Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
This review originally published in March, before coronavirus upended the theatrical release calendar and thwartedFirst Cows debut.
We are republishing the piece ahead of A24s rerelease of Kelly Reichardts film across digital platforms.
Thats when you feel most alive when you find her wavelength, and the inscrutable is suddenly crystalline.
Again, that can take a while.
The opening ofFirst Cowis loose bordering on limp, the aura of drift a depressant.
(There are no explanatory titles.)
Cookie has no roots, no ties to the material world.
For Reichardt, it takes two to get a rhythm going.
And two might be all you need.
A startling assertion, that home isnt a place or thing but a connection to someonenot you.
(Sartres Hell is other people can be regarded as a related not opposing contention.)
(Nothing is spelled out.)
(He seems to have created a Native American Raj a pun?)
Now, one man has dairy and the rest dont.
In a cold, harsh, unjust society, a bond like theirs is surely worth the risk.
The two actors are criminally endearing.
Magaros Cookie is socially stunted but large-souled and very sweet, looking addled even before hes actually concussed.
The abrupt finish leaves you saying, What … ?
And then, Oh.
(Tylers country albums are much more busily orchestrated.)
The effect is just so.
Youre left sad but happy.
But happy, after all, when you think about Blake and what a life without friendship could be.
This haunting movie transports you to another world and redefines home.
