Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow

In the cover story of our March-April issue, out now, Film Comment Digital Editor Clinton Krute writes “Kelly Reichardt’s deceptively modest epic First Cow opens with a wide, static shot of a barge, heavy with consumer goods, pushing down the Columbia River. Like the story that follows, this shot is deceptively straightforward, gesturing toward one of the themes—nature vs. society, with the human being somewhere in-between—that the filmmaker has been worrying since her 1994 debut, River of Grass. With First Cow, Reichardt has managed to weave together the various concerns—social, philosophical, economic, and cinematic—that have haunted her films to date, producing a work of remarkable beauty and startling complexity.” Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold sat down with Krute and Phoebe Chen, a regular contributor, to talk about Reichardt’s career and her latest, in theaters this week.