Synopsis
An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.
The Cow
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Alternative Titles
Gaav, Die Kuh, Lehmä, Η αγελάδα, 牛, Krowa, Крава, Kon, Корова, A Vaca, La Vache, İnek, 소, 奶牛, H αγελάδα
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Theatrical
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Iran
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Iran
01 Jan 1969
- Theatrical Tehran
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Six years after Farrokhzad's love letter to the beauty of humanity and the fortitude of the human spirit, Iranian filmmaker Dariush Mehrjui directed Gaav, which is claimed to be the beginning of the Iranian New Wave in feature films.
Classic Asian cinema, excluding the versatility of Japan, which has a long celluloid trajectory that dates back since the times of the silent era, put a lot of emphasis on either rural life, human relationships, or both, most of the times packaged with symbolic folklore representative of the country's culture filling the empty lines of what was left unspoken. South Korea, Turkey and Egypt are the most important examples, as their testaments remain being seen today. Iran was added to the…
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Metaphoric. For the film’s protagonist, Hassan, his cow represented in his life feelings of joy, happiness, acceptance, security, identity, ritual, self-worth and a sense of value within his community. The film responds to the question; what happens when these things are not simply lost, but unexpectedly taken from you overnight? Disillusion; a loss of self, of community, of purpose.
In 1969 Iran, entering the final decade of the Shah’s rule, rural villages and communities were being forgotten about, their well beings ignored, and they found themselves under the threat of accelerated modernization, amongst other forms of socio-political ostracism. Just as Hassan had all of the above feelings stripped away from him overnight with the unexpected loss of his cow; so…
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The Cow stands as a landmark film in the history of Iranian cinema and additionally managed to unsettle Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, the forty-second Prime Minister of Iran. Directed by Dariush Mehrjui, who ensures the sloping downward trajectory of the narrative creates an alarming atmosphere of contextual unpredictability which ostensibly deals with the complete dehumanisation of man. It formulates a tonal connotation of catastrophe and fatalism as the central protagonist Masht Hasan, portrayed wonderfully by Ezzatollah Entezami, departs into a realm of madness after the disappearance of his beloved animal.
Adapted by Gholam-Hossein Saedi from his play and nineteen sixty-nine novel, it's a film which is not so much informed by its dialogue but rather by the villager's panicked and dishonest activities,…
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“each man is alienated from others . . .
each of the others is likewise alienated
from human life.”humanity reduced to a delusion on the outskirts of oblivion, relieved of the attributes that define us by diluting our ethos, placing importance on a socioeconomic essentiality—our relationships with each other and ourselves decided by value and utility—rather than their central, emotional essences. no wonder one is wont to go off and graze alone in a system that forces one to feed and fend for themselves.
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Iranian Cinema - A List of Good Persian/Farsi Films boxd.it/5pAgU
This movie talks about Iranian politics near the end of the Shah dynasty. It was the first film in Iranian New waves to make a big difference for the filmmakers in Iran.
A masterpiece of Iranian cinema, paving the way for future directors like Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and Panahi. -
The Cow is a richly layered film. Mehrjui thinks of it as a philosophical exercise not unlike The Metamorphosis, but there is a specifically Iranian angle at play. The beauty of the movie is its ability to relay deep emotional feelings while at the same time making a statement on the Iranian peasantry.
The film thus gives from the start an image of the village really unpleasant and harsh. The contrast could not be starker with the shots depicting how the film’s lead character, shepherd Hassan, takes care of his cow, not only seeing to it it takes a bath and drinks enough but actually playing with the beast in the water, having as much fun as if he were…
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Oh. Based on the opening scenes, I figured this was a lovely romp about a lovely man and his lovely cow. Nope. It's a Cronenbergian trip down clinical lycanthropic lane. The Cow is brimming with delusion, invasion, obsession, isolation, and cruelty. It's grim but also uncomfortably funny in a very bleak way. Despite this being a beloved classic, I was genuinely shocked by its brilliant cinematography and sharply modern editing. I'm even more shocked to find the editors have no other credits to their names, because this is cut together with incredible precision. An obvious must-see of the Iranian New Wave.
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“I’m not Hassan, I’m Hassan’s cow”.
Often cited as the beginning of the Iranian 'New Wave', Dariush Mehrjui's 1969 film Gaav (The Cow) is a deceptively simple neorealism piece in the mould of The Bicycle Thief, but here we have an examination of small village life and community and a pregnant cow as the object of affection for a villager named Hassan (where the cow could easily stand in for social status, being the only one in the village).
It is shown early on how much love Hassan has for this animal and when he leaves town for a day, only to return to discover the cow has died (the townsfolk knowing his reaction, tries to hide the truth), he…
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A man takes the death of his cow very badly.
When I read this was the first step in the Iranian New Wave I pictured a leisurely trek through a regular day in the life of a man and his cow, but instead, I got a punchy and extremely taunt journey through an individual's mental degradation.
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Through the philosophical and metaphysical premise, the film is deeply allegorical and describes the fleetingness of all existence. The masterful acting, remarkable cinematography, and transcendent storyline at the heart of the film create an experience that is incredibly powerful and moving.
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Went in expecting a slice of social realism, instead got a darkly humourous and genuinely frightening descent into madness.
The performances in this are astonishing, legitimately some of the best acting I've ever seen. Ezzatolah Entezami - in what is apparently his debut screen role - brings warmth, unease, passion, anguish, insanity...he does a million different things and ends up working with a level of intensity you rarely see. Eat your heart out, Raging Bull. Raging Cow is here. Everyone else across the board is also putting in simply amazing work, naturalistic and completely convincing, selling you on a premise that should be ridiculous but ends up riveting.
I can't find much information about the restoration efforts that have gone…
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Masht Hassan is a farmer who has only a thing he loves in his life than his life itself: his cow. One day the neighbours take the pregnant cow away and the other she dies. First they try to hide it, but once they reveal the information, our good ole' farmer goes completely moo (see what I did there).
The film started very slow, and that would kill any hopes for most of the viewers. I couldn't stop thinking how this one looked almost like a bad version of Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar but by the third act it evolves into this crazy, almost small budget psychological horror film.
The acting is really good, again, when the whole film fully…