{"id":49,"date":"2022-03-10T14:53:55","date_gmt":"2022-03-10T14:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cutthroughcollective.org\/?p=49"},"modified":"2022-03-10T14:53:55","modified_gmt":"2022-03-10T14:53:55","slug":"review-cow-by-andrea-arnold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cutthroughcollective.org\/index.php\/2022\/03\/10\/review-cow-by-andrea-arnold\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Cow by Andrea Arnold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Cow<\/em>, the new film by Andrea Arnold, is unlike her previous animal titles. \u2018Dog\u2019, \u2018Wasp\u2019 and Fish Tank<\/em> featured animals as metaphor or plot point in a story focused on human characters who struggle with interpersonal relationships in a British council estate setting. Ostensibly, Cow <\/em>bucks the trend with its focus on a single dairy cow. The film is billed as a documentary, which further distinguishes it from the narrative pattern of oppressed woman seeking solace in romance. However, looking closely at the construction of its scenes, it would appear that Cow <\/em>merely follows this narrative structure on an anthropomorphic plane. What are the political implications of coercing these images of a cow into such familiar cinematic shapes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start, the film’s emphasis on a single hero’s journey can prevent the audience from looking at aspects of the hero’s wider context. The beginning of Cow <\/em>is the most harrowing part, in which we see our dairy cow protagonist giving birth to a calf, from whom she is very soon separated. The cow licks her newborn calf clean, and the choice of focusing on an individual cow and calf here is a strength. While the excessive licking is somewhat alien, it remains a legible sign of maternal affection. There are close shots of their eyes, their heads. Then, the camera follows the mother cow as she is herded away, down a narrow metal passageway, to her next enclosure. For one long take, the cow stares at the cameraperson and moos. She pauses, and moos again. She is agitated, it seems like she is trying to express something. Coming direct after the separation from her calf, the overriding sense here is the cow\u2019s voiceless impotence. When she joins other cows in the barn, rather than expressing how her oppression is shared across all her fellow cows, the camera remains very close to this one – marking her out as different and special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A character partly exists in order to guide the audience through the situations with which they are asked to identify. Therefore, the character is always mediated, framed, condensed. Very early on, the viewer is gripped by the mechanised, industrial oppression of this cow and, secondarily, her calf. The cow is rendered \u2018identifiable\u2019 so that the audience can identify with her experience. While this is a sign of a domineering hand of characterisation, it is also a useful way to evoke pathos in the audience. Pathos evoked, the film is endowed with a responsibility to take that somewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indignation at the situation carries through the first half of the film, where we see the calf\u2019s nascent horns burned off its head, and the mother cow\u2019s internment in a cold, mechanical milking apparatus. Then, however, the film veers into absurdly familiar territory. The cow is led to another enclosure. A song begins to play – \u2018Tyrant\u2019 by Kali Uchis ft. Jorja Smith. A bull is led in and starts smelling the cow. The cow walks away from the bull, to the closed gate. Not exactly embracing his advances, and yet the music becomes more exciting, and then, in a bizarre coincidence, we see fireworks outside in the background. While the cow studiously looks away from the bull, who licks her and then mounts her, we hear inserted sound effects of the fireworks whistle and spark, and Kali Uchis sings \u201cI don\u2019t wanna come down, keep spinning me round and round and round and round<\/em>.\u201d The film cuts to actual fireworks, until the song ends. The bull and cow stand together. Postcoital tenderness and telepathic pillow talk, surely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1938, Bertolt Brecht wrote: ‘The crude aesthetic thesis that emotions can only be stimulated by means of empathy is wrong.'[1]<\/sup><\/a>Bertolt Brecht, ‘Short Description of a New Technique of Acting that Produces a Verfremdung<\/em> Effect’, 1940, in Silberman et. al, eds, Brecht on Theatre<\/em> (Bloomsbury, 2015) <\/span><\/span>