Capitalism is a character in Kelly Richardt’s First Cow

I’m re-visiting First Cow as a fable about capitalism, from the perspective of a left-wing millennial who once tried to read Das Kapital. This perspective isn't too farfetched since direct Kelly Richardt recently said in the A24 podcast that she is interested in the beginning of capitalism in the US. Incidentally, the word capitalism and the word cattle, both come from the same old Latin word “catum”. Pretty neat, right?

Capitalism 101

First Cow takes us back into a world that had only just started turning into what it is today. Kelly Reichardt tells a story about the inception of capitalism in America; back when there was no railroad, no settlers in covered wagons. Only wilderness and loose groups of fur hunters who lived in huts built from sticks.

Back then, everyone lived off the land. The economic system was based on harvesting nature’s goods and trading them for a profit. The pioneers went into the vast forests of pre-industrialised North-America to hunt beavers and sell their fur to rich Europeans. This is not a system based on capitalistic principles because every man hunted on his own, nobody owned a beaver farm to mass-produce fur. Just forest, beavers, and men without any means of production. The economic system called capitalism still had to develop.

Lactose Revolution

Into the fur trading economy steps a wealthy man, titled Chief Factor. For his house in the muddy settlement, he imports a cow from Europe. The first cow to make it into the American wilderness. The First Cow.

Suddenly, milk is an available resource in the settlement full of muddy beaver hunters. That changes everything. By introducing a cow, as a “means of production”, into a world without milk, we observe the inception of capitalism and the plot thickens.

Pasteurize the means of production

The film’s main characters, Cookie and his companion Lu, immediately recognize the opportunity. Driven by Cookies' love for baking and Lu’s entrepreneurial spirit, they start secretly milking the cow at night and sell oily cakes with a “secret ingredient” during the day.

This changes the game. A luxury commodity enters the market. For the comfort-deprived settlers who live in huts and tents, the sweet oily cakes are a first glimpse of how sweet life in America could be. It is a nostalgic treat for those who left civilization (and its many amenities) to tame the harsh wilderness of North America.

As the oil cakes become the most luxurious product in the village, supply and demand start doing their work. We observe how very high demand for utopian and nostalgic cakes drives prices up. The fur traders form long lines and fight for the sweet treat on a first-come, first-served basis. Their desires fill Cookie’s and Lu’s pockets. As demand surges, the supply of milk starts dwindling because our heroes are literally milking the cow for all she can give.

By milking more and more, they’re exploiting their resource and enter a vicious cycle that eventually reins in their destruction. Even when they hear from the Chief Factor how concerned he is about the cow's meager production and their supply is endangered, their greed gets the best of them.

Until now, Kelly Reichardt has shown how a mass-produced commodity overthrows a harvest-based system, introduces the forces of supply and demand, and contributes to the exploitation of resources. This change is staggering because the settlers’ craze for luxury is contrasted with the natural abundance of the untouched North-American rainforest. Even though human life has sustained itself by living in harmony with nature for centuries, the forces of commodity fetishism reign supreme. Everything nature provides succumbs to the power of dairy-based baked goods.

The milk goes sour: greed and ignorance

So what influenced the vicious cycle of greed and exploitation that leads to our heroes’ downfall? An explanation can be drawn from the personalities of the main characters and what they symbolize.

The beginning of the end comes after our heroes had an argument about the merit of accepting higher and higher risks for financial gain. Cookie, the idealist, wanted to be content with the wealth they had assembled and respect the cow’s health. Lu, the entrepreneurial dreamer, wanted to push their luck to fund his bigger dream of opening a hotel and entering a better standard of living. An ideological dilemma between being satisfied with what one has at the expense of greater comfort or pursuing something better without sustaining resources.

The ambitious dreamer Lu is more dominant and wins the argument. They embark on one last milk run in the dark of night. As Cookie milks the cow while talking to her in a caring tone, the branch Lu is sitting on to stand guard, breaks off. The noise wakes up the Chief Factor’s men and the thieves have to escape from flying bullets. Yet, they manage to recover their savings and leave town, even though Cookie is injured. It seems like they were pushing their luck by exploiting someone else’s resource and fate finally caught up on them.

At this point, the film makes a classic statement about capitalism: those who own the means of production will always come out on top, and greed will diminish resources without a care for consequences or want for sustainable methods.

A dairy alternative

Yet, there is a different moral to be found. First Cow ends as both men lie down to rest from running, oblivious that a young stranger with a gun is stalking them. We never learn what unfolds, only that Cookie and Lu’s skeletons are found in the same position, lying side by side, decades later.

So, who was this man, and what does he symbolize? He is the element of class who symbolizes those even less fortunate and privileged than our hero’s. The young man is the class below the lowest class. We actually met him earlier on the market, as he was waiting at the end of a long queue to buy an oily cake. A young man whose weak stature and quiet nature put him at the end of the pecking order. When it’s finally his turn and he can buy the last oily cake of the day, finally cherish the fruits of his hard labor, another man jumps the queue, pushes him aside, and takes the prize.

This is the moment when the milk really turns sour: Cookie and Lu don’t police the bully for jumping the queue. They don’t enforce fairness and equality. They don’t extend a hand out to the young man who is even less privileged than them. Their lack of solidarity is mirrored by the young man as he stalks them at the end of the film. Whether he acts out of revenge for the unfairness, jealousy for their success, or greed for their savings is never answered.

When Cookie and Lu turned a blind eye to the peril of the weakest link, they lost the solidarity of the class that was below them. Instead, they should have reinforced equal opportunity and equal access to their commodity. They should show empathy for those below them, especially after they only just stepped up on the ladder themselves.

The true takeaway from First Cow is not that capitalism is bad. It is more nuanced than that. First Cow shows that compassion for the less fortunate is paramount in an economic system built on class struggle and inequality. Class struggle doesn’t only mean the struggle between the laborer and the capitalist. The same struggle rages between the successful laborer and those below him. The fable on capitalism that is First Cow, shows that compassion and empathy still are the most important values without which even the skilled and successful can’t win the race.