Love for a Cow but Not for People

            Many things disturbed me while watching Dariush Mehrjui’s film adaptation of The Cow but as Hamid Dabash pointed out in his article, the film is a work with an uncanny nature.   Even the opening credits inform the audience that what they are about to see will not be a typical film.  Shapes appear that resemble a man and a cow, but these shapes are fluid.  They are not strict outlines of a man or animal; they are like watching a mirage in the distance and never quite come into focus.  This choice for the opening credits made much more sense to me once I realized the character Hassan had such a close relationship with his cow and when he eventually goes mad and mentally transforms into his prized animal.  I was very stuck by the bond between man and beast as well as the actions of the villagers.  The uncompassionate attitude of the village is displayed in the opening scene when a mentally challenged man is being tortured by the children and Saffar’s son, a young man who has come back from the city.  This scene is later replicated when Hassan loses his grasp on reality but the lack of empathy and compassion amongst the humans only contributed to illustrating how significant Hassan’s relationship is with his cow. Another aspect that made me feel uncomfortable was the lack of any sort of relationship between Hassan and his wife.  His wife clearly knows that her husband values a cow much more than he values her; this fact definitely made an impact on me.  Unlike Dabash I didn’t find solace in this intense bond between Hassan and the cow, because of the flagrant disregard that was shown towards human begins throughout the film.  Perhaps that was the point.  Perhaps Mehrjui meant to force the audience to confront the lack of human consideration by showing how much a man can love an animal and if anything that human beings tend to treat each other like beasts.