34 | New Scientist | 2 April 2022
Views Culture
Film
Cow
Andrea Arnold
MUBI and Apple TV+MOST documentaries chronicle
exceptional lives that anyone
would be curious about, or highly
ordinary ones that warrant a
second look. Andrea Arnold’s
new film does both, providing
an immersive look into the
world of a dairy cow.
Arnold is the celebrated director
of projects as diverse as Red Road
and Fish Tank, which explore
working-class Britain; the Shia
LaBeouf epic American Honey;
a 2011 adaptation of Wuthering
Heights; and episodes of
Transparent and Big Little Lies.
In Cow, her fifth feature and first
documentary, Arnold turns her
trademark unflinching gaze on
a subject that is both familiar
and entirely other: a cow named
Luna on a cattle farm in the
English countryside.Six years in the making,
the BAFTA-nominated Cow
follows Luna in her day-to-day
life, from grazing and mating
to birthing and milking. It is
about as immersive and visceral
a depiction of a non-human
being as one can imagine, with
Arnold filming from Luna’s
perspective as much as possible
and using zero narration.
For many viewers, the first
surprise may be the immediate,
easy charisma of her subject:
in an early scene, Luna holds
the camera’s gaze, mooing
insistently, in such a way that it
leaves the audience in no doubt
about her curiosity and appraising
intelligence. Likewise, shots of
her caring for her just-born calf
and taking obvious pleasure from
an open field suggest a multifaceted
mind, which is portrayed clearly
and without sentimentality.
For an essentially quiet film,
sound is used to great effect in
Cow. Mournful pop songs by Billie
Eilish and others are piped into the
milking shed, adding pathos to theclear that Luna is well cared for,
even loved. But the life of a dairy
cow is, by definition, one that is
punctured with sudden violence.
Though Cow may not depict the
industrial-scale horrors of animal
production, Arnold doesn’t
shy away from depicting the
indignities and intrusions that
feature in a dairy cow’s world.
An early scene of calves being
dehorned with a cauterising
iron reportedly had critics at
the Sundance film festival
covering their eyes.
The end, when it comes,
manages to be at once inevitable
and shocking – the harshest
possible awakening from the
dreamlike state viewers have been
lulled into. It encapsulates the
film’s understated political point:
that, from beginning to end, this
is a life led entirely on humanity’s
terms, for the production of
milk and meat. Luna may not
suffer more than is essential to the
existence of a dairy cow, but is that
a price we are willing to accept?
In honouring the sacrifice
of one farm animal, Arnold
quietly but insistently invokes
the spectre of far more – many of
which aren’t treated with the same
dignity as Luna, even if we choose
to remain ignorant of the details.
Empathetic and often
unexpectedly moving, Cow
may not instantly turn you vegan,
as more aggressive accounts of
animal production might – but
you will never see its subject in the
same way again. Equally, having
gently led us to assume the bovine
gaze, what may be most unsettling
is how we see ourselves. ❚Elle Hunt is a freelance writer
based in Norfolk, UKscenes of Luna’s everyday life,
while snatches of chatter from her
largely faceless farmers lend them
structure. The emotion we come to
feel for Luna, our investment in her
well-being, is organic and earned.
The only point where Arnold
relaxes her commitment to
realism is a late-night mating
sequence, set to R&B pop
music and with spliced-infireworks, a moment that
concludes with some post-coital
cuddling. The surreal comedy
of the scene excuses any charge
of anthropomorphism, as does
the sequence where Luna is being
milked on Christmas morning by
a farmer wearing a Santa hat, set to
the sound of Fairytale of New York.
This is no hard-bitten
slaughterhouse exposé: it isMUBIDown on the farm
A dairy cow’s-eye view on the world raises uncomfortable
questions about the way we treat animals, finds Elle HuntThrough Luna the dairy
cow, we see the reality of
life lived on human terms“ Luna may not suffer
more than is essential
for a dairy cow, but is
that a price we are
willing to accept?”