Kel­ly Reichardt blazes a trail in the First Cow trailer

Kel­ly Reichardt, cinema’s pre­em­i­nent poet of the Amer­i­can West, will make a return in tru­ly mag­is­te­r­i­al fash­ion in 2020. Her new film First Cow blazes a trail through a lush, ver­nal Pacif­ic North­west dur­ing the ear­ly 19^th cen­tu­ry, a vision as vivid now as it was when she toured through the area in Meek’s Cut­off ten years ago.

This morn­ing brings the first trail­er for Reichardt’s lat­est, and a fine trail­er it is, in no small part due to the judi­cious selec­tion of pull quotes from only the most esteemed and good-look­ing crit­ics. (I am quot­ed in the trail­er.) The atten­dees at the film’s New York Film Fes­ti­val pre­mière gave the mar­ket­ing team lots to work with, as the film emerged ahead of sched­ule as one of the best-reviewed releas­es set for 2020.

John Mag­a­ro stars as the humbly monikered Cook­ie, a coun­try meal-prep­per for the hardy fur trap­pers wend­ing their way through the untamed wilds. In the mold of Reichardt’s Old Joy, a ten­der friend­ship blos­soms between him and a fel­low wan­der­er, in this instance a Chi­nese immi­grant named King-Lu (Ori­on Lee), who finds that a lot of Cookie’s gen­tle ethos of care and nur­tur­ing res­onates with his per­son­al philosophy.

They’re joined in a mis­sion of mer­cy, to bring a small taste of home to the unfor­giv­ing woods in which men brutish and less-so (Toby Jones makes a mem­o­rable appear­ance as a dandy fop amused by the pair’s ​“oily cakes”) seek their for­tunes. Reichardt cap­tures this sim­ple ges­ture of human­i­ty with an eye for details, not­ing how the lit­tle things – turn­ing a flail­ing sala­man­der over on its back, for instance – can amount to a larg­er dec­la­ra­tion of compassion.

Some­thing about the com­bi­na­tion of the slimmed aspect ratio, the serene dearth of dia­logue, the beck­on­ing fer­til­i­ty of the for­est, and Magaro’s sooth­ing voice makes this some­thing close to art­house ASMR, noth­ing if not a deeply ther­a­peu­tic expe­ri­ence of the most sen­so­ry-response lev­el. It’s one of those rare, pre­cious movies that a per­son can only let wash over them – not to be missed.

First Cow comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 6 March. A UK date has yet to be set.