First Cow surprisingly – for anyone who has seen the trailer – opens in the present day as a woman (Alia Shawkat) and her dog unearth human remains. Visually, it is reminiscent of Kelly Reichardt’s 2008 film, Wendy and Lucy. The sky is blue, birds are chirping and the low camera angle makes our eyeline at one with the earth, along with the bones. The camera pans to the river and a freighter moves languidly across the water. In the blink of the eye, it has transitioned to a tugboat and, just like that, we have travelled back in time.
Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro) is foraging amidst the greenery for mushrooms. They are his first choice but he searches for anything edible to feed the party of fur trappers he cooks for, as he tries to stretch their diminishing supplies. Among the leaves, brush and overgrowth he stumbles across a naked Chinese man (“not Indian”) and within moments Cookie has given calligrapher King-Lu (Orion Lee) food, something to wash it down with, a coat and a ride on his way.
They won’t meet again for a number of days, weeks even, but when they do King-Lu will return the favour, giving Cookie shelter and a place to stay. The two become fast friends and set about making some money: “To get started, you need capital” declares King-Lu to which Cookie retorts without missing a beat: “You need leverage.” That leverage comes in the form of Chief Factor’s (Toby Jones) honey-coloured cow (Evie). You’ve heard the expression, why buy the cow when you can milk it for free? With her produce, the two budding entrepreneurs can make oily cakes. They drizzle them in honey and grated cinnamon, and make a killing selling them to the men mining and panning for gold.
As with the majority of Reichardt’s oeuvre, in terms of plot-points there aren’t many, but what is slowly revealed is an absolute pleasure to watch. She has the immense skill to relay so much with so very little and allows an audience to see but never instructs it where to look, often by her own sleight of hand in the editing suite. From the subtle timeline change to the use of light on the colour palette of yellows, earth tones and greens. It’s a quiet unassuming film, discerning, as it excavates American history and wrestles with the past and present – summed up during an exchange between Cookie and Lloyd (Ewen Bremner) in which one suggests that where they are isn’t the place for cows… “This isn’t the place for white men either.”
Based on Jon Raymond’s first novel The Half Life (2004), First Cow is the author’s fifth collaboration with Reichardt – their sixth Showing Up was released on Blu-ray by A24 earlier this month – and can be viewed as a companion piece to Meek’s Cutoff (or even Certain Women, also starring Michelle Williams), certainly a historical pre-cursor of early life in nineteenth century Oregon, America. Thematically, it acknowledges the ambiguities of (male) friendship. Those formed under the most unlikely circumstances and the power, grace, pleasure and heartaches that bind us together, marking human frailty and endeavour in such a profound, moving, and meditative way. The cast is led majestically but Magaro and Lee, who both give such delicate and beguiling performances, made only more poignant by William Tyler’s score – often only the plucked strings of an acoustic guitar.
First Cow is a moving and quiet fable about kinship and an America of the past and present, overflowing with the milk of human kindness.
First Cow is currently showing on MUBI.
The Framing Device 