‘Cow’ Captures the Boring, Beautiful Life of a Dairy Cow
Andrea Arnold's first documentary follows life on a farm for one dairy cow.
Where to watch: ‘Cow’ is now playing at the Lumiere Music Hall in Beverly Hills.
As humans, we have the uncanny ability to project our thoughts and feelings onto others. We do this subconsciously, of course, and usually with the best of intentions. Ryan, my brother and Cinemacy editor, names his plants. When I leave my dog Ernest at home to go to work, I feel guilty because I assume he is missing me all day long. Taking a step back, it’s clear that we make these projections to make us feel better, or closer, to a thing that cannot communicate with us directly. It’s a fascinating effect of our species’ evolution, and this realization hit me even harder when watching Andrea Arnold’s latest film, Cow.
Very similar to Viktor Kossakovsky’s 2020 documentary Gunda, Cow is a meditative, slow-moving observation of the life cycle of a dairy cow. From birth to adolescence, motherhood to death, we witness it all. We are immediately transported to a working farm and stay there the entire runtime, practically able to smell the fresh manure and feel the briskness of the dawn mornings.
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Since a cow is our main character, the film is obviously rather quiet–aside from a few moos. Yet in this silence, it’s hard not to place our emotions and feelings onto this big, beautiful animal. Are the moos cries of pain or sadness when she is separated from her young calf? Is she confused or afraid when she gets branded and tagged? Of course, we can’t read her mind to know what she’s really thinking but what we can do is watch without objection or bias, and just observe.
Andrea Arnold is known for her provocative filmmaking, Fish Tank and American Honey being jarring depictions of coming of age stories. In this respect, Cow feels like a breath of fresh air for the director. The “Andrea Arnold” edge is still present in Cow, it’s just far more tempered down and subtle.
Perhaps the Academy Award-winning filmmaker says it best. “This film is an endeavor to consider cows. To move us closer to them. To see both their beauty and the challenge of their lives. Not in a romantic way but in a real way. It’s a film about one dairy cow’s reality and acknowledging her great service to us. When I look at Luma, our cow, I see the whole world in her.”
94 minutes. Distributed by IFC Films.
