The First Cow: Slow Bow Long Bard

Author: Wang Wenjue

Friends who learn strings like to practice the slow bow diligently. Slow bows are sometimes more difficult than fast bows, and a long breath should be sent steadily and slowly. For example, erhu, a long bow from left to right, can be 8 seconds, can also be 16 seconds, the artist's hand of the slow bow, and slow and full, gossamer continuous, long rhyme.

The Golden Bear-nominated "First Cow" at the Berlin Film Festival was recently released. As a film depicting the history of the American West, it is contrary to tradition in the hands of female director Kelly Lecat, calm and delicate, plain and sad, like a good bow pulling out a slow and full long moan.

In the U.S. state of Oregon in 1820, the resources of nature were opened overnight, and people carrying desire flocked to it. The Chinese Jinlu and the changed cook "Biscuit" are defectors in their respective gold panning teams—less sociable, less verbal, and untimely and a little tender-hearted.

They are people who are constantly bullied by others, and they always want to make life look better within the scope of their own ability. When you only have a decent outfit, a pair of shoes that don't leak, everywhere is full of cherishing, even satisfaction. They talk about their dreams — "Cookies" want to earn the first bucket of gold, go to the city to open a bustling bakery, baking bread and selling bread is simply satisfying; Jinlu wants to open a hotel for people to rest their feet, and listen to the stories of the south and the north of the mountains.

"Cookies" and Golden Road are the most inconspicuous kind of people in the pioneer army. The heart is not fierce enough, and the marksmanship is not good, but in the confusion, I heard that "you can get rich here", so I came slowly. They were not the powerful warriors of the Western Expedition, and it was precisely because of this that this life, which was wrapped in poverty and powerlessness, reflected the most possible and most ordinary life.

How do powerless people break through the rivers and lakes, and how do they get a piece of the pie in the western part? The opportunity came — the Town's British commander brought a cow from Europe so that he could drink authentic "milk coffee". "Cookies" sneak around the night to milk cows and fry them into their dough for dessert. The clever Golden Road realized that this was a great opportunity to make money, everywhere cold and wet, everywhere muddy, hot and sweet snacks seemed magical in the cold world, and the arrogant British commander could not help but buy one after another: "I have eaten the taste of London"! The cunning little people get a little stretch in the cracks, they hide their daily "cash flow" in the tree hole, and the dream of opening a store is getting closer and closer.

The life of the makeshift partner is very slow. The camera permeates the most mundane details of the West, when the air wafts with the smell of the forest and the silence engulfed by a huge deep green. At that time, people's ears were also particularly useful, and in the distance, the butt of the gun hit the shoulder, and you heard it. There are pristine codes everywhere, time is slow, and people are very smart. Walking in the mountains, when a partridge whispers in its throat, the breadth and depth of the whole mountain seem to be there; for the story of a west world, when two vulnerable human beings live hunched over, the vastness, warmth, and coldness of the whole west suddenly appear.

The little days of the little people are fragile. The commander invites "Biscuit" to his mansion to show his hand, and the "stealing of milk" is exposed, and the two people are chased by bullets all the way. That little bit of milk doesn't really stand in the way of commanding anything, but this is the very different worldview and logic of the period of capital expansion—the last person to leave a name in the history of pioneering will be this kind of person. After the two ran away, Jinlu returned to the tree hole to take the hard-earned money with him and searched for "biscuits" without abandoning. When they met again, the two people were injured and tired, and fell asleep under each other's pillows under the tree...

The film begins with a modern Oregon city, cold river water, and winter forest. A woman ran with her dog in the morning and glimpsed white bones looming under the trees. The camera pulls away, and the two white bones resting on each other are impressively under the blue-crystal sky, as if they are asleep, as if they are tired. When many people watch the story, they are immersed in the details of old life, like a distant and solid dream, completely forgetting the beginning of the foreshadowing. Only then did he realize that "Cookie" and Jinlu had maintained the posture of taking a nap at that time, and they had died like that. Was he hunted down or killed by passers-by? It's all possible, and it doesn't matter. People who have a vision of "little days" in the story understand the disillusionment that suddenly shattered before the arrival of the pastoral pastoral. Ordinary people have not escaped the cruel fate of the west.

Many stories are grand or intense, and they are supported by a very full structure. In this film, "slow" lengthens time, but "fine" fills this part of time in a sense. We see not only history, but also life in history, the actors are not able to exert their strength, the audience can not fast forward, people completely feel the wet cold of the mud, the long night, the lonely, the fantasy of life, racking their brains to resist poverty. How to steal milk and how to make desserts is both gentle and fearful, just like the simplicity that people shared in the early days. An ordinary life, with an ordinary texture, but also to promote the input of ordinary people, it is not a conceptual romanticization of the west, but a very solid, similar to the subtlety of chai rice oil and salt, careful and naïve fantasy. Finally, a sudden disillusionment is the natural sadness of life and the roughness of the early primitive capital era. (Wang Wenjue)