Bring Them Down screened at BFI London Film Festival and will also screen at the Irish Film Festival in London on Sunday, November 17. BOOK TICKETS.
In an essay on revenge circa 1625, Francis Bacon famously wrote, “A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green”. Bacon was right; while revenge may initially seem appealing and even necessary to healing, it never ends well and only adds further layers to scars already tender to the touch. Mountain Shepherd, Michael (Christopher Abbott) is about to add to a lifetime of scars as a long-running feud and turf war with another local farmer boils over into revenge, retribution and regret as the green mountain moss of rural Ireland is stained red with blood.
Chris Andrews opens his feature debut, Bring Them Down, with a short, disturbing prologue that sets the scene for the coming events. Years before he ended up managing the family sheep farm due to his dad’s (Colm Meaney) ill health, Michael (Abbott) was in a car accident with his girlfriend Caroline (Nora-Jane Noone) and his mum. The accident was Michael’s fault, as he entered a rage after his mum announced her plans to divorce his dad. That rage-fueled accident not only took his mum’s life but ended his relationship with Caroline, who later married his neighbour and competitor, Gary (Paul Ready), with whom she had a son, Jack (Barry Keoghan).
Now, alone managing his flock of mountain sheep with only the toxicity of his overbearing and controlling housebound dad for company, Michael’s flock have become his children and his sheepdog his only friend. Meanwhile, the loving Caroline, who still bears the scars of that car accident years before, her bitter husband Gary, and their wayward son Jack manage a farm that has slowly turned into a dodgy business enterprise as Gary attempts to deal with a growing mountain of debt. Gary and Michael are chalk and cheese, and neither of them talks to each other despite the closeness of their farms. But long-simmering tension, mistrust and anger are about to ignite when Gary’s son Jack steals a pair of valuable rams from Michael’s herd. Little does Jack know that he has pulled a trigger that will cause relationships, events, and actions to quickly spiral out of control, with devastating results for all involved.
Abbot and Keoghan are mesmerising as two men from different generations bound together by resentment, uncertainty and the need to protect the only thing that makes them whole. Each holds anger that has never been allowed to surface, doubts that have been suppressed out of necessity and fears that have become toxic over years of silence. Here, Andrews reflects on the truth that conflict always has two sides. While he opens his film from Michael’s perspective, painting a portrait of him as “The Good Shepherd”, he cleverly switches halfway through to young Jack, enabling us to see the complete picture behind this bold, gripping, windswept tale of generational conflict, open wounds and cruelty.
Bring Them Down is a story about inter-generational entrapment and men (young and old) who are dangerously defined by what they do. From the opening scenes, the beautiful mountain vistas and misty moors of rural Ireland juxtapose the claustrophobia of Michael, Gary, Jack and Caroline’s rural lives. Despite the vast, open landscape, they are all trapped in a repeating cycle of duty, survival at any cost, and despair. There is no escape from their rugged existence, and nowhere to run on farms that have consumed their souls as they attempt to protect themselves and their family history from ruin.
Andrews carefully navigates each character’s motives, behaviours and choices without passing judgment, leading to a thriller that never takes sides. Everyone is to blame for the events that unfold, and everyone has a role in the final devastating outcome born from years of anger, pain and torment that have festered in a suffocating sheep pen of growing toxicity that not even the animals they care for can escape.
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