Lamb Director Ross Partridge on Man-Made Virtue and Vice

Another great year in cinema is behind us, and the question we ask heading into 2016 is a familiar one: What’s next? How will directors, new and seasoned, continue to create bolder and more ambitious projects? What stories have yet to be told, and who will have the audacity to tell them?
When Ross Partridge talks about his latest film, Lamb, you hear something in his voice that suggests we can trust him to carry a certain cinematic torch—it’s a sense of responsibility. Many directors might come across a bold and provocative story like Bonnie Nadzam’s novel, and decide that it is worthy of an adaptation. But it’s the care and tenderness with which Partridge presents his version of Nadzam’s work that makes him a powerful representative for the best of what’s next in film.
“It’s so deeply psychological,” Partridge says of the story he first fell in love with a few years back. A middle-aged man, David Lamb, is surrounded by loss and seeks solace in a little girl, Tommie, who appears to be just as alone and lonely as he is. The unfolding of their indefinable relationship makes for a troubling and equally indefinable viewing experience.
“Of course I was terrified,” Partridge admits, particularly of taking on the role of the main character. Depending on the reaction to the story, he knew people would either see the fascinating complications that he saw, or he’d be vehemently attacked and, perhaps, never get an audience back.
“But the same thing that terrified me was the same thing that intrigued me,” he goes on. “In trying to translate that to film, I’m hoping that the audience will understand it. We have to flex a different part of our muscles to allow [the connection between David and Tommie] to have a chance to be something else from what we assume.”
What we assume, of course, is the worst. And there is not one moment in the film when we are fully relieved of such fears. The tension comes from our wavering as an audience, between disgust, disdain and disappointment in the main character, and a deep understanding that continues to creep in, despite our better judgement. David should know better than to pursue a bond with a neglected young girl, and we should know better than to empathize with him, or even be interested in his narrative. In any story of conflict, blame must be assigned, but Lamb makes this process incredibly difficult. Do we blame David? Or, Tommie’s emotionally unavailable and disinterested parents? The destitute community that wrought them? It’s not an easy choice, because of the manner in which David is presented.
“David’s reality is so skewed, and sad,” Partridge says. “In Tommie, he sees the child in himself. He’s trying to correct the ills of his past by doing what he thinks is the right thing—what he needed when he was a kid. It’s not right, it’s not correct, but in his reality it seems like perhaps this is okay. And that’s why it’s uncomfortable, because you can see all that sadness, and you hope that maybe there’s something here that creates light in their lives.”
We might also ask ourselves, then, if we should blame the filmmaker, for presenting us with this story, or perhaps his cinematographer, Nathan M. Miller, for daring to provide us with gorgeous landscape shots and a certain light that captures the very human emotions at the center of it all.