Cow

source: 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.

The documentary "Cow" of Andrea Arnold shows every day's endeavors of a cow on a dairy farm. It brings us closer to the dark truth behind human exploitation of other species, where our desire of drinking milk makes millions of creatures suffer and live in fear. This straightforward approach of showing us one specific cow and her way from giving a birth to death, allows us to empathize and understand what is hidden and invisible to a consumer of a milk product. It reminds us that we have no right to use other forms of life just to increase our own comfort. It manages to immerse us into a mind of a cow, living in fear and with no understanding of her own fate. A method of no narration or dialogue is successful in providing us with tools that help us to distinguish emotions from cold thoughts. The documentary has a simple form, yet still, it manages to be rich in its effectiveness. It succeeds in being immersive, thought-provoking, moving and leaves us with questions that we need to answer ourselves. I believe that the film's memo and the statement that it makes are on the same pathway of delivering similar messages related to discovering the incomprehensible human sense of superiority over everything else. While the eponymous cow's way of thinking is less complex and abstract than the potential of the human brain, assuming it is therefore inferior due to that is a result of a rather shallow thinking. The document shows us that cows' greatest dreams and desires are not all that different from human ones. As equal to us, cows just want to be happy. Their way of being happy is to be close to others, surrounded by their family, and by grazing grass in beautiful clearings amidst nature and good weather. What prevents them from being happy in this way is a human system based on taking advantage of others and getting rid of them when they are no longer useful. As long as the destructive and harmful system continues, the suffering of the livestock will continue. However, not only theirs, because the system in which we operate ultimately hurts us, humans, as well.

I have seen literally 10s of thousands of movies. But this is the most gruesome and useless one I have yet seen. I had to fast forward through most of it because it was 2 grotesque to watch. There was no narrative, which made watching this movie impossibly boring. Thank God for fast forward to help me through. I didn't miss anything by fast forwarding, but then there was NOTHING to see! Just a bunch of ugly cows on a very muddy farm. The farm was portrayed as a muddy mess. Why didn't they film a nicer farm or during a drier period? (There are two farms close to where I live in metro Boston where the cows are in heaven compared to the ugly underbelly of the farming world that is the subject of this depressing film. There is comparatively little or no mud at those two nearby farms) Why was this movie made? To turn people into vegetarians? Only an idiot would mistake this movie as representative of ALL cow farms. And why would anyone watch it? It's mind numbingly boring. And why would ANYONE rave about this thing. There is no story and nothing interesting happens (except one cow is euthanized). My advice: don't waste your time.

You should definitely see this, it's a beautiful cinematographic work that takes a closer look at about something that many people prefer to ignore, a reality that we can live through this film, as if we were part of it, sometimes it can be hard to watch but it is necessary to have a real perspective that helps to rethink our interaction with our environment.

The documentary Cow is an eye opener, long takes, raw footage, very few words over the hour thirty, and the inevitable ending, leaves a bitter taste in your mouth and it's not the tannins.

This is just absolutely pitiful the life of a cow and when they shot the cow in the end I just lost it. No more milk or hamburger for me. I think someone needs to see how these cows are treated.

STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful Documentary filmmaker Andrea Arnold follows Luma, a cow around a dairy farm, through her daily cycle of grazing, milking, and cultivation, through to giving birth to her calf, with whom she becomes separated. The monotonous routine of her life is captured in grim detail, before she meets her inevitably grim end. Dairy farming is a matter that has been raised a lot recently with regards the whole climate change movement, and this very intimate, personal film shines a light on the plight of a typical, average cow reared in such an environment, who inevitably meets with a grim conclusion. Arnold has admittedly tried to aim for a very personal, close up film, which shines through in scenes at the beginning, with Luma staring directly into the camera with an almost pleading glare, but the complete lack of context ends up leaving the viewer alienated. To anyone not familiar with the agricultural process, some sort of overhead offering some kind of explanation as to what is taking place, or some statistics around dairy farming, would have put us in the picture and made it more involving. With the lack of verbal input, Arnold uses an emotive soundtrack at various points to illicit our feelings. It all builds up to a grim, unoptimistic ending, not quite as gory as you may has envisaged, but still pretty stark and brutal, in the end pulled off with all the subtlety of a mafia hit. If only there'd been a little more context and clarity to it all, and his brutally tragic story could have had the true impact Arnold was aiming for. ***

I watched this after frying up some very expensive Wagyu steak. I am still licking it off my teeth. My 10yo son loved tonight's meal too. After seeing this story afterwards I feel ashamed and I am not sure what kind of person I am. Welcome to Veganism. I worked in abattoirs when I was younger. When the animals came into the pen for me to bolt kill them, I could see their distress; they all knew. When I grabbed an animal from a pen to 'process it' I knew that they knew. I have a freezer full of prime cut and now I think I will just bury it. I watched Babe and I still enjoyed bacon but after this I cannot anymore. The people in this film are gentle, humane, and kind, but this simple no dialogue film has altered me. Watch at your peril.

Stunning documentary, excellent storytelling of the cow called Luma that builds upon the unforgiving apocalypse. Top notch cinematography for its genre and i would absolutely recommend this to all audiences. Cow had me crying with joy to me in emotional tears. Cow. I love Cow. The image, the poster the film, cow. Nothing has ever made me more happy than a single image of a cow in a back background. The movie itself is more better than Spiderman- No way home, the story is more impeccable than any high-budget film could ever aquire. Cow is amazing and nothing less.