Revisiting Masculinity and the American Dream in First Cow
First Cow, 2019
Regi: Kelly Reichardt
Foto: Christopher Blauvelt
Med: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Lily Gladstone, Gary Farmer
På kino: fra 21. mai
“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship” —William Blake
The opening quote —taken from Jon Raymond’s novel The Half-Life from which the film is adapted—already summarizes the essence of First Cow: Humans build themselves a home in friendship. As in Kelly Reichardt’s earlier film Meek’s Cutoff (2010), painting and poetry find their way into the film, which takes us to Western frontier life in 1820s Oregon and to the colonization of First Nation territory. This time, however, First Cow shows how a film mostly involving male characters can still be a feminist film.
Amidst the nascent American dream and mixing of people from all origins seeking fortune in rural areas at a time of early capitalism, First Cow focuses on a loving friendship between a Jewish-American, Cookie Figowitz, and a Chinese immigrant, King-Lu. The two protagonists come together as a result of not fitting in—King-Lu for his ethnicity and Cookie for his great sensitivity. Joining Cookie’s baking skills and King-Lu’s entrepreneurial instinct, the duo starts a risky cake-baking business. The success of the operation relies on the clandestine night milking of the first and only cow on the territory, and the gullibility of the owner, Chief Factor.
Very subtly and avoiding cliches, First Cow places in the hands and mouths of men gestures and conversations that have stereotypically been attributed to women. In this way, the film rewrites colonial history through a questioning of roles assigned to gender and ethnicity. The masculinity of the film’s protagonists takes form through daily activities such as bathing, cooking, and caring for others and for animals. A man sweeps his house while another plays the violin on the porch of his home, yet another comes with his baby in a pram at the village pub, and Cookie cleans and picks up flowers to decorate King-Lu’s interior; all these apparently small actions give form to the atmosphere of the film. First Cow abounds in rich remarkable details bringing special attention to human relations and the maintenance of the domestic space. As with Reichardt’s earlier films, most notably Old Joy (2006) and Wendy and Lucy (2008), large parts of the film’s action goes on in its silences. And just as the faded friendship between the two men in Old Joy, the bonding between Cookie and King-Lu happens through the sharing of a domestic space and the exchange of tender emotions. While social class brings and keeps them together, the protagonists’ loving care for each other sees beyond racial or ethnic differences. Characters—mostly white men—from a variety of origins cohabit rather peacefully in the village, while also admitting that this is “not a place for white men”.
As with more recent revisions of colonialism and the western, like Reichardt’s own Meek’s Cutoff and Lucrecia Martel’s Zama (2017), the usual white men of the western genre have been replaced by a heartfelt portrayal of masculinity in a colonial ambience. The story of First Cow blends cooking and domestic life with classical western ingredients such as hardship, roughness, and rivalry, and a ladder of power already well installed and defined by sex, ethnicity, and property. In Reichardt’s films, men convincingly appear as they are, they do not need to be tough but they need to be real. The film listens to its protagonists and gives them—and us—space to breathe, walk and exist. While the 4:3 aspect ratio anchors First Cow in the1950s western genre, it also provides a unique ability to frame faces and bodies. [1] The format also brings us to intimately connect with the characters rather than getting lost in admiration of the film’s lush landscape. As Reichardt states in an interview, her film contains no beauty shots, but still offers us a beautiful representation of “people who do not have a safety net”. [2]
This absence of a safety net is what drives the film forward, just as it did in Wendy and Lucy. First Cow in fact opens with a scene in a desolated forest of a woman and her dog that recalls Reichardt’s earlier work. The very first images of the film establish the parallel further as they feature an industrial setting similar to the one that propelled Wendy to her loss. The deforested arid landscape and a long take of a cargo boat on a tamed river connect the colonial times of the film with contemporary life, [3] and contrast with its later raft, wild river and lush forests. Through its photography and narrative, First Cow comments on environmental, political, and socio-economic transformation. But also on what has not changed, such as the invisibility of women of colour in the public sphere (Chinook women in the film) and the harsh punishment reserved to the most vulnerable. As soon as the main characters meet, it is clear for the spectator what their end will be: we know what will happen, but we do not know how.
From the very beginning, the film makes its realist intentions clear through the costumes and props it uses, and through its portrayal of power relations: the louder men abuse the more silent ones, and First Nation women remain silent throughout. In spite of these realist depictions, the film cleverly shows its true intersectional feminist colors as it ridicules British nobleman Chief Factor and his supposed superiority over the villagers and the Chinook people. This happens in particular in a sequence that keeps the spectator in tension as Chief Factor orders Cookie a clafoutis, made without his knowing, with his own cow’s milk. As he presents the pie to a visiting British Captain with the aim of impressing him, the oligarch’s gullibility and sympathetic tone—in stark contrast to the arrogance of his visitor—makes the spectator almost have pity for him and forget the harshness of his words as he declared in the preceding scene that robbers should be punished with the highest penalty so as to deter others to follow suit. First Cow gives all its characters undeniable depth and complexity, even some of the most secondary ones such as Chief Factor’s wife and father-in-law. While First Nation people (women especially) appear mostly in the background, the careful editing and mise-en-scène of this sequence in particular dismantle any kind of cultural hierarchy and place genuine value on Pacific culture and knowledge. The clever acting of Toby Jones, Lily Gladstone and Gary Farmer—Chief Factor’s First Nation bilingual wife and her witty noble father—provide lightness and subtlety to the derision brought upon a certain British superiority.
The clafoutis sequence ends with the camera lingering a tiny bit longer on the two women sitting together in the house after the men leave to pay a visit to the cow. Only three untranslated words in Chinook are pronounced between the two unnamed women during this scene, which very clearly works as a nod to the Bechdel test and its unconvincing criteria to validate films as feminists (based on the appearance of at least two named women talking together about something else than men). The popular press has often reduced feminism on screen to the Bechdel test, but Reichardt brilliantly demonstrates how to make a feminist film while failing at the test. First Cow shows how a film mostly involving male characters can still be a feminist film. Similarly to Old Joy and Meek’s Cutoff, it portrays masculinity in a way that is seldom shown, while also depicting some of the limitations imposed on women. The film is a love story between two men who thrive through domesticity. It is in fact the story of a whole community whose life revolves around domestic chores rather than fighting as the western genre has us accustomed to.
Although First Cow preserves the socio-economic hierarchy from the western, it concentrates on two underdogs that not only aim to survive but rather to establish a long-term living situation. The film, however, makes visible how for the American dream to exist, it must remain a dream for most. Films celebrating the very few who succeed abound and ensure the persistence of this American ethos. Only a small number show the real face of the American dream: the 99% that do not make it and the implied necessity to step on others—whether that is through light robbery or through killing those who get in the way. In addition to its refreshing portrayal of masculinity and domesticity, First Cow’s originality lies in its focus on those who struggle and ultimately perish. It shows that the struggle not only happens between lower and higher socio-economic classes but also and above all within them. The film demonstrates the value of community in capitalism, and poses the question of who we are to each other and what we owe each other as members of a global world.
Notes
1 See Noam Kroll’s blog post on the 4:3 aspect ratio.
2 “Kelly Reichardt on First Cow and Filmmaking| NYFF57”, Youtube, 7 Oct. 2019, and “Kelly Reichardt: ‘My films are about people who don’t have a safety net’”, Youtube, 15 Mar. 2017
3 In homage to the landscape filmmaker Peter Hutton to whom the film is dedicated.