The Cow (Gaav)
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: B
When you hear about a film simply called The Cow,
you have to laugh. Is it a kid’s film,
an animal documentary or even a pretentious art film? In this case, it is the groundbreaking 1969 Iranian film from
world-class filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui.
It was a landmark that was censored by the Shaw of Iran and helped make
cinema possible in one of the most oppressive of all countries.
The film involves a little village where one man values
his cow more than the people around him in what he sees as a cold world. When he leaves the cow alone among the
villagers, it dies. Was this form lack
of love, companionship, or the disdain and coldness of the people? No matter what, the townspeople bury it and
then tell the returning owner that it ran away. That makes no sense to him, but he does not expect at first the
truth. When it becomes obvious, he
cannot handle those around him and the manifestation of justifiable distrust
drives him to believe he is that cow!
Mehrjui did this in the Italian-Neorealist style, which
pumps up the coldness and cruelty, further emphasized by the fact that it is
shot in black and white by Fireidoon Ghovanloo. The 1.66 X 1 letterboxed image has more of a bar at the bottom
than the top and is an older print with the kind of burned-in subtitles that
get lost in the background. The print
has its share of artifacts and scratches.
The Video Black is not 100% and the print is a bit aged on top of
that. I still liked the look of the
film. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Farsi Mono
is not bad for its age, sounding about as good as it can for such a low-budget
production. Extras include an interview
with Mehrjui, his biography as text, a small stills section, text notes by
Godfrey Cheshire, and trailers to other First Run titles.
Iran has had a rough history, especially of late, going
from the dictatorship of he Shaw, to the insanity of the Ayatollah Khomeini, to
the ugliness of the Iran-Contra Affair, and the perpetual presence of terrorism
and a hijacked version of Islam that can do nothing but destroy the world as we
know it. Fortunately, there is a better
Iran buried deep in this madness and The Cow is an existential beacon of
light through that darkness than shows this.
Add that to its artistic achievements and it is no wonder it is
consistently voted the most important Iranian film ever made. It is a film that could have cost its
director his life (among others) and when it comes to World Cinema, it holds as
timeless as Citizen Kane and Children Of Paradise. See it!
- Nicholas Sheffo
