First Cow is a Dry Heifer

First Cow (2020)

Directed by Kelly Reichardt

A24, 121 minutes, PG-13

★★

 

 I planned to see First Cow back in March, but COVID-19 closed the theatre before I had a chance to do so. Now I can officially say at least one good thing has come out of the virus. I didn’t spend $10 to see it.

 

Director Kelly Reichardt is known for both her deliberate pacing and her love of the West. Four previous films are, like First Cow, set in Oregon: Old Joy (2006), Wendy and Lucy (2008), Meek’s Cutoff (2010), and Night Moves (2013). At her best, Reichardt gives us small slices of Americana that focus on the kind of ordinary people that Hollywood generally ignores. Her Certain Women, set in Montana, was one of my favorite films of 2016. But Reinhardt seriously misfires with First Cow, a film so slow you’re tempted to check if you have a pulse.

 

The setting is the Oregon Territory of the 1820s. That’s not the official U.S. region organized in 1848, rather a sprawling region stretching throughout the Northwest that encompassed parts of four eventual states, most of modern-day British Columbia, and parts of southern Alaska. At this point in history, the United States, Britain, and Russia all laid claim to the area, none of whom gave a hoot about indigenous peoples already on the land. Non-natives entered a place more akin to the Wild West than that mythical land ever was. Reichardt and cinematographer Chris Blauvet do a superb job of making us see how travelers, settlers, and fortune-seekers could get swallowed up in its very vastness. To the degree that Euro-American style civil authority existed at all, it was in scattered “forts” such as Fort Tillicum (present-day Washington State), which is where our two principals end up.

 

They are Otis “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro), the cook for a band of fur trappers, and King-Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese man on the lam for killing a Russian, whom Otis feeds on the sly. Otis cashes out and sets off for Fort Tillicum, where he again encounters Lu, who has a cabin nearby into which Otis moves. Fort Tillicum is not for the faint of heart. It is a muddy cesspit with a hard-drinking bar, a small native encampment, and whites living in ramshackle cabins and makeshift tents. The only substantial home in the fort belongs to the Chief Factor (agent) and life there is so rudimentary that the big excitement is the arrival of the namesake first cow. (Its partner died on the trip to Oregon.) Otis and Lu pass their days daydreaming of heading off to San Francisco to open a hotel or bakery, but they don’t have the wherewithal to get there.

 

When they observe the cow being milked by a lad named Lloyd (Ewen Bremner), Lu hits upon the idea of sneaking in at night to help themselves to the cow’s bounty. With the pilfered milk, Otis reverts back to being Cookie and his oily cakes, biscuits, and fritters are soon in high demand. See Otis bake. See Lu sell. See a key character have his cake taken by another. Not exactly what one would call heart-stopping action.

 

Just a few more batches, and it’s California here we come. That small detail is one of the biggest clichés in film. Therein lies a second major problem in the film. Foreshadowing is a time-honored device but in First Cow, the film’s ending is predestined by the modern find that opens the film and all that can possibly be revealed is how it happened. Once the cow’s owner is identified half way through, we know how and why as well. The only thing left is dotting the i’s.

 

First Cow also wastes some of its talent. Gary Farmer is a well-known Native-American actor, but he’s practically silent in this film. The Chief Factor is veteran British character actor Toby Jones, and his role is little more than that of Chief Egoist. You know anyone billed simply as “Chief Factor’s wife” won’t have much to do, and it’s a crying shame to subordinate the sublime Lily Gladstone (Blackfoot/Nez Perce). To add a note of solemnity, First Cow was one of the final projects for the late Réne Auberjohn (Deep Space Nine’s Odo) and it’s a mere cameo.

 

Metaphorically speaking, Kelly Reichardt painted herself into a corner with a poorly storyboarded tale. There is something to be said for making slow-paced slice-of-life films, but when anything remotely dramatic is taken from viewers, all that’s left is boredom.

 

Rob Weir