Kelly Reichardt’s ‘First Cow’, A Different Way To Explore American History, Offers Food For Thought – Contenders Film
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, which won the New York Film Critics’ Association award for best picture of 2020, significantly centers on food and food preparation two centuries ago in the Pacific Northwest region we now call Oregon, four decades before the area became an American state. Fish, game and vegetation were in abundance, and the director and her frequent writing partner and historian Jonathan Raymond saw food, and specifically Lewis and Clark’s cookbooks, as a useful way in to defining an important aspect of frontier life at the time.