Cow is a documentary film by Andrea Arnold, revolving around the life of a cow, first shown at the Cannes film festival in July 2021.
The film can be viewed on the Mubi film streaming service : “A portrait of the life of a dairy cow called Luma, this observational documentary unflinchingly chronicles its subject’s daily life, from grazing in green fields to giving birth, making milk and everything in between”. [1]
Situated on a farm in Kent, and filmed over four years, there are lighter moments as the cows are seen eagerly streaming out of the yard to wide open grass fields. There are pictures of Luma resting under a star-lit sky, and of the companionship between members of the herd.
“But Cow also serves as a damning critique of the dairy industry more broadly. Although conditions will differ from farm to farm, the film records routine, and near-universal practices: mother-calf separation, harmful selective-breeding and bodily mutilations like branding, ear-notching and dehorning, not to mention killing spent cows” [2]
After giving birth in the film’s opening scene, Luma and her calf are immediately separated [3]
The overwhelming impression is of the relentless milking, taking all that the cows can provide. The myth of an idyllic farmyard replaced by the stark facts of sentient creatures imprisoned, controlled, and exploited by the unsleeping industrial machine.
The director Andrea Arnold later described her experience. The longer she spent with Luma the more she was able to read her moo music. As the animal got older, and was separated from more calves, she also seemed to become angrier, Arnold says. She is convinced Luma felt compassion for the other pregnant cows, aware of what they were about to lose [4]
“My films don’t give you an easy ride. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterward that they’ve really been through something.” [5]
The end, when it came was inevitable and sudden. Luma, worn down by years of exploitation was no longer profitable. When set alongside Luma’s youthful calf, joyfully gamboling around the sunlit fields of her youth it was sorrowful to see.
But then, we must have cheese on our tables, and milk in our tea.
“We call them dumb animals, but they are not. Rather, it is we who are deaf to their words; they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because we will not hear” – adapted from Anna Sewell, 1877
Of course, not all cows are condemned to live as Luma did.
Not far from my home are fields of grass-fed cows with their calves. Life for them is certainly better. But even this is problematic.
To begin with, they are outside and grass-fed. But with a natural desire to run freely suppressed by an electric fence it must be a depressing experience at times. After a while, confined to their small range, the grass, mixed with silage, has turned brown. Eventually, their lives will also be cut short against their will.
Second this is an inefficient way of using land. With the biodiversity crisis highlighted in recent IPCC reports we are driving an increasing number of species of wildlife to extinction as we roll out the monochrome green carpets.
Thirdly, this can still lead to effluent runoff, water pollution, antibiotic resistance, and other problems
Finally, this is still an inefficient way to provide calories and protein, and considering the whole lifecycle of grass-fed cattle, they will emit more green-house gases than are emitted by the production of the nutritionally-equivalent plant-based sources.
[1] https://mubi.com/films/cow-2021
[2] https://theconversation.com/cow-documentary-shows-the-need-for-fundamental-legal-rights-for-animals-175576
[3] https://filmmakermagazine.com/113976-interview-andrea-arnold-cow/#.Yk7-lZNKi-o
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/06/i-kept-saying-dont-worry-luma-we-see-you-andrea-arnold-on-her-four-years-filming-a-cow
[5] https://fullcirclecinema.com/2022/04/04/cow-2022-review/
