First Cow: The Best and Worst of A24

Except for Everything Everywhere All At Once, Kelly Reichardt's "First Cow" may be the most A24-ish A24 movie ever made. It's an unapologetically artsy, no-craps-given, and sometimes downright bizarre story based on Jon Raymond's 2004 novel "The Half-Life." And this is simultaneously a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it means that we all got to see a film with a legitimately original and fresh vision for once. It's a bad thing because this legitimately original and fresh vision brings with it a handful of undesirable storytelling techniques that detracted from what was otherwise a great film. However, whenever a movie is imperfect, it gives me food for thought, ammunition for a new film review, and a valuable learning experience, so it's a win-win-win for me when I watch a movie that may technically not be perfect but is by no means a bad film. And let me say, I really liked First Cow. Whether or not you like it may come down to your opinions on A24's eccentric and unusual filmmaking habits and tendencies, and I say all of this to impress on you the fact that First Cow is an incredibly acquired taste. But all of that said, let's get into this review.

First Cow is, as I said, an adaptation of Jon Raymond's novel The Half-Life, which is set in 1820's America. It follows Cookie Figowitz, a down-on-his-luck cook for a group of old-west settlers in the Oregon territory, and King Lu, a Chinese immigrant, and their bizarre adventures involving a cow, American settlers who like biscuits a little too much, and a very rich and influential man called the Chief Factor.

So, I want to start by commending this film's technical prowess. Its visual work is eccentric and mostly very well done, and even if some of it might exist for no particular reason other than for its own sake, this film was still a unique vision of the American frontier and, to be honest, refreshing. No, beyond that. It was charming. One thing that really stood out to me about First Cow was it's insistence on using natural light as much as it possibly could. And so even if the film had a strange, artsy, and for lack of a better term, cute aesthetic in terms of the way it presented itself, everything I saw still managed to look really natural and down-to-earth. As a general rule, I like to see natural light get used in films so long as it is used well, and I must say, every daytime scene in this movie looked absolutely immaculate, but I couldn't help but wish that the filmmakers had backed down a little bit with their bold approach as the day turned to night. The same lighting solutions that looked so good during the day started to get cracks in them as the day turned to night and everything started to look a little grainy like the editors had bumped up the light a little bit in post-production so that audiences could actually see the film which, if you're out of the loop on film editing, is something you should try to avoid as much as possible for the sake of your image quality, as the dark tends to bring out noise and grain in your image, and it doesn't look especially good when this happens. But that said, I think that the good aspects of this film's cinematography choices far outweigh the bad, and at the end of the day, the filmmaker's vision was brought to life, flaws and all, and I can respect a moviemaker for committing fully to his or her artistic decisions.

As far as the characterization in First Cow goes, it's really strong. Cookie and King Lu are two incredibly likable protagonists from two very different parts of the world, and while the character-centric narrative we got in this movie was nothing revolutionary, First Cow still tells us a feel-good story about two very different people setting aside their differences for the sake of a goal that is bigger than themselves. This movie makes it really easy to root for in particular Cookie, as the beginning of the movie makes it very clear that he is something of an outcast from his group. This outcast structure Cookie has also helps us empathize with his teaming up with Lu, a fugitive who is on the run from some Russians, and also makes Cookie's choice of friends make a lot of sense. This movie is a buddy film, and that is a refreshing and simple type of story that isn't told as much as it should be anymore. Keeping the pool of characters relatively small gave us an uninterrupted and intentional look into the lives of both men and brings a charming simplicity to the movie that is absent in even some other A24 projects, to say nothing of mainstream Hollywood entries.

Now, this movie does have some less-than-desirable tendencies, and the most notable of them has to be that First Cow is an incredibly self-indulgent film, which means that its very best and very worst tendencies rise straight up to the top of this film and shout for your attention. This is where the "worst of A24" part that I put in the title of this article comes into play. Now, no one can deny that the films made and distributed by this studio have pervasive and unique visions that we simply don't get in mainstream Hollywood, and this is a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it allows filmmakers, who are artists at the end of the day, to make undiluted and unperverted art. However, it also promotes a culture where it's harder for someone to step in and say something like, "Uh, this particular aspect of your film might not be a great idea." This movie likes its technical aspects a lot, and I don't think there's anything especially wrong with or bad about that. However, it does become a problem when your shots start lingering for maybe a little less than ten seconds too long in some cases, and your film starts bloating its runtime without accomplishing anything particularly noteworthy. Too much of First Cow seems to lack purpose, and this is a much larger problem in the first half of the movie than it is in the second, by which time the film seems to have put an end to a lot of these pacing issues. The titular cow doesn't even show up for 25 minutes into the movie's runtime, which is less of an issue in and of itself, and more of an indicator of the fact that this movie tends to waste time rather than do anything important because a lot of the character beats don't come into play until the second half of this movie. I don't want to call First Cow a self-important film, because that sounds a little too harsh for what it was, but self-important is pretty close to the phrase I'm looking for. However, a lot of these problems are frontloaded, and most of them get less noticeable as the film's pacing kicks up a notch.

All of that said, at the end of the day, and despite all of its imperfections, First Cow is a movie that I really liked, and it seems to be something of an exhibition of the best and the worst habits of A24. I like the studio, so I was willing to mostly overlook some of the flaws in this film and focus on the good things, which work really well, but I do want to give this movie a fair shake, and part of that comes down to being willing to aim legitimate, fair, and what I believe to be objective criticism at a work of art. If you're not familiar with A24's artistic tendencies, I can easily see you not liking this movie. But regardless of what you may think of it, I encourage you to go into First Cow with an open mind, and maybe you'll be surprised at what a cow and two initially unimpressive but incredibly likable and dynamic characters can do for you.

First Cow - 8/10

Isaiah 11:6-9