Cow

Do you eat dairy? This film is for you.

I will never be the same after this film. I was already a fan of Arnold, but this film wrecked me. There is no gratuitous violence, just the truth. The empathy you feel for these intelligent beings in inescapable. This is a brave film. Watch it if you're brave.

Because you know how it's gonna end. At least environment is better than U. S. factor farms. But I only go for grass-fed free range milk and meat, if I eat meat at all. I do not care what kind of "mind" a cow has, this is no way to treat these beautiful animals. Here must be a better way. Humans must be kind to all creation.

Upon watching this documentary I didin't really know what to expect. I saw a glowing score on Rotten Tomatoes and love a good documentary so I rented this film to see what it was about. All I can say is that its unlike any film I've ever seen and is something that will stick with me, forever.

I won't ever view cows in the same way, and I think that is a good thing. The film has almost zero dialogue, and really puts you into the life of a cow and everything they are put through, just to provide us meat and milk. Their lives are seen as pure commoditity, only useful until they can no longer give birth anymore.

The film is simple, elegant, and powerful. Its not an easy watch and is at times very painful to endure, but its very worth it. The films ending was so abrubt that I sat in silence for many minutes after pondering what I had just watched, and how I take for granted the many things that consume in my life because an animal endures torture for me.

If you watch "Cow", know that it won't be an easy film to sit through. It can be repetitive, but that is by design, becuase that's what a cows life is. An endless loop of miserable repitition all on the name of giving us the products that we consume every day. I for one am so glad I watched this film because tis forever given me a thankfullness for an animal that is far too often ignored when it should be put upon a pedestal for all they provide to us.

One of the most illuminating documentaries in film history is called Titicut Follies (1967), one of the first and only times a director got under the skin of an institution, which Andrea Arnold manages again with Cow. Follies uncovers the horrendous maltreatment of people at an asylum in Massachusetts. It's remarkable because of the co-operation given to the filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The medical staff at Titicut simply do not have the self awareness or empathy to know that they do wrong and give him the run of the place. In the most jawdropping moment a doctor smoking a cigarette over an anaesthetised patient, lets his fag ash fall into the man's open mouth, and no-one bats an eyelid. Exposés since that time have been rather subdued as most wrongdoers are informed enough to be a completely different person when they know a camera is nearby.

The farmers here simply feel that everything they do is justified (or maybe they crave judgement?), and so they have given Andrea Arnold and her crew the run of the place. Like Wiseman before her Arnold simply points her camera at stuff going on, there are no interviews, no explanatory notes, the camera eye does all the talking. They spend four years focussing mainly on one cow, Luma, her day-to-day experience, and those of her calf. When the calf is announced female I didn't know whether to be relieved or appalled, males are often shot straight away as rearing them to sell on as veal is not economical, whilst the female become part of the dairy herd; which is better, murder or slavery?

Cow is the nightmare of Fritz Lang's Metropolis come true, where persons literally become part of machines. On the farm placid and majestic creatures are cruelly exploited, and then when the economics of keeping them enslaved stops making sense, abruptly murdered. There are indeed Wisemanian moments here, where a farmhand comments that Luma is bad for being protective. "Bad" here meaning that she doesn't do exactly what her enslavers want when they want it ("Fair is foul and foul is fair"); the second farmhand knows a faux pas has been made on camera. The farmers are of that chilling breed of individuals who know what they do is wrong but do it anyway, because there are no repercussions. We can at least say of them that they are not sadists, no-one deliberately harms an animal here for entertainment (although things like this have been videoed on other farms).

Numerous unpleasant scenes include debudding without anaesthetic (to make the slaves more manageable the tissue that grows horns is burned away), Luma refusing to eat after her latest child is abducted and industrial milking apparatus dangling in slurry.

Arnold's treatment feels occasionally tone deaf, Luma is corralled into a pen with a bull to get made pregnant yet again (cows are essentially kept permanently pregnant and have no agency whatsoever), and Arnold feels it's appropriate to edit this in with a firework display, as if something remotely romantic is happening when breeding of slaves occurs. In interviews Arnold has talked about the service that the cows have given us, the problem is that cows have their free will removed, they are not giving us service, everything they give is being taken. I gave the film a 6 because for all its revelations I do still feel that Arnold doesn't fully get it.

It is sobering to remind oneself that of all the lurid horrors of Cow, this is likely the best a farm gets, and the best simply isn't good enough. We can stop the suffering, end deforestation and end climate change if we stop enslaving animals, but we enjoy the taste of these easily substituted products too much. The childishly absurd "bacon tho" and "cheese tho" arguments win out. Humanity had better hope that no wrathful judge exists.

An honest look at how cow farming works in the first world. No commentary, no agenda, as little interference as possible. Each viewer can watch with his own eyes and make up his own opinion about the topic. This documentary portrays a civilized farm, so take in consideration that in most of the farms around the world life for cows is much worse. Also consider that the farm owners/workers might have slightly changed their behavior knowing they were filmed. Having said that, it looked to me quite honest and genuine. I liked the absence of sentimentalism and the close portrait of farm cows. I'm a consumer of milk and cheese, but at the same time I love animals and cows. Is there something we can do that reconciles the two?