This film’s a beauty – though the leading lady is a real cow
Dir Kelly Reichardt Starring John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, René Auberjonois, Scott Shepherd, Gary Farmer, Lily Gladstone, Alia Shawkat
The titular role in Kelly Reichardt’s wonderful new film is taken by a bovine character actress called Evie. She plays the first cow to make it to the Oregon Territory during the 1820s, a time when the competitive fur trade – “soft gold”, as they called it – brought settlers to the area from far and wide.
We only get two glimpses of Evie in the film’s first hour. What’s more on our minds is the friendship of two newly acquainted men: Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro), an apprentice baker; and King Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese fugitive who is found by Cookie crouching naked in the bushes, having narrowly escaped the clutches of some murderous Russian rivals.
Drawn, hesitantly at first, to each other’s company, they come up with a business idea. Tasty food in the region is scarce, unless you’re partial to squirrels or flour-and-water bread. But with the addition of milk – which only this one cow is capable of providing – Cookie is able to make superior oily cakes. The only problem? The milk is not theirs, and they’ve been creeping into the woods at night to poach it.
Subtext alert: it’s surely no coincidence that the cow’s oblivious owner, a dapper Englishman played with deft control by Toby Jones, uses the exclamation “Capital!” when a commission goes his way. Cookie and King Lu talk several times about making their way up from nothing, the struggle of this process, and their plans for the future. The oily cake earnings are essentially a start-up fund, but we begin to dread them pushing their luck.
The first scene between Evie and Magaro, who sidles up beside her like an awkward suitor in the dark, is a real beauty. “Hello, how are you?” he asks quaveringly, keen to make a good impression. “Sorry about your husband…” From roughly this point on, Reichardt’s stealthy, resonant, and finally riveting film – based on a 2008 novel, The Half Life, by her regular screenwriting partner Jon Raymond – has you in the palm of its hand. Magaro, acing his role, gives Cookie a wariness and interesting unknowability, while Reichardt could hardly have cast a subtler or better performer than Lee, a British actor in a major breakthrough.
The obvious companion piece among this director’s films has got to be Meek’s Cutoff (2010), her filigreed wagon-trail western, but I prefer this by a distance: the heart-in-mouth plotting carrying us through the last part, to a pitch-perfect final shot, is a steady shift she manages exquisitely.
All dairy might be theft, as Evie could protestingly moo to Cookie Figowitz if she felt like it, but at least their arrangement is friendly – more than can be said for biped property rights in this lawless age, or in any age at all.