The human voice, a necessity in virtually any film, is barely existent and wholly secondary in “COW.” We hear only random bits of conversation, muffled and unimportant, from people we don’t know and don’t need to.
The only character that counts in Andrea Arnold’s deeply moving documentary about the life cycle of one dairy cow is Luma, the cow. Thanks to her expressive sounds and soulful eyes — which we both see, and see through — we sense what it must feel like to be her, a creature whose only purpose is to provide milk, mate and procreate. In Arnold’s careful, unhurried hands, it is a sobering lesson, though one without a clear agenda. Arnold simply seems interested in telling us Luma’s story. And that is enough.
