First Cow · reception & legacy

How First Cow has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Its March 2020 theatrical run was cut off almost immediately by COVID lockdowns, so most people met it at home — and it quietly snowballed from critics'-darling (New York Film Critics Circle's Best Film of 2020) into a consensus pick for the best American film of its year, now a fixture on best-of-the-decade-so-far lists.

What's debated

The perennial split: devotees call its patience the whole point, while detractors say 'nothing happens' — sharpened by the fact that critics' groups crowned it and the Oscars gave it zero nominations.

Its footprint

Evie the cow became a genuine internet celebrity, the oily cakes launched a thousand baking attempts, and the William Blake epigraph about the bird, the spider, and friendship is quoted in seemingly every other Letterboxd review — it's become shorthand for 'gentle cinema' about male tenderness.

Where it stands

An A24-era instant canon climber and Letterboxd sweetheart — the film cinephiles hand you when you say Reichardt is an acquired taste.

Named by the director

Influences Kelly Reichardt has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Peter Hutton — Reichardt dedicated the film to the late landscape filmmaker, her longtime Bard College colleague, and has spoken about his influence on its patient images of river and forest.