The Cow was an excellent film, I walked away with a lot of
different ideas taking from it that I found to be incredibly interesting. To
begin an idea i noticed was how by the end of the film Hassan begins to go
insane and becomes more cow like, until the point that he is tied up and take
out of the city. I found this interesting simply because at the beginning of
the film its shows the town ganging up on one poor man, which made me wonder,
did the same thing that happened to Hassan happen to him? For example, he lost
one of his animals and the pain of loosing it drove him here.
On top of
this when the cow goes missing the ENTIRE village bands together to make up
this lie. Now what was odd to me was how easily able these villagers were to
rally. This is later shown that their ability to be a community and rally can
back fire with them pushing Hassan out. The director is able to show us how
united this town is just by the actions they take to take care of Hassan in the
beginning then later them getting rid of him.
Hassan's
love for his cow was shown in the beginning of the film great when he is
bathing the cow. Even later it is shown when he is sleeping in the cowshed with
her and eating wheat with her. You cannot deny that Hassan loves the cow. The
thing is people believe that he goes insane after the cow dies, however I feel
that he was always insane. Even when the cow was there he was talking to
himself and the cow and doing very strange things. Perhaps the cow was
anchoring him to be human, but with its death he felt no need to pretend
anymore and just became "The Cow".
All in all
this film was very good. It was able to show a man who had everything (Because
he had the only cow) to him having nothing. And with this it was able to have
us as viewer walk away and interpret many different things behind it.
I agree with your comment about the unity within the village because I noticed the same thing. I like that you also were able to relate unity to how the village rallied in the end to push Hassan out. Although the village was treating him poorly by tying him up and dragging him out of the town, nearly everyone in the village stood outside or watched from their windows, creating the sense of unity against the actions of Hassan in the end.
ReplyDeleteI too noticed the sense of community within the village. I can see where you are going in thinking that perhaps Hassan was always insane, which to me I would have thought that perhaps because of this, maybe the villagers should have simply been honest with him about his cow and tried to help him. I think that if Hassan had always been insane, the unity of the village should have been cause to make him feel he had value with or without the cow. Perhaps if he had felt that he had more worth to his life than his cow, he would not have fallen so delusional.
ReplyDeletewhen you talk about the end of the movie and Hassan becoming gradually more like the cow it reminds me of the supplementing article we read which points out how this could reflect the theme of reincarnation in the movie. You also talk about the village as a whole, almost as if the village took on a life of its own to make Hassan feel like an outsider. This reminds me of the town mob that forms in To Kill a Mockingbird which points out that people think differently when they are in groups to the point where individuality is lost to a certain extent.
ReplyDeleteI thought you brought up an interesting point about him always being insane. I liked the idea of the cow being an anchor to Hassan's humanity.
ReplyDeleteI thought you brought up an interesting point about him always being insane. I liked the idea of the cow being an anchor to Hassan's humanity.
ReplyDelete