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| Courtesy of IFC Films |
Made on the side while Arnold was
editing the show Big Little Lies and bereft of a vegan agenda, instead
just training her camera on Luma who occasionally bumps it but allows Arnold
and her crew to get closer to her than most animals would ever grow comfortable
with, Cow is a sparse unfettered view of Luma the cow while also
factoring in the various invasive human machinery and techniques used to care
for the cows. Unlike Gunda which
took great pains to keep any and all humans from visibility to sounds absent
from the film, Cow wants you to be aware of what it means for Luma to
more or less be in what looks like an animal prison with humans poking and
prodding the cows every chance they get.
According to the director, the film threatened to shine unwanted
attention on the Park Farm which was not her intention.
Featuring a tracklist sure to sell
soundtrack albums of current pop tunes heard on the radios of the farm while
Luma the cow goes about her business and shot extraordinarily by Magda
Kowalczyk, Cow is an interesting project which aims for the same
transcendences achieved by Gunda but doesn’t hide director Andrea Arnold
from the camera as she’s seen following Luma at certain points. Probably the most unique aspect of the
cinematography is how it follows Luma’s head movements, looking up at the sky
as she looks up before following her gaze back down to the grass for more
feeding. Released in 4K by IFC Films in
the US, a first for Arnold, Cow over the course of the movie and the
music gradually begins to humanize Luma and make her appear more feminine in
form.
At times difficult to watch,
particularly the ending, Cow puts a spotlight on the struggles lived out
by these animals and manages like Gunda to make you think twice about
what the meat you eat and the milk you drink.
While not as pure and evocative as Viktor Kossakovsky’s aforementioned
documentary epic, Cow nevertheless is a fascinating and engaging forward
step in pure documentary form observing animal life under the thumb of human
farmers.
Most certainly a strong double
bill with that other documentary film that lets you know how it feels to live
on a farm where eventually you’ll likely be killed and eaten by humans, some
will tire of the film’s relentless footage of Luma being poked and prodded, an
endurance test in and of itself. Yet in
the end most will feel they’ve experienced something extraordinary and difficult
to put into words, as close to the pure cinematic documentary expressions of Koyaanisqatsi,
Baraka and more recently Aquarela where the images and sounds tell
the story more clearly than conventional narrative dialogue can.
--Andrew Kotwicki
