First Cow: Kelly Reichardt offers a sparkling, perceptive portrait of early America

Alongside her earlier film, Meek’s Cutoff, it deserves to be held up as a new standard of historical filmmaking

Dir: Kelly Reichardt. Starring: John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones, Ewen Bremner, Scott Shepherd, Gary Farmer, Lily Gladstone. 12A, 122 mins

First Cow, a film of sparkling tenderness and affection, opens on a scene of death. A young dogwalker (Alia Shawkat) stumbles across a piece of bone jutting out of the ground. She starts to dig with her bare hand; it’s almost nurturing, the way she pushes back the soil. Eventually, the camera pulls back and we see the full extent of her discovery. Here are two skeletons, resting against each other, with no sign of violence against their bodies. They are at peace.

We then cut to a second pair of hands, this time foraging for mushrooms, as the narrative begins in earnest. First Cow is a period film, set in 1820, in the disputed Oregon Country in America’s Pacific northwest. It’s shot in a boxy aspect ratio suggestive of old sketches or oil paintings. The skeletons belong to two frontiersmen, Cookie (John Magaro) and King-Lu (Orion Lee). Cookie, whose few skills were acquired after a period of indentured servitude to a Boston baker, is a soft-spoken naïf with eyes as big and brown as the dairy cow whose milk he steals on a nightly basis.

It’s part of a scheme that he’s hatched with Lu, who presents himself as a man of the world, but who has mischief in his eyes and wears a smirk that suggests he might be more of a showman than he lets on. The cow in question is the very first in the territory, the prized possession of a local landowner, known only by his title of Chief Factor (Toby Jones). The skeletons suggest that Cookie and Lu may not have been successful in their enterprise. Dreams are made to be killed and wasted.

That kind of simple, emotional devastation is at the heart of Kelly Reichardt’s films. With First Cow, she’s returned to the same thematic territory of Meek’s Cutoff (2010). This is a bold, perceptive portrait of early America that deserves to be held up as a new standard of historical filmmaking. Unlike so much work set in the period, it’s firmly rooted in ideas of colonisation and oppression. Reichardt has done much to battle the cultural myth that there was ever a west to be tamed or to be won, since it was always home to its indigenous people.

Cookie and Lu use the cow’s milk to make oily cakes, a doughnut-like pastry, which they then sell to their fellow frontiersmen. These are lonely, grimy men who have arrived from across the globe – Russia, Scotland, China – and now cling to any small reminder of home comforts. When the Chief Factor bites into one of the cakes, he tearfully remarks that he can “taste London”. In a subtle but striking contrast, the people of the local First Nations tribes are essentially forced to assimilate on their own land. A few gather in the Chief Factor’s house (he has married a Chinook woman, played by Lily Gladstone), sitting uncomfortably and largely silently in their starched, western clothing. When the men leave, the two women relax and talk jovially about a piece of indigenous, beaded jewellery.

Orion Lee and John Magaro’s performances, as King-Lu and Cookie, so sincerely, directly connect to each other that to hear them talk is to feel invited into their world (MUBI)

Reichardt makes a clever mockery of the idea that America was ever a place of promise and enterprise. But, as a filmmaker, she’s never been a cynic. The profound sweetness of the film comes from the small details she builds into Cookie and Lu’s friendship. The pair fall into a kind of private, domestic bliss – a haven within an angry, ruthless world. Cookie bakes, while Lu chops wood. Magaro and Lee’s performances so sincerely, directly connect to each other that to hear them talk is to feel invited into their world. First Cow begins with a quote from William Blake: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” America may not have been their home, but they still found one in each other.