Some people can't imagine being stolen from.

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 51 Movies of 2021

#12 : First Cow

Meek’s Cutoff director Kelly Reichardt returns with a superbly chewy story about a pair of drifters in the old west trying to make money by stealing milk from a newly arrived cow.

I've heard this is good and I suspect I'd like anything The Guardian described as "superbly chewy", so was looking forward to catching up with this...

What?  Another 4:3 aspect ratio film?!?  Although, I guess if it's set in the old west that's probably fine.  But, hold on - if it's set in the old west, why is there a massive cargo ship sailing across the screen?  Hmm - and I probably shouldn't tell you what happens next but after that we finally find ourselves back in the old west.  And I know this to be true because everyone's got a beard.

And what follows is a circumlocutory tale which very much ambles along at its own pace in whichever direction it feels like going.  It concentrates on Cookie and King-lu, a couple of chancers looking to make their way in a frontier settlement.  And they hit upon a scheme making and selling cakes, which prove to be very popular - but unfortunately require them to steal the milk from the first (and only) cow in the area.  Which is owned by the Chief Factor (aka the Big Cheese), who obviously gets to hear about these cakes and has to try them.  Uh-oh..

However, somewhat surprisingly, it does actually manage to find itself an ending which makes some kind of sense - tbh I wasn't expecting this in the slightest, but I also don't think I would have been too upset if it hadn't.  Which is somewhat unusual for me, but this film is very much more about the journey than the destination - and I was happy to be swept along with it and experience the randomness.  I think my favourite randomness was the man being giving a baby to look after during a bar fight - and then just abandoning it.  There was also one conversation which takes place in a Native American language without any subtitles, so you have no idea what's going on - and then one of the characters quite clearly says "ding a ling".

The randomness carries over into the film direction - a lot of shots appear to be included just because they look nice and I've absolutely no problem with that because they just look gorgeous.  There are some stunning landscape shots which use the light perfectly - the shot of the cow arriving by boat in the morning sun is particularly entrancing.   I would also say that the night scenes are very authentic - by which I mean they're so dark that even with the TV in "Eternals mode" (so called because without that setting, we wouldn't have seen 90% of what happened in The Eternals) I still couldn't tell what was going on.

And to complete the randomness, huge swathes of this film have no or minimal dialogue.  And at other times, you sometimes you have background characters just saying things for no obvious reason - the effect is quite disconcerting, but not in a bad way.  It certainly keeps you on your toes because you're not sure whether you're being fed some important facts (spoiler alert - you rarely are).

The acting is fine throughout - Cookie and King-lu are played by John Magaro and Orion Lee and they have a nice easy chemistry together.  No other characters have more than a few scenes in the film - Toby Jones and Scott Shepherd are worth mentioning as the Chief Factor and the Captain because they have a great scene together.  I also have to mention Evie who puts in fab-u-lous performance as the cow - she's a proper scene stealer.

And I'm also going to mention René Auberjonois (who I know best as Odo from Deep Space Nine, which is a surprisingly complex role in a surprisingly complex series) in one of his final film roles (as "Man With Raven") - his appearance got me reading his Wikipedia page and I learned the man won a Tony award in 1970 playing opposite Katherine Hepburn in Coco.  He also did a LOT of other stuff - the man lived a full life.

All in all, this is strangely hypnotic film which manages to tell a story in its own way - on several levels, I was reminded of Twin Peaks, but in a very different setting and with considerably less dialogue.  I can see it wouldn't appeal to everyone, but I really enjoyed it - it might not have hurt for it to have a bit more story, but I can forgive it that because I'm generous that way.  I also think that it would benefit from a rewatch - I feel that there's a lot hidden away in there.  And, finally  it all looks so damned gorgeous!

#11 - An all-round impressive offering
#13 - Entertaining utter drivel