Moo

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's top 50 films of 2022

#28 : Cow

American Honey director Andrea Arnold’s meaty slice of bovine socio-realism, detailing the life of dairy cows with unflinching and empathic precision.

Skipping over #29 for the time being (for various reasons, I'm really struggling with it), I'm moo-ving on to this one (do you see what I did there?).  I was previously aware of this film and the concept and I can assure you that there would have been no chance of me ever watching it under any other circumstances - I'm hoping it's not going to be as bad as I suspect it will be.

Well - it wasn't quite as bad as I feared, but it's not exactly great either.  For those of you that aren't aware, the concept of the film is to follow a cow's life from cradle to grave (although obviously neither of these things is actually involved) - and that's very much what it does,  But, I hear you ask, does a cow actually lead an interesting life?  Welllll (spoiler alert)...

No, not really.  The film certainly can’t be accused of glamorising the bovine lifestyle but, having said that, I thought the cow had a better life than I was expecting - I suspect there are plenty of cows that don’t see nearly as much outdoors as this one did.  It’s quite sad towards the end because you can tell she’s getting old and you know it ain’t gonna end well.  And, when the end comes, it’s very sudden - but I guess there's no time for sentimentality in this game.  The film does end with a nice final shot of the cow's calf out and about though - the circle of life continues on.

However, not content with one high concept, the film introduces another one because there’s no dialogue or voiceover.  Every so often you’ll hear one of the farm workers talk, but it’s not done for our benefit - sometimes it helps you understand what’s going on, but it’s certainly not a given!  A minimal voiceover would actually have helped - when they cauterised the calf's horns, I had to stop the film to Google what was going on and why - so I did learn something at least!  The other thing I'd say I learned was that cows' udders can get a lot bigger than I thought they could!

Overall, it’s an interesting idea which has been well executed, but unfortunately it doesn’t make for a great film.  A 30 minute short might have held my interest but 94 minutes was somewhat interminable.  Or would have been, except this was almost the perfect film to watch at double speed - but I'd have to say it was still pretty dull though…

Now - what can I say about the acting?  Well, Luma is superb and fully inhabits the cowness of the lead role - one might say it's the role of a lifetime.  She's a bit of a prima donna though - everything and everyone else is just sidelined.  It all looks well filmed (with some nice shots of the countryside), but doesn't feel like it took loads of technical skill - Andrea Arnold has made some very interesting films in her time but this feels more like an art school project (I also suspect Andrea didn't do an awful lot of standing around in fields and cowsheds).  

Wikipedia tells me things could have been worse because she considered making the film focus on a chicken - now that really would have been dull.  It also tells me that she doesn't intend the film to be a political or vegan statement - it's just the life of a cow and she wanted to "show the aliveness of a nonhuman animal".  And, in that, I'd say she succeeds.

And finally, I have to report that I was very surprised to find myself laughing at one point because the hot cow sex scene was filmed on November 5 - so actual fireworks were involved.

As I said, it's an interesting concept - but it just didn't have the legs for me and the lack of narration just annoyed me, so it's not a recommendation.  It was educational in places, but I'm not sure exactly what I was supposed to take away from it.  My general feeling from the film is that a cow's life isn't quite as bad as I was expecting, but I'm not entirely sure I believe that's generally the case. To be clear, I'm certainly not accusing either the director or the farm of dressing things up for the film - I just feel that only a farm that looks after its cows well would agree to have something like this filmed on location.

At time of writing, it's available to stream on MUBI (like you subscribe to that!) or to rent at all the usual locations - and if you insist on watching it, then I strongly recommend you do so on a technical platform that allows you to play it at double speed.

#29 - Better than its predecessor
#27 - A very confusing film