First Cow ★★★★
FIRST COW IS A CHARMING HEIST FILM CENTRED ON FRIED DOUGHNUTS
First Cow
Cast: John Magaro, Orion Lee Director: Kelly Reichardt
Duration: 2 h 1 m
Movies are full of firsts. First Man, First Reformed, First Daughter, First Wives Club. And who can forget such famous second firsts as Rambo: First Blood Part II or Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment?
Director and co- writer Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow stars Evie, a delightful, doeeyed Jersey, portraying the first cow to be brought to a small fort and settlement in what was then Oregon Territory, circa 1820.
The cow is owned by the Chief Factor — basically the head trader, or local bigwig — played by Toby Jones. But she soon becomes part of a plot by two impoverished travellers, who aim to steal her milk under cover of darkness and use it to make the best darn oily cakes west of the Mississippi.
Local traders and trappers, starved of all things dairy, pay handsomely for these buttery fried doughnuts. Even the Chief Factor falls for them, blissfully unaware of the purloined ingredient.
Reichardt lets this story play out at a lovely, lazy pace. We get to know Otis (Cookie) Figowitz (John Magaro) and King Lu ( Orion Lee) as they slowly get to know each another. The theme of simple comradeship is signalled with a quote from William Blake that opens the movie: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.”
The men meet on the trail. Cookie has been employed by a group of trappers, and King Lu is running from some Russians he’s angered. ( Recall that the American West wasn’t yet full of “Americans,” but a mix of
First Nations and adventurers from around the globe.)
King Lu is a scoundrel — he tells his customers that the oily cakes’ mystery ingredient is an “ancient Chinese secret” — but he’s also something of a philosopher. “History isn’t here yet,” he tells his new friend. “It’s coming, but we got here early this time. Maybe this time we can be ready for it.”
But how do you jump out ahead of history before it runs you over? “It’s the getting started that’s the puzzle,” muses King Lu. He reckons it’ll take a miracle. Or a minor crime, like mild cattle rustling. Cookie, gentler of the two, nuzzles up to the cow the first time he milks her, talking softly and commiserating on the loss of her “husband,” who didn’t survive the voyage to Oregon.
Reichardt, adapting the novel The Half- Life by her frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond, is a master of so-called slow cinema, and she lets her camera drift and linger.
It may pause on King Lu lighting a fire with some smouldering moss, while Cookie chops wood outside. Or take the scene in which they deliver a clafoutis (a kind of flan) to the Chief Factor; after some conversation, all the men go outside to see the cow, leaving two First Nations women to chat quietly in the now-still room.
It’s a reminder that a heist needn’t be heavy on action and violence to capture an audience’s attention. Sometimes all it takes is a little flour, sugar, lard, cinnamon and honey. And a cow. One will suffice. ΠΠΠΠ First Cow opens March 13 in Toronto; March 20 in Vancouver; and March 27 in Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax, Winnipeg and London.