First Cow movie review (2021) | Little White Lies

First Cow

25 May 2021 / Released: 28 May 2021

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

Starring John Magaro, Orion Lee, and Toby Jones

A man with a beard wearing a brown felt hat in a natural, outdoor setting.
A man with a beard wearing a brown felt hat in a natural, outdoor setting.
5

Anticipation.

A new film from one of the best directors currently working? Yes please!

5

Enjoyment.

A simple story of a gentleman baker that channels the danger and excitement of early capitalist endeavour.

5

In Retrospect.

It’s a McCabe & Mrs Miller with cows, and there can be no higher praise than that.

This minia­ture epic is both a thrilling exten­sion and per­fect sum­ma­tion of Kel­ly Reichardt’s cin­e­mat­ic project to date.

In the year of our Lord 2008, I was a vic­tim of sub­tweet­ing before the term had entered into the pop­u­lar lex­i­con. For those who remain bliss­ful­ly unaware of the word’s ori­gins, it’s essen­tial­ly a form of stealth crit­i­cism where­by one is called out for an opin­ion or action tak­en, but remains unnamed, allow­ing for a lev­el of blind item” anonymi­ty to those not in the know. As a wide-eyed jour­nal­is­tic lick­spit­tle, I had been com­mis­sioned to review the film Wendy and Lucy by the direc­tor Kel­ly Reichardt for the pages of hal­lowed arts list­ing organ, Time Out London.

At that time, and under the aus­pices of a, shall we say, wacky” new edi­tor-in-chief, Time Out no longer rat­ed art out of the tra­di­tion­al five stars. Now things were out of six. The mal­formed guid­ing prin­ci­ple behind this deci­sion was that the final sixth star equat­ed to some­thing oth­er­world­ly and unique – an exam­ple of untram­melled genius, nev­er to be repeat­ed or repli­cat­ed. So astound­ed was I by Wendy and Lucy’s por­trait of a young woman founder­ing on the precipice of the Amer­i­can mar­gins, I decid­ed to cash in all my chips and lay down for the big one: six shin­ing yel­low stars. It was a very big moment. Being able to pros­e­ly­tise about this film in such a hyper­bol­ic man­ner made me feel alive. Some­times, it’s what makes this game worth playing.

Yet the high was short-lived. Three days after the review appeared in print, I found myself surf­ing the salmon-pink pages of the Finan­cial Times, whose film crit­ic at the time was the august and unpre­dictable Nigel Andrews. I had long been a fan of his writ­ing. His reviews were like dain­ty lit­tle diary entries where lit­er­ary flour­ish­es adjoined neat­ly with hyper-artic­u­late analy­sis (he is now retired). He did not like Wendy and Lucy at all. His arch­ly dis­mis­sive review com­pared it to sen­ti­men­tal slush like Lassie Come Home. His coup de grâce was to call out the crit­ic at Time Out (me) for reck­less mis­man­age­ment of the time-hon­oured star sys­tem, and for dras­ti­cal­ly over­rat­ing what he con­sid­ered to be a text­book exam­ple of Amer­i­can indie mediocrity.

Let me first say that this anec­dote is not intend­ed as an act of ret­ri­bu­tion or late-game bit­ter­ness: then, as now, it was water off a duck’s back. If any­thing, I was flat­tered that this leg­endary crit­ic was read­ing my words. Some­times you can be made to sec­ond guess a judg­ment, maybe through a con­ver­sa­tion, or read­ing oth­er crit­i­cism, or per­haps as a result of your nat­u­ral­ly matur­ing and expand­ing def­i­n­i­tion of per­son­al taste. For a long time I won­dered whether I had over­rat­ed the film, to the extent that I was a lit­tle scared to rewatch it. What if my youth­ful zeal was mis­placed? What if Nigel Andrews was right?

Two men wearing period clothing - one in a dark coat, the other in a brown outfit - standing in a lush forest setting with large green ferns.

Upon belat­ed­ly rewatch­ing Wendy and Lucy, not only were my para­noid fan­tasies instant­ly debunked, but in fact the film was even more rich and sad than I’d ini­tial­ly sup­posed. A sev­en star film, if you will. This should have come as no sur­prise, as in the inter­ven­ing years, Reichardt has deliv­ered one extra­or­di­nary film after the next, nary leav­ing so much as a per­fect­ly cal­i­brat­ed frame out of place. The love­ly term pock­et sym­phonies” is often used to describe the music of the Beach Boys, and it also applies to Kel­ly Reichardt’s cinema.

Via extreme­ly mod­est means and assid­u­ous cin­e­mat­ic con­struc­tion she is able to whip up melo­di­ous, sweep­ing and tact­ful­ly polit­i­cal dra­mas which cut deep into the often-chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ence of liv­ing, work­ing and thriv­ing in Amer­i­ca. They are the small for­mal acorns from which tall the­mat­ic oaks grow.

Her lat­est film, First Cow, is a hushed, inti­mate, heart­break­ing sto­ry about noth­ing less than the birth of mod­ern Amer­i­ca. It is the thought­ful, book­ish cousin to Mar­tin Scorsese’s myth­i­cal­ly-inclined fisticuffs aria, Gangs of New York, from 2002 (with a dash of 2012’s The Wolf of Wall Street thrown in as well) but this actu­al­ly man­ages to do and say a lot more with a lot less.

For Reichardt and her trusty co-screen­writer Jon Ray­mond (their fifth col­lab­o­ra­tion), it is about two men who find them­selves unwit­ting­ly at the cen­tre of a push for Amer­i­can cul­tur­al expan­sion­ism and a nascent form of sup­ply and demand eco­nom­ics. And as usu­al, Reichardt is inter­est­ed in the con­cept of the dashed dream, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how the promise of those dreams usu­al­ly arrives laced with per­il and degra­da­tion. We only see fol­ly when it’s too late.

Via extremely modest means and assiduous cinematic construction, Reichardt is able to whip up melodious, sweeping and tactfully political dramas.

At its core, First Cow is the tall tale of two pals who decide to cap­i­talise on a col­lec­tive yen for sweet baked comestibles among the mem­bers of their Mid­west­ern fur-trap­ping com­mu­ni­ty cir­ca 1820. Otis Cook­ie’ Figowitz (John Magero) is a lov­ably effete baker’s appren­tice dis­placed to the Ore­gon wilds where he works as a com­mer­cial food scav­enger. While rustling through the brush in search of sus­te­nance, he finds a naked Chi­nese man, King-Lu (Ori­on Lee), who is on the run from some Russians.

Cook­ie helps out King-Lu, and when they lat­er recon­nect, Cook­ie becomes King-Lu’s house­guest in his idylic wood­land shack. As in the famous A Woman’s Touch’ scene from the Doris Day west­ern-themed musi­cal, Calami­ty Jane, gen­der roles are furtive­ly assigned among this same-sex two­some and a gen­teel domes­tic­i­ty is formed, with Cook­ie dust­ing and bak­ing, and King-Lu for­ag­ing and chopping.

Beyond our cen­tral pair, every mem­ber of the ensem­ble hails from a dif­fer­ent part of the globe. This choice hasn’t been made to empha­sise dis­cord: quite the oppo­site. Reichardt is more inter­est­ed in stress­ing com­mon ground among this eth­ni­cal­ly diverse enclave, with these pitiable char­ac­ters either yearn­ing to be trans­port­ed back home, or keen to exist (and per­sist) as a far-flung totem of nation­al char­ac­ter. Toby Jones’ stovepipe-hat­ted Eng­lish popin­jay, Chief Fac­tor, takes a bite of fresh oily cake, glances to the mid­dle dis­tance and exclaims in almost teary-eyed exul­ta­tion: This tastes likeLondon.”

The cow referred to in the film’s title is anoth­er of Factor’s lit­tle home com­forts, allow­ing him to have a dain­ty splash of milk in his tea. Cook­ie and King-Lu have oth­er plans, as they sneak into his mead­ow at night and extract the milk for their own nefar­i­ous means, name­ly pro­duc­ing rudi­men­ta­ry baked goods for the hun­gry fur trap­pers to waste their mon­ey on. Pri­or to their scheme, King-Lu makes the off­hand com­ment that all suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es are based upon some aspect of crim­i­nal endeav­our, and this appar­ent joke seals the friends’ fate before ingre­di­ents have first been combined.

A man in a black top hat and dark coat standing outdoors, with a walking stick in his hand.

The docile cow is a sym­bol of wealth and suc­cess, and also rep­re­sents the pos­si­bil­i­ty of progress. Aside from Lily Gladstone’s bemused First Nation trans­la­tor, the cow is the only oth­er female char­ac­ter in the film, and Reichardt very sub­tly presents her as being the sub­ject of a very blithe form of male exploita­tion. As Cook­ie lov­ing­ly extracts the cow’s milk in the light of the moon, he coos sweet words to her and talks to her like a ner­vous John might to do an expe­ri­enced Madame. It is through a bout of vio­lent jeal­ousy that our heroes are even­tu­al­ly scup­pered, and the film switch­es from a tone of hushed com­ic friv­o­li­ty to an almost fugue-like death rattle.

With­in Reichardt’s immac­u­late canon of films, First Cow does have some­thing of a megamix qual­i­ty to it: there’s the bash­ful male kin­ship of 2006’s Old Joy; the idea that we can over­reach even the most hum­ble of per­son­al ambi­tions as artic­u­lat­ed so poignant­ly in 2008’s Wendy and Lucy; there’s the per­fume of vio­lence that hung in the air dur­ing the pio­neer days from 2010’s Meek’s Cut­off; and the idea of crime being jus­ti­fied by a desta­bilised form of per­son­al moral­i­ty in 2013’s Night Moves.

I often see Reichardt’s films as all being about the strug­gles of being an inde­pen­dent artist, and the road­blocks that come from priz­ing orig­i­nal­i­ty and try­ing to work off of the main­stream grid. In the sto­ry of Cook­ie, King-Lu and their beloved but illic­it treats, the metaphor works once more. And at the same time as being part of this close-knit cin­e­mat­ic fam­i­ly, the film is entire­ly unique: a shag­gy cow saga one minute; a trea­tise on class, eth­nic­i­ty and the mech­a­nisms of cap­i­tal­ism the next; and then, in its final moments, a rumi­na­tion on how sto­ry­telling, cin­e­ma and a curios­i­ty in the past is the only prac­ti­cal way of keep­ing the dead alive.

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