Logos Reviews: Eden Reimagined in First Cow
July 27, 2020 | Sharla Moody BK ‘22. Sharla majors in English.
NOTE: Spoilers ahead
Kelly Reichardt’s minimalist film First Cow[1] premiered in August of 2019 at Telluride and enjoyed an extremely limited release in March this year before it was pulled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this week, it was made available for rental on digital, and I was able to enjoy what has been hailed as one of the best movies of the year.[2] Slow and friendly, the film concerns the adventures of Cookie, a trapper and cook in the Oregon Territory in the 1820s, and his new companion, King-Lu, a Chinese immigrant with a fuzzy history and fuzzier intentions. Cookie and Lu find themselves at a settlement where a wealthy English man called Chief Factor lives. Chief Factor has recently procured the first cow in the territory, a milking cow whose mate and calf died on the journey. Lu recognizes the economic advantages the cow brings—it is, after all, the only source of milk in the territory—and convinces Cookie to steal milk from it in the night. Then, Cookie uses the milk to prepares baked goods for miners in the settlement. The pair makes a good deal of money from this venture. At its heart, First Cow is a celebration of innocent love for creation and redemptive friendship, a reimagination of Eden on the frontier.
The beauty of nature captivates First Cow. Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt highlights the flora and fauna of the Oregon territory, and the first appearance of the cow as it enters the territory is almost mythical. Chief Factor describes the cow as “royal.” While the movie exudes a love for creation, Cookie embodies this ideal. Our first impression of Cookie is his gently turning over of an immobilized newt onto its stomach so that it can scamper away. Later, during his first encounter with the cow, he says, “Sorry about your husband. I heard he didn’t make it all the way. And your calf. It’s a terrible thing. Terrible. But you got a nice place here. You do. You got a real nice little place here, don’t you?” Cookie expresses his appreciation for nature in these lines, pointing to an Edenic love for creation. In Genesis it is written, “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there He put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight of and good for food.”[3] Cookie sees in nature that pleasantness and goodness ordained by God.
In Genesis, God mandates Adam to be keeper of creation: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”[4] The author later writes, “Now out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.”[5] Cookie’s gentle treatment of the animals he encounters suggests that he bears this task as well. First Cow is further Edenic in that the cow is the first cow in the territory—the first creature of its kind in this place, and while there, it brings joy to the humans around it.
First Cow resembles Eden in relationships as well. The film centers on the friendship between Cookie and Lu, which seems innocent at first. Cicero wrote, “All I can do is to urge on you to regard friendship as the greatest thing in the world; for there is nothing which so fits in with our nature or is so exactly what we want in prosperity or adversity. But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle—friendship can only exist between good men.”[6] For the majority of the film, it’s not clear whether Cookie and Lu’s friendship is really between two good men. At the beginning of the movie, Lu says that his association with an accused thief has endangered his life. In his partnership with Cookie, Cookie pulls most of the weight in the work and risk of their ventures. Lu is a worldly traveler, with eyes on the economic profits that their theft can garner. In contrast, Cookie is far too tender for the frontier. Though Cookie has ambitions to open either a bakery or a hotel in San Francisco, he says that he only wishes to have a place for travelers to rest and does not mention any desires for financial wellbeing. According to Cicero, friendship is predicated on virtue, trust, mutual interests, and loyalty. Cookie and Lu are united by their mutual interest in survival and their desire for the cow’s milk, which offers them both opportunities. It’s not clear, however, whether either character is truly virtuous or trustworthy.
For one, very early in the film Cookie abandons his trapper companions during an argument and sets off on his own. In doing this, Cookie also abandons Lu, who he had been hiding. Later, a man asks Cookie to watch his baby before he starts a brawl with a man who was mocking him in a pub. Cookie leaves the baby, thinking it will be fine unsupervised. Cookie is quick to jump ship when danger rears its head. Lu, on the other hand, has no qualms about stealing from Chief Factor and burdening Cookie with the majority of the involved risk. It is questionable whether true friendship is possible between the men since both are primarily self-serving. Cicero defines friendship as “a complete accord on all subjects human and divine, joined with mutual goodwill and affection.” It is dubious whether their partnership is joined with mutual goodwill, if this goodwill is to be understood as mutual flourishing towards virtue.
Still, they reap some of the benefits of friendship. Cicero writes, “In the face of a true friend a man sees as it were a second self. So that where his friend is he is; if his friend be rich, he is not poor; though he be weak, his friend's strength is his; and in his friend's life he enjoys a second life after his own is finished.” In Ecclesiastes Solomon similarly notes,
“Again, I saw vanity under the sun: one person who has no other, either son or brother, yet there is no end to all his toil, and his eyes are never satisfied with riches, so that he never asks, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business. Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.[7]”
The men share the outcomes of their thieving and riches, and they have the same understanding of their actions even before they reach theses outcomes. But friendship cannot be identified by the sum of its fruits. Instead, friendship must produce virtue, and without this, the relationship is not between friends. With no virtues visible in this relationship, First Cow pedals along with a foreboding sense about the relationship.
Fortunately, there is space for redemption in relationships, including in Cookie and Lu’s. At the end of the film, after being caught in the act of stealing milk by Chief Factor’s men, Cookie and Lu run for fear of their lives. Cookie, injured, lies down to rest. Rather than abandon Cookie, Lu sits down with him, and the screen fades to black. At the very beginning of the film, in the present -day, a woman discovers two skeletons during her walk that were unearthed by her dog. They lie side by side. These are Cookie and Lu. While Lu could have easily left Cookie, he stayed—and it cost him his life. It is an image reminiscent of John 15:13: “Greater love has no man than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Cicero writes, “For everyone loves himself, not for any reward which such love may bring, but because he is dear to himself independently of anything else. But unless this feeling is transferred to another, what a real friend is will never be revealed; for he is, as it were, a second self.” Staying with Cookie yields no reward for Lu; in fact, it leads to the loss of his life. But he still chooses to remain by his ailing friend for comfort, despite the looming danger and the ease of escaping alone. As Solomon noted that it is vanity to serve only one’s own desire for riches, Lu gives up his desire for riches and safety to die alongside his friend. While sin has ensnared all relationships since Adam and Eve’s fall in Eden, our relationships are not beyond redemption, as First Cow demonstrates. Rather, better formulations of our friendships are possible through the exercise of virtue for each other. And this sort of friendship is “the greatest thing in the world.”
[1] First Cow. Directed by Kelly Reichardt, performances by John Magaro, Orion Lee, and Toby Jones, A24, 2019.
[2] As of July 25, Rotten Tomatoes has ranked the film as 23 on its list of 100 Best Movies of 2020.
[3] Genesis 2:8-9a, ESV.
[4] Genesis 2:15, ESV.
[5] Genesis 2:19-20, ESV.
[6] Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Laelius de Amicitia. Translated by Evelyn S. Shuckburgh, Project Gutenberg.
[7] Ecclesiastes 4:7-12, ESV.
