The cookie is also a gifted baker, and this skill, combined with King-Lu’s entrepreneurial determination and pilfered milk, causes a fateful change of situation. Their “oily cakes” – nuggets of fried dough topped with honey and a little cinnamon – become the Cronuts of Fort Tillicum, drawing lines of customers eager to spend hard-won riches on a piece of fried dough. Cakes remind a customer of something their mother was doing. For the main factor, they are a taste of England. They remind the public that luxury can be a necessity, that pleasure is a basic requirement of the species, as necessary as shelter or bread.
And the pleasures of “First Cow” are deep and substantial. Reichardt’s style is direct and restrained, sometimes to the point of austerity, but at its best – in “Old Joy”, “Wendy and Lucy” and in this, perhaps her most beautiful feature so far – she finds a poetic resonance rich in clear, hardly visible images and words. (The rough and pictorial cinematography is by Christopher Blauvelt). And also a vein full of humor. The pomposity of the main postman and his entourage, who speak of Parisian fashion and military discipline, is ridiculous (but also potentially fatal). The occasional sweet feuds that bubble between Cookie and King-Lu have their own charming nonsense, as if Robert Altman is directing an episode of “The Odd Couple” written by Samuel Beckett.
Lee and Magaro are relaxed and attractive performers, and they work in a natural and relaxed counterpoint. King-Lu draws Cookie from his melancholy distrust, while Cookie calms down part of his friend’s agitation. Due to an introductory scene that takes place over several years – an implicit link between this film and “Wendy and Lucy”, starring Alia Shawkat – we suspect that something terrible will happen to them, but this omen points to both the comedy and the tenderness of the time we spend in their company.
It also crystallizes Reichardt and Raymond’s ideas on history and politics – on how the simplest companies trap people in complex relationships of power and competition. “First Cow” is basically a western: it tackles the questions of civilization, solidarity and barbarism on the American border. And like many great westerns, he criticizes some of the founding myths of the genre with beautiful and strong rigor, including the myth of heroic individualism.
Blake’s quote could be written by one of Walt Whitman’s, who wrote that “whoever walks a long distance without sympathy goes to their own funeral dredge in their shroud”.
First cow
Classified PG-13. Some difficult cases. Duration: 2 hours 1 minute.