathy and neglect, but it’s also possible that he is unintentionally scarring her in a different way.

But again, I don’t think that any of this happens without the knowledge of the storytellers. Nadzam shares,

”It’s interesting, because when I reflect on my relationships, even with my mom, my dad, my siblings, good friends, there is not a single one where I haven’t hurt them often and repeatedly and gotten hurt by them. So that’s what’s kind of confusing for me about Lamb and Tommie. Yes, it’s damaging, yes they hurt each other, and use each other, but it’s caring. There’s some degree of real love and affection between them.”

            When asked directly about whether he sees Lamb as having romantic feelings for Tommie, Partridge has said, 

“I don’t think that’s his DNA. What he sees in her is himself. In her, he sees the little child that was neglected himself, all the things that he was missing. He’s just lost his dad and his life is falling apart. And this is the one thing that’s trying to pull him up from that. He’s trying to correct the ills of his past, in some skewed way." 

I do think it is possible for the discerning audience to be repulsed by Lamb's behavior while also feeling sympathy for the situation he is in. It's not as though Lamb is himself without internal examination. Lamb has his moments, like when he is with Linnie, that he confides, “I think I might be an awful person.” Part of what makes the film so disruptive is that there aren’t a lot of films to compare it to. But when you reach for films that have almost similar premises, you hone in on what exactly makes Lamb so striking.

For Further Reading

Some discussion on Lolita is probably warranted here, not because the film actually has much in common with it, but because that’s where the lay-viewer's attention tends to jump to first. Premiering first as a novel by Vladimir Nabokov in 1955, this story follows a middle-aged man, Humbert, who lusts after a teenage girl, Lolita. He even goes as far as marrying her mother so he can be close to her. After Lolita’s mother is killed, Humbert inserts himself as the authority figure in her life, and they have a semi-sexual relationship that gets played up to differing degrees depending on the adaptation. 

    Lolita doesn’t exactly endorse Humbert’s behavior (he ends the film in jail), but neither does it fully condemn his actions. It’s the sort of The White Lotus brand of commentary where the text is overtly frowning on the debauchery on display while also carving out a space where viewers can vicariously participate in it without actually getting their hands dirty. Lamb, meanwhile, doesn’t really let the viewer “get away” with indulging anything other than a few nice shots of mountains and fields, which is where the differences between the two texts start to emerge.

But to me, the most significant difference between Humbert and Lamb is a simple one: Humbert is shown to have sexual designs on Lolita which he then acts on. Lamb is never described as having such, nor does he ever behave in such a way. Yet despite these differences, Lamb is still somehow just as if not more testing because, unlike Humbert, the audience is meant to see David Lamb as a sympathetic character. Maybe not a responsible or even a stable character, but a sympathetic one just the same. Nadzam herself has said about the potential parallels,

“Part of the reason that some of the comparisons to Lolita upset me has nothing to do with the writing, but because I think it’s too easy to look at Lamb and go, ‘Oh, he’s a pedophile!’ and put him in the same category as Humbert and not talk about him or worry that we might have anything in common with him.”

Lolita is where viewers tend to go first, but I’d argue Lamb’s closest equivalent is Leon: The Professional. That film also follows the unconventional bond between a neglected pre-adolescent girl and an emotionally warped adult man. Here, the family of eleven-year-old Matilda is taken out by corrupt DEA officers, and Matilda takes refuge with her neighbor, the enigmatic Leon. When she learns that her neighbor is a hitman, she asks him to train her in the art of the assassin, and in the process these two lost souls develop a close bond.

    A portion of the audience has also assigned sexual love onto this story, and that claim is not entirely baseless. There are a few points where Matilda makes romantic gestures to Leon (which he never reciprocates). But Matilda’s bids for romance read more as her way of reaching for a maturity that is beyond her as a helpless child in a world that is cruel to people who can’t look after themselves. She is trying to use Leon as a springboard into maturation the same as she does when she asks Leon to teach her how to be an assassin. Neither of these shortcuts to adulthood are paths the film ultimately allows or encourages Matilda to tread, by the by. I guess I can’t dismiss the sexual reading completely, but it’s worth acknowledging that the most commonly cited bits of evidence for this being a grooming narrative rely on extra-textual factors, like director Luc Besson’s habit of marrying much younger women (including an actual teenager), rather than anything in the text itself.

Leon and Matilda develop a powerfully close bond, yes, but they are also brought together by extreme circumstances. Matilda grew up with emotionally neglectful parents, and Leon is the first person to show her what a real home could feel like. Meanwhile, Leon’s line of work surrounds him with death and corruption, and finally caring for someone gives him the chance to nurture life instead of taking it. Their relationship is characterized more as a child-parent relationship in the vein of The Last of Us than anything resembling Lolita. Claiming that two people could never feel such deep love without one or both being horny for the other (especially when one of them is a literal child) buys into a lot of steep prepositions about human behavior, and it entirely ignores an underlying human need for connection that cuts across barriers like age and transcends simple biological impulse. Lamb feels inspired by a similar train of thought.

A Perfect World does something very similar. In this film, Kevin Costner is an escaped criminal who takes an 8-year-old boy hostage to cover his tracks. The two end up becoming good friends, even entering a surrogate father-son relationship, which is where the film finds its emotional core. Even though the relationship is built on a literal kidnapping, the audience is still meant to root for these two, and the film pulls it off for a number of reasons.

    The biggest of these is probably the way it alleviates responsibility from Costner’s character. Not only is kidnapping the kid framed as not entirely his fault (he escapes with a much more sadistic prisoner whose foolishness necessitates the kidnapping), but the film also explores the reasons why an otherwise upstanding man was forced into a life of crime to begin with, which is where the film’s comment on cycles of toxic masculinity kicks in (for further reading, see my essay on said film).

Lamb plays a very similar game to these two films but plays it even bolder. “Leon,” A Perfect World, and Lamb all use their respective relationships to hold up a mirror to society, but where the former two keep the mirror fixed almost entirely on the world at large, Lamb also puts its own protagonist on trial. Lamb isn’t forced into his relationship with Tommie like Butch or Leon were with their respective child wards. There was no immediate deadly consequence to not taking Tommie on the road as there was with Leon and Matilda. He makes that leap himself.

          But the most significant difference that makes Lamb unique is the way the central relationship ends. These three films are united in the conclusion that no matter how sincere the love between these characters, it is somehow incompatible with the real world, but this verdict is delivered in different ways. Both Leon and Butch are killed almost as a rebuke from a world that doesn’t have room for something so pure. Meanwhile, Lamb is still alive at the end of the film, and we presume that he is never even charged with kidnapping Tommie. We are, however, led to believe that both Lamb and Tommie will carry the baggage from their interaction for years to come, be it good or bad.

And this brings up the question, what does the future hold for both characters? Did Lamb’s swing ultimately work to Tommie’s benefit, or has he just passed his curse onto her?

The film’s final shot has Tommie’s backpack lying abandoned on the ground, suggesting that she never goes back for it. The last time we see Tommie is from inside Lamb’s car through the rearview mirror as she is running after him. There is the possibility that she catches up to Lamb, and that they go off together. Or the abandoned backpack could merely be a symbol of a life that she is not returning to, which might suggest that she has somehow grown past the child she was at the start of the film. Or it could be a token of an unending sense of abandonment that will continue to permeate both of their lives. 

It's telling that the film's denouement is also limited exclusively to their final interaction. We never find out what happens to either character after this little road trip. The film never forces the audience to wrestle with whether Lamb "gets what he deserves," whatever that is, because the consequences are never shown onscreen. Same with Tommie and her potential emotional fallout. However the world does or doesn't respond to this ordeal, we don't get to see it. Our response to this is confined strictly to how it affects these two characters.

Open-ended conclusions like this are very common in films that dwell outside the mainstream, but here, it might also just be Partridge and company admitting that we really don’t know what happens to Lamb and Tommie any more than we know how to bridge society’s loneliness gap.

 

Whyyyyyyyyyyy revisited

            I think one of the reasons why I respond so much to Lamb is that you can’t watch movies like this ironically because it just demands so much vulnerability from the audience. You might hate what this movie is doing, but you can’t catch it on its lie because the movie isn't hiding anything, and I imagine that must be part of the reason why the film is so frustrating, perhaps even more than the controversy at its center.

            This isn't a slight against media like Breaking Bad or Joker, but this pushback is one of the reasons why movies like Lamb feel more interesting to me than those seen in other “boundary-pushing” media. They reveal something about what kinds of moral dilemmas we find palatable and which actually push some buttons. It takes a certain kind of boldness to make bids for emotional connection in a world that just expects people to keep to themselves. 

Most of us are so far removed from any opportunities to actually, I don’t know, take on the drug/crime underworld with our meth empire. On the other hand, we’re all in positions to go one step further than we currently are to make the world an emotionally safer place. We need not take the extreme actions seen with David Lamb. (In fact, please don't.) I imagine that both Lamb and Tommie’s lives would have been much better if they had simply had, I don’t know, a reliable book club or something in their lives. But again, in a world where even making small talk with an old coworker is somehow aberrant, how many of us are willing to take those small steps?

It Chapter 2 (2019)

          It’s not as though film is unwilling to represent emotional vulnerability. Indeed, an emotional display of closeness is a selling point of many films and television shows. Providing that catharsis can turn a movie into a form of therapy, which can really sell a piece of media. Yet there is little incentive to prod at how complicit most of us are in our own isolation. Lamb is the rare film that acknowledges how in an unfeeling world, the willful act of human connection is itself a form of disruption. Because there’s no concrete solution to fixing the loneliness problem, any direct confrontation is going to feel bizarre, even heretic. 

In the words of Partridge, 

“People are flawed, and human nature is that we're very complicated. People are trying to do the right thing, but often they don't, and they can't. The ultimate goal is to show that there's pain in all of it, and we're all suffering but there's always some sense of hope on the other side.”

           Everyone craves genuine human connection, but we are trained to shirk from the necessary vulnerability. In some ways, this reveals one of the unspoken purposes of mass media: to provide onscreen the kind of social intimacy that most of us don't know how to pursue offscreen. Yet until we are willing to confront why this kind of connection feels so out of reach, out of reach is exactly where it will remain.

        --The Professor