First Cow

A story about two outcasts who find friendship and a business partnership with each other in the American frontier.

John Magaro plays a gentle baker who begins the movie as cook for a prospecting expedition. He's too thoughtful and sensitive to really fit in with the macho wild men he's with, who bully and threaten him. Orion Lee is a Chinese immigrant who befriends him and suggests that they go into business selling the baker's biscuits at a local trading post. The biscuits are a sensation, but the enterprise is a dangerous one -- the only place to get milk is to steal it from the cow (yes, THE cow, not A cow) that belongs to the local aristocrat, played by the always welcome Toby Jones. The film begins in the present day with a hiker in the woods discovering something that hints at how the movie will end, and how the movie then circles back to that find is a small miracle of narrative storytelling.

Kelly Reichardt, who's made a career of quiet, understated films, remains true to form here. "First Cow" shows much more than it tells, which should please fans of art house fare but will probably frustrate more casual moviegoers who have less patience for the way stories are told. The two main characters don't talk much, but we learn much about them, not from what they say, but from how they act. The first time we see Magaro's character, for example, he's hunting for mushrooms in the woods, and he takes the time to set a salamander he finds back on its feet when it's struggling to flip itself over. And when Lee's character shows him to his cabin in the woods, the first thing Magaro does is find some wildflowers with which to decorate the small space. Little flourishes like these reward the patient viewer, and we come to like the two men so much that the end, though we've been warned of it in advance, feels that much more tragic when it comes.

Covid has seen to it that 2020 hasn't exactly been the most robust year for movies, but of movies that have been released so far this year, "First Cow" is one of the best I've seen.

Grade: A

"It's the getting started that's the puzzle. No way for a poor man to start. ... You need capital, or you need some kind of miracle." "You need leverage." "Or a crime."

Another excellent Western from Kelly Reichardt, one with high production quality and which quietly subverts the genre's traditional themes. That starts with the two protagonists, King-Lu and Cookie (Orion Lee and John Magaro) who are rational, somewhat timid guys who hit on a plan to make a fortune via baked goods (yes, baked goods). Cookie is quite the domestic for the hero of a Western, and can crank out a clafoutis if necessary. The buddy he meets, King-Lu, is from China but is the antithesis of stereotypical representations, having traveled the world and multi-lingual, including English and the local Native American dialect. How fantastic is it that these guys aren't macho gunslingers, that they cook, sew, sweep the house, and forage while trying to figure out how to take advantage of this "land of riches." Meanwhile, the Native Americans themselves aren't blood-thirsty savages, they're people and they co-exist with the colonizers, which is reasonably accurate for the 1820's, a few decades before mass colonization would lead to genocide.

Despite the relative harmony, there is a quiet, rather ominous danger everywhere, from a bully in the fur trapping group promising to wait outside the fort after Cookie is paid to rob him, to King Lu describing how his friend was gutted from neck to loin because he was suspected of being a thief, to the more powerful men who debate how many lashes are appropriate in corporal punishment which is clearly at their discretion. There is no real law and order here, just force, and might makes right. At the same time, Reichardt is incredibly restrained in not showing a lot of violence, or reveling in it as a lesser director might have done.

Meanwhile, the message comes through that the West wasn't won with frontier spirit or some other aspect of mythical American exceptionalism, it was won with crime. Sure, the two mild-mannered fellas with big dreams steal milk from a rich guy's cow to make some delicious oily cakes, setting up a pop-up food stall (ok food blanket) that's quite popular with the locals, enriching themselves in the process. But the rich guy is stealing resources from the Native Americans and idiotically believes that the beaver can be trapped without limit. When he's told by King-Lu how vast the original beaver population was in the state, he can't extrapolate what greed will do to the population eventually, or doesn't want to (and indeed, the beaver was almost driven to extinction in Oregon). The little thieves end up in shallow graves, the big thief ends up likely lauded in the state's history, with a town probably named after him.

The first cow (fantastically played by Evie the cow btw) is thus a symbol of the natural order shifting, and in a profound way. Early on in a small saloon, one man remarks "This ain't a place for cows. God would've put cows here if it was." Another replies "No place for white men either then." It's notable that the cow is there so a rich man can have cream in his tea, and so he can display his status and sophistication to visitors who might look down on his rustic surroundings. It's a luxury, and reserved for him alone. It's the tip of an enormous iceberg, of many more white men with their precious possessions, of a lifestyle that will ravage the environment for the sake of personal wealth. In the opening shot in the present day, an enormous (and very ugly) cargo barge is seen going down the river. It's a shot I almost forgot by the time the film ended, but it seems to show in a subtle way the result of 200 years of such a lifestyle.

That's an aspect of Reichardt's direction I admire most, just how much she holds back and lets the viewer think about. There is a powerful message here, but it's delivered with great subtlety. Most of the scenes are played without a soundtrack in the background, and she doesn't feel a need to include shots to fill everything in for the viewer. There were places where I felt the film could have moved along a little more quickly and it won't be for everyone, but the more I thought about it afterwards, the more I appreciated what she had done.

It may be because of how I watched this - First Cow and Reichardt's films in general call for seeing it in a cinema if at all possible, she simply has that eye and ear for the minutest details and for the time she takes with every shot and many scenes to draw out the feeling of a place as well as for the actors to settle in, that you want to sink in to this film as a sensory experience, and instead I saw it at home where (I don't know about you but) I have too many distractions, not least of which the phone on a busy weekday - but it took me about fifteen to twenty minutes or so to get into the mood of this film. I wasn't sure if it might go anywhere really, as it follows the Cookie character as he is part of this fur trapping outfit (or almost on the outside, just barely with it, but enough to be in it without, say, getting into scraps/fights like the others), and it was frankly slow-going.

But then the story, as much as it is, kicks in and it becomes this very simple tale of a friendship and what may be a fairly minor crime in the grand scheme of things - taking milk from a cow that isn't there's so they can make oily cakes, basically the 1820's rural Oregon equivalent of what I assume is Krispy Kreme - and how it gets tested and firms as they become more successful and gain the employ of the wealthiest man in the area (Toby Jones), who... also happens to own the cow that they've been milking. It's so engrossing because of its simplicity, the delicacy and yet the immediacy of the world that Reichardt has recreated for us. Like all the best period filmmakers, she and her collaborators bring this part of America/the Pacific North-west to life in almost a humble sort of way: it isn't ostentatious, it's just... what it was, and that makes it special.

Aside from the performances themselves from these two, I have to wonder if the power of this film comes from something that maybe Reichardt was conscious of or maybe she wasn't, but this story makes me think about filmmaking itself, especially of the independent kind (or art creation in general). You have to assemble the right ingredients, and it most often takes some tenacity for it to all come together like it should (and how many times have you heard of someone on an indie movie shoot "going guerilla" or "stealing a shot" from some such and such a location they didn't have a permit for, etc). It feels like a story that Reichardt has lived at some point in her life, and she gets to deepen on the themes she worked in on Old Joy, also about a male friendship that gets tested by cirumstance.

And what's fascinating is how because of the slow-burn-ness of the pacing, by the time it gets to the last half hour or final quarter, it has some real suspense as we wonder how our two great lawbreakers will get out of this as they get hunted down. It's not quite to the same level of poetic grungy-frontier depiction heights as a McCabe & Mrs. Miller, but it has that same looseness and understanding about humanity, and if anything is less pessimistic about equality between people of different backgrounds and races. What happens after the end credits start to roll? I don't know, and I don't need to is the point - they've gotten through some s***, and they're together.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Director Kelly Reichardt doesn't do plot driven movies. Still, FIRST COW is a feature where one has to be observant from the very first shot to the final one.

Reichardt's method of expression is to create a setting and fully immerse the viewer in it. Even though it's based on a novel by Jonathan Raymond (who also co-wrote the screenplay with the Director), FIRST COW isn't concerned with telling a tight knit tale, indeed the characters themselves seem to be exploring and creating their own "plot". They're own history. It's 1820s Oregon and two drifters, Cookie (John Magaro) and King-Lu (Orion Lee) end up in a small town with little at their disposal but some vague hope to keep on moving until they find themselves. The title animal comes to town and the pair find some short-term opportunity to use it's precious milk. Toby Jones is the owner of the Cow - and the richest man in the hamlet.

As is Reichardt's manner, the pacing is deliberate, her camera mostly steady (the movie is framed in the old fashioned 1:37 ratio) and the editing stately. She seems averse to making even the most intense situation palpable to the audience (her previous film, CERTAIN WOMEN, probably had cinema's least dramatic hostage sequences). Reichardt depicts the situation, and the viewer must create their own drama. It doesn't always work (WENDY AND LUCY), but, here as in OLD JOY, there is a vividness in the depiction that makes it worthwhile, if still not entirely satisfying.

Reichardt is an interesting talent and FIRST COW is an immersive dive into the old frontier (there is talk of going south towards the promised land of California and its emerging cities) even if it never quite strikes deep enough.

Thanks to constant mental stimulation due to social media, cell phones, and online content always being available, the majority of people now have an extremely short attention span. If that sounds like you, then don't watch this.

I personally consider myself to be a very patient person, and if you are willing to just be patient and actively appreciate the film you will find this film to be a rich cinematic treat. The cinematography is exquisite, meticulously framed in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The performances are extremely watchable - these characters could easily have been rather dull or boring but the brilliant actors elevate them to near-mythological status. The plot, while cliched, is supported so well by the aforementioned elements that it feels like a completely new experience to the other films that have similar plots.

If you only watch films for a quick dopamine hit, this is not the film for you. In order to get anything out of this film, you must put in some of your own thought. Under the surface, the film is rich with ideas about capitalism, the American Dream, and especially male friendship. It's left up to the viewer to interpret the work for themselves, which is what I appreciate most about Kelly Reichardt - she doesn't try to force a message down your throat, she just lets you interpret her films however you want to. But you need to be patient if you want to get a good experience, which many people, especially on this website, don't quite seem to understand.