478. Gaav/The Cow (1968)

Running Time: 100 minutes
Directed By: Dariush Mehrjui
Written By: Dariush Mehrjui
Main Cast: Ezzatolah Entezami, Firouz Behjat-Mohamadi, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, Parviz Fannizadeh, Jamshid Mashayekhi

BEEF...MORE THAN JUST DINNER

There are currently four movies streaming on Netflix, that I've scheduled myself to watch during this 100 movies, that I'm really dreading. The reasons why I'm dreading them are probably nonsensical, but "The Cow" was one of the four. While it wasn't anything that knocked my socks off, it certainly wasn't worth the dread.

Hassan (Entezami) is the proud owner of the only cow in his small, Iranian village. He loves the cow very much, constantly obsessing over the cow - making sure she always has plenty of water, giving her baths in a nearby stream and being very proud to be her owner. When Hassan is away, in the city, for a few days, the cow dies. It is suspected that marauders from the nearby village of Bolour are to blame for the death of the cow, but nonetheless the villagers know that when Hassan returns he will be devastated. Instead of telling him that his cow has been killed, the villagers band together and decide to go with the story that the cow simply ran away. They figure this will cause less of a blow and at least give Hassan a little hope, for the time being. The villagers dump the dead cow down a well and go so far as to tie up the village idiot, in an abandoned tool shed, so that he won't spill the beans. When Hassan returns home they tell him that the cow ran away, but he refuses to believe it, citing that the cow wouldn't do that. Hassan begins to drift into madness as the heartbreak over the loss of his prized cow washes over him.

Like "Daisies", this is another movie that I'm having a hard time making up my mind about. It wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting to be and actually did a fine job of keeping me engaged throughout. While it was quite hard for me to imagine such a bond between man and cow, that would drive this story to it's extreme lengths, I soon realized that this was a different kind of story and one that, to my knowledge, has never really been delved into. It's a unique type of story, in that, it's something you couldn't tell without using man and animal. Reality and fiction seem to be playing tug of war in my head, with reality saying that the movie was absolute nonsense because what man loves a cow as much as Hassan and what man would go into madness over the loss of that cow. On the other hand, fiction is fighting back with the facts that Hassan was the only man in the village to own a cow and with the village being a poor one, that fact allowed him to carry a certain pride.

I really think that this is a film that everyone is going to look at differently. I think you'll be on either side of the fence. Either you'll be able to empathize with Hassan and feel his heartbreaking, or you'll just call it all poppycock and wonder how any man could love a cow as much as him. Me, I haven't really decided which side I'm on yet. I'm probably more prone to the side that empathizes with Hassan. I really felt for the guy, up until the point where he went totally crazy and started acting like a cow, having to be pulled on a rope, to the hospital to get checked out. For me, that was just going a little too far and if they'd have kept everything on a more realistic rope, I could've bought into it a little more. Also a sweeter, softer score could have helped to maybe even coax a few tears out of me and maybe even a little empathy from the other characters toward Hassan. The other characters just seemed to be too cold toward Hassan and not really that understanding of his situation, thinking that he could merely snap out of it and be their "old Hassan" again.

On a final note, there was a particular scene that I want to make note of. When Hassan is first informed that his cow ran away. He doesn't quite understand what Eslam (the one who's telling him) is saying at first. He gets the news as he's taking water to the cow and when he realizes that Eslam is saying, he drops the pail and we watch as the water pours out over the dry Earth. For some reason as I watches the patch of water grow and witness the silent emotion that was playing out on the screen, it all hit me as a very powerful scene. I liked certain aspects of the film, a lot, but on the other hand, it didn't work on some levels either.

RATING: 6/10 Not great, not bad and one that I'll need to do some thinking about.

MOVIES WATCHED: 344
MOVIES LEFT TO WATCH: 657

November 4, 2011 1:26am