Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Which came first? The Cow, or the Egg? It’s that question that First Cow seeks to answer, and does a surprisingly terrible job of it.
Set in the before times of 1820s Oregon, John Magaro’s Otis “Cookie” Figowitz is a mild mannered cook for an unruly bunch of fur trappers, who stumbles on Orion Lee’s King-Lu, who’s on the run having killed some Russian bloke. After striking up a friendship, they go their separate ways only to meet up down the line at Fort Tillicum, after Cookie takes his leave of the trappers.
They chum about for a while before learning that Toby Jones’s Chief Factor has shipped in the territories’ first cow. They reason that the fresh milk could be used to make baked delicacies the likes of which the territory has never seen, on account of it being a largely untamed wilderness with no baked delicacies whatsoever. Sneaking in at night to milk the cow, their produce is a roaring success, however the increased demand risks drawing the unwelcome attention of the Factor and his brand of frontier justice. Some chasing may be involved, which may or may not tie in with the leisurely told framing device of Alia Shawkat digging up two skeletons in the modern day.
I’d heard good things about this film coming into it, but then again I’d heard good things going into Kelly Reichardt’s previous Certain Women and didn’t get a lot of joy out of that. I have broadly the same things to say about this as I did that, so perhaps it’s just the case that her style is not my cup of tea.
There’s a lot in here that I can appreciate, at least. The cast give uniformly believable performances of believable characters, given the time frame, and it looks great. It’s just that the entirely intentional slow pacing of the film and straightforwardness of the story just wasn’t connecting with me the way that it seems to have done for others. It’s all just a bit too minimalist for me. Maybe if it had more dubstep, or if the cook turned out to be an ex-Navy SEAL who must stop a group of mercenaries taking over a warship it’d be more my speed. It is important to recognise that I have no taste.
This is a well made film, for sure, and I’m sure there will be a great number of people more receptive to its arthouse charms than I was, so I shall not denigrate it, other than to say it didn’t do a lot for me.