sustain:if:able kiwi

The First Cow: a theological film review

Monthly I write a film review for Touchstone (the New Zealand Methodist magazine). Stretching back to 2005, some 160 plus films later, here is the review for June 2021.

The First Cow
Reviewed by Steve Taylor

The First Cow is slow. Like cattle chewing cud, the movie rewards the patient viewer. Beautifully plotted by director Kelly Reichardt, the mix of humanity and humour offer an absorbing meditation on the nature of friendship.

The beginning tells the end. Up a river in the Pacific Northwest, a ship passes. It takes time and little changes. Up that same river, in centuries passed, trappers and traders have passed. Based on Half Life, a novel by Jonathan Raymond, The First Cow reveals the complexity of pioneer ambition.

The land is bountiful. Gold, beaver and the abundance of salmon offer opportunities aplenty. Amid such possibility, what to grow? Yet how to start? Because while dreams are free, getting ahead takes capital and class. Trade requires networks, more available to those already connected. New ventures take cash in advance, less risky for those who already have security.

Pioneer society is riven by class. English gentry has servants, while ships’ captains punish life with death. In contrast, Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro) is an orphan, learning to bake as an indentured labourer in Boston. King-Lu (Orion Lee) is Chinese, on the run from a charge of murder. Across cultures, Cookie and King-Lu form an unlikely friendship. They lack the cash, but as partners find themselves urging each other toward risk.

Oppressed by class, they offer each other trust and loyalty. In a sexualised society, a movie starring platonic friendship between two men, built on respect and partnership, is an oddity.

Theologically, The First Cow brings to mind Jesus’ invitation to friendship. God’s offer of friendship subverts hierarchies of servanthood. Trust, loyalty and mutuality are a radical way to relate to the divine. The cultural differences between Cooke and King-Lu remind us that relationships can be based on respect rather than sexual attraction or social media likes.

Historically, the Christian tradition has seen cultivating friendship as a spiritual discipline. Writing in the eleventh century (“Spiritual Friendship” in Ellen Charry, Inquiring After God: Classic and Contemporary Readings), Aelred, abbot of an English monastery, distinguished between the intimacy of friendship and that of sexuality. Aelred celebrated fun and sharing, arguing that we know God better as we share time, offer tact and draw on the strength of others. In the giving and receiving of life, dignity is possible.

For Aelred, friendship demanded time. Friends should be chosen carefully. Loyalty needs testing, as do intentions and discretion. Only once trust is tried will a friendship offer spiritual growth. For Aelred, such friendships, although few, will be lifelong.

Hence friendship defines the spiritual life. Indeed, greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13). This is a way to faith in which the love and loyalty of God on earth is clarified. It explains the slow burn of The First Cow, King-Lu’s final words, “I’ve got you,” and the movie’s beginning, which explains the side-by-side ending.

Rev Dr Steve Taylor is author of First Expressions (2019) and writes widely in theology and popular culture, including regularly at www.emergentkiwi.org.nz.