The Film:
The Image:
Kelly Reichardt strives for greater things when she tells a Western. First Cow (2020) tells the story of the friendship of Cookie (yes, he’s a cook and baker) and King-Lu an entrepreneur and world traveler. This is definitively a Western; it’s a story of the American West. It takes place in territorial Oregon, marks the process of the colonization of the region in it’s early throes notably marked by the arrival of the titular first cow to the territory, and showcases the variety of people living in the area during this point in time. King-Lu at one point, after having described the impact of his travels on his life and reveling in the American West says, “History isn’t here yet,” meaning that the domination of the West and the closing of the Frontier hadn’t yet solidified what the space was to be in the annals of American mythology. Ultimately, what Reichardt offers us is a glimpse into an alternative soft and interdependent West and the shot I’ll use to explore that idea is one of the Cookie and King-Lu caring for their home.
“Because Cinema is movement, the Western is Cinema par excellence,” says Andre Bazin, and he’s correct about the genre. Think of any Western and the role of movement. Stagecoach is essentially an extended chase scene, The Magnificent Seven’s story literally starts in motion, Once Upon a Time in the West features heroes who come and go like the laying of the railroad. This is all to say that the domestic space in the Western is a marginal location. It is reserved as the space for women in the stereotypical Western, a locus of order and warranting protection from the elements and outside threats. Thus, movement is indelibly tied to the dominant mythos of the West, it is tied to the danger (and thrill) of the life of the cowboy, a man who knows no home but the road.
What First Cow offers us is an alternative for the Western space and role of men and masculinity in the genre. Much in the similar methodology of Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, a film which centered the role of white women in the narrative of American western migration/movement, First Cow's character’s center their lives and dreams around the domestic space. This is a western that starts in motion, and ends in motion, but in the middle (narratively a reserved space for the action and the movement, Cookie and King-Lu nurture their living space. Cookie bakes, and King-Lu dreams of where the baking can take them as they formulate an American Dream.
In the definitive image I’ve chosen (not even close to being the most beautiful in the film, stunningly shot by Christopher Blauvelt), we see Cookie shaking the dust from a rug in the door frame and King-Lu chopping wood outside. The image suggests interchange and interdependence. Cookie faces outwards open to the world returning dust to where dust belongs, and King-Lu, chopping wood outside, taking what belongs outside to bring inside for fire. It is here in this home that their bond strengthens and that their dream flourishes.
Reichardt tells us that the West is also a place for sweet things, for love and tenderness. Heck King Lu and Cookie never once take up arms. This isn’t a land for the lone cowboy, drifting and itinerant. It’s a narrative of the West long overdue and essential in expanding the meaning of the space in our cultural psyche, and for considering what it takes to make it in trying circumstances. We cannot make it alone, and it is together that we build our dreams.
-Connor