The captivating lives of cows
A documentary in the New Zealand International Film Festival tells the story of a man who bought two cows as pets. Mike Mather reports.
Most people probably don’t know that when cows are happy they smile, and often do a little happy dance. These are among the revelations of When the Cows Come Home, a featurelength documentary making its debut in this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival.
The film is both an expose´ of the secret life of cows and a portrait of a man who, through a combination of personal tragedy, mental unwellness, weird circumstance and ‘‘one terrible faux pas’’, ended up living on his parents’ farm in the Waikato in his late 50s, looking after a small herd.
It was there that Andrew Johnstone made an unexpected connection with one of the cows in the beef herd.
‘‘This cow just walked straight up to me and gave me a bunt. That was Tilly.’’
The majority of New Zealanders likely see cows as a bunch of dull-witted creatures that hang around in fields eating grass – simple biological units that comprise the basis of the country’s largest industry. But each animal has its own place in the hierarchy of the herd, its own best friend, and its own personality – and as Johnstone found, the cow he dubbed Tilly had personality in abundance.
‘‘We just see cows and think they are standing around doing nothing, but there’s much more to them than meets the eye. They actually lead quite busy lives. They want to have fun and are constantly in search of novelty.’’
When it came time, Johnstone could not bear the thought of sending Tilly off to the meatworks. So he decided to keep her as a pet.
However, with very little in the way of riches, it was a task not easily accomplished – so he crowdfunded via Facebook and managed to buy not only Tilly, but a second cow called Maggie to keep her company.
When the Cows Come Home provides audiences with a revealing insight into Johnstone’s life on the rural idyll and his frequently joyous time spent with Tilly and Maggie.
‘‘Cows dance,’’ he reveals early on in the film. ‘‘That surprises a lot of people when they see it happening . . . We do lots of jigging [and] dancing around.
‘‘They throw their back legs in the air and click their heels . . . These cows dance when they are happy.’’
The documentary came about after filmmaker Costa Botes ‘‘accidentally’’ befriended Johnstone on Facebook – and soon became entranced by his eloquently written posts about life on the farm.
‘‘I did ask him why he friended me, and he replied ‘I thought you were someone else’,’’ Johnstone laughs.
Botes is well known in New Zealand film-making circles, and first came to prominence in 1995 with Forgotten Silver, a mock-documentary co-written and codirected with Peter Jackson.
He has since become renowned as a documentary maker specialising in stories about individuals in the grip of some kind of struggle or challenge, or with great passions. In Johnstone, he found both.
As Botes observes in the press notes for the film, ‘‘[Johnstone’s] writing is very engaging. Somehow, he manages to make mundane topics like grass growth interesting.
‘‘Andrew’s posts first caught my attention when I read about the cow he was trying to adopt. . . I thought there might be an amusing bovine soap opera in the making.’’
Botes met Johnstone and began filming. But as he got to know the human subject of his documentation, the focus of the story began to shift.
‘‘It was on his third visit when he told me ‘It’s not a film about your cows any more. It’s about you’,’’ Johnstone said.
It was a canny decision. To say Johnstone was a colourful character with a colourful past would be an understatement. He’s been – and in some aspects still is – a musician, artist, journalist, and sales manager before becoming a manager of herds. His history is littered with triumphs and tragedies in equal measure. They include taking on the authoritarian leadership at one of the country’s prestigious Marist schools; a horrific incident from his childhood; and living every journalist’s nightmare and briefly becoming nationally vilified after making a major misjudgment that appeared in print.
When the Cows Come Home will be shown in the International Film Festival in Christchurch next month.
‘‘Your cows are living in the moment and they remind me to live in the moment.’’ Andrew Johnstone