First Cow (2020)

directed by Kelly Reichardt

Justin Rizzi

“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.”

*

I was born into a world on fire. As my parents clutched their newborn son, there was an expiration date. Not just for me, not just for them, but for all of it. Whether they knew it at the time, I’d grow up knowing it. “Global warming” became “climate change,” and “climate change” became “the climate emergency,” but from the moment I understood anything, I understood that our world was going to end, and it was all our fault. Unless we did something about it.

Donald Trump was elected President of the United States weeks before my sixteenth birthday. To the “upper-middle class” well-meaning suburban liberals I was surrounded by, it felt as though the oft-prophesied end had come. “He could never win!” they promised. He did. “I’m moving to Europe if he wins!” they swore. They didn’t. Instead, the focus shifted. Every person I knew my parents’ age had the same feeling. “We fucked up, but your generation is what gives me hope.” Trump’s election was doomsday. Unless we did something about it.

Two years later, I walked to the mall with my friends. We were in Arlington, Virginia on our annual debate club trip to the Washington, D.C. area. I led the group out of the hotel and across the crosswalk, proudly wearing my nametag that read “PRESIDENT.” Small talk grew larger and larger, as it often did at these events. If the debate kids had one thing in common, it was that we wanted to share our thoughts on everything.

I still remember who asked me the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The words echoed in my head. Unless we do something about it. Unless you do something about it. I don’t think I had ever thought about this question that deeply, though it was the question I was asked most often at that age. Despite this, I had rehearsed my response over and over again, the answer I thought everyone wanted to hear. And like the great politician I already was, I gave the answer I had spent my whole life preparing: “Whatever I do I want to help people. An elected official of some kind.” I was going to do something about it.

I started college as a Political Science major in the fall of 2019, 2020 Democratic Primaries in full swing. My professor would love to remind us that Political Science is a science, and thus, show us charts. Here’s how polarized America has gotten. Here’s why we didn’t think Trump could ever win. Here’s why he did. Here’s what’s wrong with the world. Here’s why it’s so hard to do anything about it. But still, you should do something about it.

*

Kelly Reichardt’s protagonists are born into a world on fire. It’s often a beautiful world—a world full of nature, life, and beauty—but it’s always a world on fire. The beautiful waters and natural environments of Night Moves will be destroyed by a dam, and despite their efforts, Josh and Dena cannot do anything about it. The wide-open plains of Montana are just the setting for women to get mistreated, scorned, and ignored in Certain Women. Oregon Country is cruel to Cookie and King-Lu in First Cow. It’s easy to accuse Reichardt of being a cynic. But acknowledging a cruel world doesn’t make one a cynic, and it’s necessary to depict the pining, the yearning, the struggling to reveal the true humanity in the world.

In First Cow, Cookie and King-Lu are two outsiders in the early 19th century American West, both seeking a fortune, or at least, economic stability. They converse about the lack of opportunities and resources for people like them. Realizing they can steal milk from a wealthy trader, they start a modestly successful baking business. When their scheme is found out, the wealthy chase after them. While escaping, they collapse from exhaustion, lying beside each other, calling to mind the opening scene of the film: in the present-day, two skeletons lie next to each other in a shallow grave.

When Cookie and King-Lu find each other, they’ve both been abused, neglected, and cast aside by the system. Their plan, to break the law, is the only way to obtain the resources they need to have a chance to find their footing. When the people in power find out, they do what they can to stop the two from being able to work their way up. As far as we know, Cookie and King-Lu do not open the bake shop of their dreams. Not only can the two not end the injustices that capitalism has placed upon them, they cannot even defeat it for themselves. They will die poor.

A true nihilist would end the story here: two men try to beat the system, but the capitalists are too powerful. Reichardt doesn’t. She ends the film by showing her audience the one thing that Cookie and King-Lu have gained through their journey: each other. The wealthy traders are dead, and they don’t get to take their money with them. But in death, forever, our two heroes get to lie peacefully next to each other—companions until the end of time.

I think about how Reichardt starts the film with an epigraph from William Blake: “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” Money and power might be everything to society, but we don’t have to define ourselves by that. Our worlds, our stories, our lives are about people and places, not money. A human being’s home is the people who make the world worth living in.

*

I am indebted to so many people for the life I live. Friends, family members, teachers: so many people have saved my life. I would list thousands of lifesavers before I thought of a single elected official. Growing up, for me, has been realizing that none of us sign up for the planet we are put on. The only opportunity we have is to make it better for the other people stuck here with us, and maybe they’ll do the same.

I’m now 22 years old. I tutor high schoolers. I write about movies. I try so hard to love the people around me. I will never run for office, and I’m not going to be the one who saves the world. At least, not the way I thought I would when I was in high school. But I now know that I can save the worlds of those around me. We all die in the end. I will die in the arms of my best friend, knowing that I saved a tiny, tiny world. Theirs.

Justin Rizzi is a writer from New Jersey. A recent graduate with a B.A. in English and History, they work as a high school tutor during the day. You can read their newsletter at livinit.substack.com and find them on Twitter at @official_jrizz.