Animal instinct

Elsewhere in the world, away from the Indian context where cattle are zealously politicised, the relationship between man and cow has made for fascinating cinema.

Despite being universally acknowledged by critics as the mainspring of Iranian art cinema’s New Wave, Dariush Mehrjui’s Gaav (The Cow) is simply not known enough. I revisited this all-time favourite last Sunday, which also happened to be the birth anniversary of Ezzatolah Entezami, the Germany-trained lead actor who made his screen debut with the film at age 45. Critics will further agree few actors in the history of cinema have evoked as much sadness in viewers even as most of their lines consisted of mooing. 

Adapted from a short tale by Gholam-Hossein Saedi, the plot centres on Hassan whose beloved pregnant cow is the one source of milk for the impoverished village in which he lives. The milkman pays passionate and playful attention to his pet, doting more on her than on his wife. When he is away the cow dies in mysterious circumstances and the shock of her death pushes Hassan into boanthropy, where a person believes they are a cow.

In his limited outbursts in this disturbed state — while holed up in the shed, chewing mournfully on hay — one glimpses Hassan’s disappointment in himself for not having been there for her, and the anguish he imagines she experienced in the final moments. But the depiction of such an outlandish illness intends less to explain the protagonist’s internal turmoil than to hold a mirror to those around him.

A still from Dariush Mehrjui’s Gaav

 

Gaav inspires reflection on widely held, and poorly judged, ideas of what it is to be and appear and behave “human”. It is a hard look at human inhumanity towards those perceived as not-quite-human — for instance, a “village idiot” character who is regularly mistreated, and the villagers’ handling of Hassan when he loses his mind. A rain-soaked confrontation in the climax, shot masterfully in black and white by Fereydon Ghovanlou, is among the most affecting sequences ever committed to film.

Ever since it was released globally some fifty years ago, the film’s political implications, rather than its specific narratives, have dominated critical discussions. Although Gaav had been commissioned by the then government, it was eventually banned because the director focused on the underdeveloped rural areas, whereas the Shah’s regime projected a picture of transformative modernisation and prosperity. He was forced to smuggle his work out into the world. Mehrjui’s experience shows, notably, that propaganda and censorship were very much prevalent in pre-Revolutionary times too.

What took me back to Gaav in the first place was another, very different, film — Buster Keaton’s under-celebrated venture Go West. It portrays the inseparable bond between an otherwise friendless man and his adopted cow — “Brown Eyes”. Keaton’s character is no animal rights activist but, pretending to be a cowboy, he intends to save his lone bovine buddy from dangers such as sharp stones, branding irons, and the slaughterhouse. Among the copious great gags in this feature is an iconic moment where the pokerfaced star contorts his serious lips into a “smile”. There are mesmerising scenes of hundreds of bulls running loose in Los Angeles, entering not only a china shop but also a barber shop, gift store and Turkish bath.

Both Mehrjui and Keaton’s features, available on YouTube, reveal that cows can act too. Could there be a way then, in this country, to move away from violent prohibitionism surrounding these animals, and towards telling interesting stories starring them?

ranjita.ganesan@bsmail.in