First Cow (2020)
dir. Kelly Reichardt
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2020 A24
Think of Kelly Reichardt’s new film First Cow as a spiritual cousin and companion piece to P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. The films are about the American dream on the western frontier in the early 1800s (Cow) and the early 1900s (Blood). There Will Be Blood is about the American dream run amok on greed and unchecked success; it’s the story of an oil tycoon told on an epic scale. First Cow focuses on, essentially, a small business owner who goes out of business before ever striking it rich – if you’ve seen the film, you’ll get the irony of my putting it that way. It’s a tale of American entrepreneurial spirit on the smallest, most personal scale.
That’s not to suggest there are no dramatic stakes (pun intended) in First Cow. The contemplative pace of Reichardt’s film and the languorous nature of her camerawork both belie the story’s dramatic tension.
First Cow tells of the unlikely friendship of frontiersman “Cookie” Figowitz and Chinese immigrant King Lu. Cookie, serving as – what else – a cook for a group of fur trappers in the Pacific Northwest, discovers King hiding out in the wilderness one night while he’s foraging for food for the trappers. The two men cross the band of fur trappers and go their separate ways in their escape.
They meet again in a small frontier town in the Oregon territory years later. Reichardt’s picture – which she wrote with frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond and whose novel, The Half Life, served as the source material for First Cow – is very playful in terms of its timeline. The film opens in the present day in an audacious framing device that essentially makes the rest of the story a two-hundred-year flashback.
Cookie and King find companionship in each other’s company, and they spawn an idea to make money. Cookie has a recipe for “oily cakes” – basically a donut – and King has the salesmanship and business sense to make them a success. Only there’s literally one missing ingredient. Cookie needs milk to make his oily cakes. Lucky for him a rich land owner from England has just imported the territory’s first cow, which Cookie milks at night with King serving as lookout.
The townsfolk can’t get enough of the oily cakes. That includes Chief Factor, the rich land owner who doesn’t realize he’s eating his own stolen milk when he says, “I taste London in this cake.” Things get dangerous for Cookie and King when their unsuspecting benefactor gets wise to why his prize cow produces so little milk for him.
The magic of First Cow comes through Reichardt’s unique perspective and storytelling sensibility. We feel the bond between these two men solidify as Reichardt lets scenes between them blossom at their own pace. The movie provides many long takes and lengthy passages with no dialog; it’s transcendental cinema that emphasizes the beauty and stillness of the Pacific Northwest, one of Reichardt’s favorite settings. The region was the backdrop for Meek’s Cutoff, another of her films focusing on frontier times, and Wendy and Lucy, a modern-day tale of the desperation that living in extreme poverty creates.
Besides the quiet drama of human connection, First Cow also emphasizes the healing and comforting power of good food. Reichardt focuses our attention on the process of making food by spending a good deal of time showing the gathering, preparing, baking, and eating of it. The time spent by an average frontier dweller in the 19th century acquiring and making food as depicted here stands in stark contrast to the average 21st century city dweller’s experience. We don’t even need to leave our car for a meal.
Reichardt’s vision of the early 19th century American frontier also reminds us that it drew all types. Cookie has come from the east; King Lu has traveled from China to make his fortune. Actor Ewan Bremner (with his signature near-impenetrable thick Scottish accent) plays a rowdy Scotsman drawn to the Pacific Northwest. Toby Jones plays Chief Factor, the aristocratic Englishman who gets a little taste of home with Cookie’s oily cakes.
But Reichardt also takes care to honor the legacy of the indigenous peoples who lived in the region before these proponents of manifest destiny came to take the land for themselves. That legacy is represented in the character of Chief Factor’s wife, an indigenous woman played by Lily Gladstone, who worked with Reichardt in her 2016 film Certain Women.
Class struggle, too, is a focus of First Cow. There’s Cookie and King, who pilfer from the rich to make their dream come true. The hardscrabble ranchers fight over each day’s last oily cake. Chief Factor pays for the privilege of eating the milk that was stolen from him. It’s a subtle message, but Reichardt comments on how capitalism makes us take advantage of each other, even as it also allows us to create meaningful bonds with one another.
First Cow is a great example of deeply humanist filmmaking. Kelly Reichardt is a master at studying human nature – both how humans connect with each other and often times fail to – especially as it plays out against the grand backdrop of American wilderness. Her filmmaking is intensely personal; her voice is a singular one. Like with her other films, these qualities make First Cow a delight to watch.
Why it got 4 stars:
- Circle of Trust time: I wrote this review on March 1st. I’m writing this summation (and everything below it) on August 19th. The marketing team for the film asked us to hold our reviews until the film could get a proper release, since it had been canceled due to the coronavirus. Remember the halcyon days when we thought everything would be back to normal in a few weeks? A month, tops? Well, First Cow was finally released on VOD a few weeks ago, so I am finally putting up my review for it. As I read over what I had written, I got a strong sense of what I felt while watching the movie. From what I remember, it is a contemplative, gorgeously shot bit of independent film that takes its time telling its story. That’s no surprise coming from accomplished filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. Her unique sensibility as a director and storyteller is a wonder to behold.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- (I’m relying on the notes I took during the screening to fill a few things in here. It’s like cinematic archaeology!)
- So many long passages without dialog in this film. It’s a transcendental cinema-lovers dream.
- The ethos of the movie: “It sounds dangerous.” “So is anything worth doing.”
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- This was a press screening, but I don’t remember anything beyond that. It was a quiet crowd, I think, matching the energy of the movie.