The first cow on North American soil was spotted at the Plymouth settlement. Europeans brought them over from the old country in the 15th century. A second cattle colony, resided in Mexico; Texas, too, even after the Lone Star state announced its independence. Texan ranchers enjoyed the spoils of a considerable bovine inheritance and became wealthy men. "The first cow in the territory," the Pacific Northwest, either came from San Francisco or San Luis Obispo. Cookie Figowitz(John Magaro), in Kelly Reichardt's "First Cow", learns as much from a group of poker players talk about the dairy cow that Chief Factor(Toby Jones) bought, while the pastry chef downs a shot of whiskey at the saloon bar. A Virginia native, the trained cook(specializing in comestibles) was hired by prospectors to feed them on their westward journey. Before the gold rush, men made their fortunes on the beaver, slaughtered for their pelts and oils. Set in the 1820s, "First Cow" depicts the real wild west; "wild" as in wilderness, not gunfights at the O.K. Corral. The filmmaker's vision of an Oregon untamed is devoid of cowboys in ten gallon hats, guns a blazing, in a war over land with shirtless Indians outfitted with bows and arrows. This is not your father's John Ford western. The iconography associated with the genre is nowhere to be seen in the filmmaker's mis-en-scene. There is nary a horse to be glimpsed in Reichardt's western. There is nary an Indian in "Meek's Cutoff", the Portland-based auteur's last experiment in reconstructing the western.
Reichardt doesn't need a whole tribe. One Indian is enough. That's the Bertolt Brecht in her speaking. Stephen Meek(Bruce Greenwood), the frontier guide, dressed like he stepped out of a Wild West show with one of those bigger-than-life personalities to match, may or may not be leading a group of fellow travelers to the Oregon Trail in good faith. "Meek's Cutoff", with its wagons and horses, inching their way across the expanse of an unvarnished prairie, looks more like your standard western sans an action set-piece. The filmmaker likes her action implied. Out gathering firewood, Emily Tetherow(Michelle Williams) comes face-to-face with a Native American, a Paiute, causing both parties to scurry in opposite directions. Solomon(Will Patton), Emily's husband, joins Stephen in pursuit of the nameless enemy(Rod Rondeaux), leaving the ad hoc camp on horseback. Reichardt subverts genre filmmaking with a feminine lens, choosing to shoot the people behind. Action is presumed, a heated chase, lots of galloping hooves implied, when the two men return with the horseless Indian, made to walk, flanked by both Stephen and Solomon, holding each side of a rope. The filmmaker rewrites the myth of John Wayne and his ilk; men like Ethan Edwards, and in "Meek's Cutoff", Stephen Meek, who helped tame the frontier to make it safe for children and womenfolk alike. Ethan Edwards, in John Ford's "The Searchers", riding graveside, a hole, shoots repeatedly at the Najavo tribesman in permanent repose, blinding him, the heroic figure explains, forevermore in the afterlife. Cut in the same mode, Stephen, a propagandist, alleges that the Paiutes make eyelid cuts on their prisoners, then made to face the sun while lying down prostrate, blinding them in the process. Emily, the Debbie(Natalie Wood) stand-in, sides with the Indian, saving him from Stephen Meek's gun or slip knot. Claims of being their protector falls on Emily's deaf ears; she diagnoses the hero figure as such: "All I see is vanity," which succinctly demythologizes the cowboy.
"I'm Chinese," King Lu(Orion Lee), in "First Cow", corrects the pastry chef when he mistakes the stranger for an Indian, hiding in the foliage well-past dusk. The two mortal enemies become fast friends, a sort of "Dances with Kings", a filmic anecdote. Set twenty years before "Meek's Cutoff", Kelly Reichardt reinvents the Western again, this time, employing a man of Asian descent as a Native American surrogate. A bonafide auteur, Reichardt, once again, relegates the action offscreen, using hearsay, encapsulated in King Lu's monologue about watching his partner die at the hands of renegade beaver trappers, and the retaliation, a gunshot to the hunter's face, and escape. Unlike the classic Hollywood western, "First Cow" is set on the Oregon Trail, where violence between natives and settlers were rare. This shanty town, by default, is the closest approximation to a sanctuary that the Native Americans could have hoped for after foreigners displaced them from their homes. As aforementioned by the encroaching pilgrims in "Meek's Cutoff", at that time, the Oregon territory was independent of the United States; a sovereign nation. Stephen Meek, the Virginians suspect, collaborates with England, and took an unscheduled detour from the main pathway to avert them from their settlement, just like the one in "First Cow", probably Willamette. The chief factor, an Englishman, created a small empire of his own by exploiting the native population. The chief factor's wife(Lily Gladstone), a half-breed, and her relatives, had no choice but to persevere the humiliation of their tribe's degraded state through assimilation and social climbing. Against this backdrop of an unhappy, but integrated population, Cookie and King Lu become business partners, selling pastries at the open market.
"Doesn't seem new to me," Cookie answers, failing to concur with King Lu's assessment, the potentiality of an ordinary, but enterprising man's ability to procure a fortune. The well-travelled man recognizes, accurately, the west as being untouched. "Seems old," the pastry chef adds. In passing, back at King Lu's shack of a home, Cookie tells his cosmopolitan friend about the dairy cow's arrival by barge earlier that day. King Lu, ironically, isn't excited. Milk doesn't agree with him. Cookie sees the bigger picture; he can use the milk for baked goods. Reichardt foreshadows her dazzling use of post-modernist filmmaking. Both men, in a sense, break the fourth wall, from here on, once King Lu realizes the opportunity to make money. The cow is private property. They'll have to acquire the key ingredient for their signature hot oily cakes through illegal means, a crime. Dressed in all-black, King Lu resembles Jack Palance, the gunslinger, in George Stevens' "Shane", but the filmmaker, a semiologist, understands that black signifies nothing, since "First Cow" posits itself outside the genre, and its conventions. But everything old is new again, stipulated earlier by the Socratic dialogue, steeped in filmic self-awareness between both men, representative of the modernism/post-modernism binary that drives the narrative, a feminist reworking of George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".
The last horse, that's what the bicycle salesman pitches when he interrupts the sheriff's attempt to deputize some volunteers from the townsfolk, in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". Conversely, the first horse is what the Indians in this Oregon settlement fear; it's easier to get them by four hooves than two feet. They could be potential bank robbers, Cookie and King Lu, but the lack of guns and horses limit the options for these budding criminals. Such are the circumstances, the lack of technology, which finds Cookie milking another man's cow while King Lu stands watch on a tree branch. Whereas Etta(Katherine Ross), a schoolteacher, kept The Sundance Kid romantically occupied, the dairy cow acts as a stand-in for the love interest, in which Cookie sweet talks the bovine as he squeezes her udders. Since there is no woman, the dairy cow completes the love triangle. King Lu, however, loves the bovine, solely for her milk. The lack of a woman vying for the two men's attention dislocates the masculine/feminine binary, then reassembles itself within this platonic same-sex relationship. While King Lu, shirtless and sweaty, chops wood under the hot sun, Cookie remains indoors, sweeping floors and straightening out his friend's belongings, going outside only to collect wildflowers for the vase. Like the desperados in the George Roy Hill classic, both Cookie and King Lu have nothing but disdain for the rich, and that their time is fleeting. They're unofficially the Hole-in-the-Tree gang, named after the cottonwood they hide their money in. Eventually, the chief factor discovers the theft of his milk. The pursuit of these thieves recalls "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". "I can't swim," The Sundance Kid(Robert Redford) alerts Butch(Paul Newman) in the famous canyon scene. Cookie can't swim either, apparently. He stops to look at the river and decides against jumping off the cliff.
"First Cow" is a story about the real west. Not the Hollywood version; the filmic west of train robberies and showdowns at high noon to see who's the quicker draw. Kelly Reichardt is telling the story of legal stealing; the birth of capitalism. The chief factor builds a fence around his dairy cow, a metaphor, perhaps, for regulation.
Reichardt doesn't need a whole tribe. One Indian is enough. That's the Bertolt Brecht in her speaking. Stephen Meek(Bruce Greenwood), the frontier guide, dressed like he stepped out of a Wild West show with one of those bigger-than-life personalities to match, may or may not be leading a group of fellow travelers to the Oregon Trail in good faith. "Meek's Cutoff", with its wagons and horses, inching their way across the expanse of an unvarnished prairie, looks more like your standard western sans an action set-piece. The filmmaker likes her action implied. Out gathering firewood, Emily Tetherow(Michelle Williams) comes face-to-face with a Native American, a Paiute, causing both parties to scurry in opposite directions. Solomon(Will Patton), Emily's husband, joins Stephen in pursuit of the nameless enemy(Rod Rondeaux), leaving the ad hoc camp on horseback. Reichardt subverts genre filmmaking with a feminine lens, choosing to shoot the people behind. Action is presumed, a heated chase, lots of galloping hooves implied, when the two men return with the horseless Indian, made to walk, flanked by both Stephen and Solomon, holding each side of a rope. The filmmaker rewrites the myth of John Wayne and his ilk; men like Ethan Edwards, and in "Meek's Cutoff", Stephen Meek, who helped tame the frontier to make it safe for children and womenfolk alike. Ethan Edwards, in John Ford's "The Searchers", riding graveside, a hole, shoots repeatedly at the Najavo tribesman in permanent repose, blinding him, the heroic figure explains, forevermore in the afterlife. Cut in the same mode, Stephen, a propagandist, alleges that the Paiutes make eyelid cuts on their prisoners, then made to face the sun while lying down prostrate, blinding them in the process. Emily, the Debbie(Natalie Wood) stand-in, sides with the Indian, saving him from Stephen Meek's gun or slip knot. Claims of being their protector falls on Emily's deaf ears; she diagnoses the hero figure as such: "All I see is vanity," which succinctly demythologizes the cowboy.
"I'm Chinese," King Lu(Orion Lee), in "First Cow", corrects the pastry chef when he mistakes the stranger for an Indian, hiding in the foliage well-past dusk. The two mortal enemies become fast friends, a sort of "Dances with Kings", a filmic anecdote. Set twenty years before "Meek's Cutoff", Kelly Reichardt reinvents the Western again, this time, employing a man of Asian descent as a Native American surrogate. A bonafide auteur, Reichardt, once again, relegates the action offscreen, using hearsay, encapsulated in King Lu's monologue about watching his partner die at the hands of renegade beaver trappers, and the retaliation, a gunshot to the hunter's face, and escape. Unlike the classic Hollywood western, "First Cow" is set on the Oregon Trail, where violence between natives and settlers were rare. This shanty town, by default, is the closest approximation to a sanctuary that the Native Americans could have hoped for after foreigners displaced them from their homes. As aforementioned by the encroaching pilgrims in "Meek's Cutoff", at that time, the Oregon territory was independent of the United States; a sovereign nation. Stephen Meek, the Virginians suspect, collaborates with England, and took an unscheduled detour from the main pathway to avert them from their settlement, just like the one in "First Cow", probably Willamette. The chief factor, an Englishman, created a small empire of his own by exploiting the native population. The chief factor's wife(Lily Gladstone), a half-breed, and her relatives, had no choice but to persevere the humiliation of their tribe's degraded state through assimilation and social climbing. Against this backdrop of an unhappy, but integrated population, Cookie and King Lu become business partners, selling pastries at the open market.
"Doesn't seem new to me," Cookie answers, failing to concur with King Lu's assessment, the potentiality of an ordinary, but enterprising man's ability to procure a fortune. The well-travelled man recognizes, accurately, the west as being untouched. "Seems old," the pastry chef adds. In passing, back at King Lu's shack of a home, Cookie tells his cosmopolitan friend about the dairy cow's arrival by barge earlier that day. King Lu, ironically, isn't excited. Milk doesn't agree with him. Cookie sees the bigger picture; he can use the milk for baked goods. Reichardt foreshadows her dazzling use of post-modernist filmmaking. Both men, in a sense, break the fourth wall, from here on, once King Lu realizes the opportunity to make money. The cow is private property. They'll have to acquire the key ingredient for their signature hot oily cakes through illegal means, a crime. Dressed in all-black, King Lu resembles Jack Palance, the gunslinger, in George Stevens' "Shane", but the filmmaker, a semiologist, understands that black signifies nothing, since "First Cow" posits itself outside the genre, and its conventions. But everything old is new again, stipulated earlier by the Socratic dialogue, steeped in filmic self-awareness between both men, representative of the modernism/post-modernism binary that drives the narrative, a feminist reworking of George Roy Hill's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".
The last horse, that's what the bicycle salesman pitches when he interrupts the sheriff's attempt to deputize some volunteers from the townsfolk, in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". Conversely, the first horse is what the Indians in this Oregon settlement fear; it's easier to get them by four hooves than two feet. They could be potential bank robbers, Cookie and King Lu, but the lack of guns and horses limit the options for these budding criminals. Such are the circumstances, the lack of technology, which finds Cookie milking another man's cow while King Lu stands watch on a tree branch. Whereas Etta(Katherine Ross), a schoolteacher, kept The Sundance Kid romantically occupied, the dairy cow acts as a stand-in for the love interest, in which Cookie sweet talks the bovine as he squeezes her udders. Since there is no woman, the dairy cow completes the love triangle. King Lu, however, loves the bovine, solely for her milk. The lack of a woman vying for the two men's attention dislocates the masculine/feminine binary, then reassembles itself within this platonic same-sex relationship. While King Lu, shirtless and sweaty, chops wood under the hot sun, Cookie remains indoors, sweeping floors and straightening out his friend's belongings, going outside only to collect wildflowers for the vase. Like the desperados in the George Roy Hill classic, both Cookie and King Lu have nothing but disdain for the rich, and that their time is fleeting. They're unofficially the Hole-in-the-Tree gang, named after the cottonwood they hide their money in. Eventually, the chief factor discovers the theft of his milk. The pursuit of these thieves recalls "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". "I can't swim," The Sundance Kid(Robert Redford) alerts Butch(Paul Newman) in the famous canyon scene. Cookie can't swim either, apparently. He stops to look at the river and decides against jumping off the cliff.
"First Cow" is a story about the real west. Not the Hollywood version; the filmic west of train robberies and showdowns at high noon to see who's the quicker draw. Kelly Reichardt is telling the story of legal stealing; the birth of capitalism. The chief factor builds a fence around his dairy cow, a metaphor, perhaps, for regulation.