(Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Few filmmakers have a stamp as distinct as Kelly Reichardt‘s. The acclaimed director has been producing quietly devastating portraits of life on the economic margins of American society for the past 25 years; her films move quietly, slowly, centering on economic anxieties and reveling in the vistas of the American wild, whether on the frontier or in the country’s densest woods. For her latest, First Cow, she returns to the forest (echoes of Old Joy) and to the 19th Century (echoes of Meek’s Cutoff), adapting a portion of her co-screenwriter Jonathan Raymond’s novel, The Half Life.
As ever with Reichardt, the story is simple: It’s the Oregon Territory, and Chinese immigrant King Lu (Orion Lee) and traveling cook Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro) embark on a scheme to steal milk from a wealthy landowner’s cow in order to sell baked goods at market and save up enough money to rise above their station and pursue their dreams. But, as ever, the resonances are deep – the film’s imagery may be of docile cows and muddy paths and broke-down huts and silver pieces, but First Cow feels urgently of our time.
Ahead of the movie’s release, Reichardt spoke with Rotten Tomatoes about five films that were on her mind as she made First Cow, and which she feels are a piece with the new film’s look and feel, its characters, and its message. The movie will be digitally released Friday, July 10, 2020, giving people a new chance to see one of the most acclaimed films of the year.
Editor’s note: This interview took place before the Coronavirus outbreak and subsequent lockdown and was originally published ahead of the movie’s limited theatrical release.
I mean the thing with Ugetsu, and the whole Apu Trilogy [discussed next], that I was really looking at when I was making First Cow, was that they are super low-to-the-ground films. You get to the ambition of the potter in Ugetsu, and the sort of dream sequences of it. I love the way it’s filmed, in the way the small villages are filmed, and the way you’re in this hutch all the time and everyone is super low-to-the-ground. I mean everyone’s sitting on the floor all the time and you’re wandering through these small towns and you’re inside these hutches, and I liked that Cookie [in First Cow] is sort of a down-to-the-ground guy – he’s a forager.
There are caste systems in both Ugetsu and the Apu Trilogy, and both of the protagonists are sort of at the bottom of the food chain and surviving hand-to-mouth. In the case of Ugetsu, I found that character relatable as far as King Lu [in First Cow] goes – he really wants to get a toe hold in the next level, and he’s very seduced by getting there; he just has kind of a narrow vision of like, “I’ve got to get to this place.” He also knows that he has to find a backdoor into it. And they’re all craftspeople in Ugetsu, and in First Cow Cookie is a cook and they’re constantly making things, and King Lu is sewing his slippers – it’s a life of just endless making of things because it’s how you’re surviving.
I hadn’t seen that movie when I made First Cow, but then I went to Cannes and was on the jury. I had just finished editing, and when I got back from Cannes, I was going to do my sound mix. I met Alice [Rohrwacher, director of Happy as Lazzaro] – she was on the jury with me – and so I watched her film before I went, and I love this film and I thought, “Oh my God, there are some similar things to First Cow as far as, like, Lazzaro wakes up in some other house and you don’t know how much time has passed…” I put that on my list because it was very important to me to let Alice know I found her so inspiring and great, and I felt a real simpatico with her filmmaking. It feels in the world of my memory of making First Cow.
Joel Meares for Rotten Tomatoes: We are seeing you return to the 19th century, to the early, early stages of this country. I’m wondering what is it that draws you to that period and interests you?
Well it was Jonathan Raymond’s novel, The Half Life, which has kind of been hovering around us, he and I, for a couple of decades, and we’ve been trying to think of how we could ever sort of get our arms around it, because the novel spans 40 years and there’s a ship ride to China and it’s this very big [story]. So part of it was that and that I had my head in this time period for this film that I ended up not making, and I had been sort of steeped in just some paintings from the 19th century, in images I didn’t really want to lose hold of. Some of it made its way into First Cow – things I had been living with for a while.
First Cow is available to rent or buy digitally from July 10, 2020.
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Thumbnail image: Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images, ©Zeitgeist Films., © Netflix, Everett Collection
