Unified participation versus inactive voyeurism in The Cow

The townspeople in Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow have their fair share of problems. On a good day, they are constantly being watched by a strange group of marauders. On a bad day, the town’s only cow dies of an unknown cause. And on a really bad day, that cow’s owner starts to believe he himself is his dead cow. As the town tries to work through its problems, two types of behavior emerge: active participation and watching from afar. Mehrjui uses sound design and composition to propose that in a community such as this, active unified participation is essential to survival, while inactive voyeurism is at best useless, and at worst harmful.

In the very first scene of The Cow, we pay witness to the voyeuristic aspects of the town at their harshest. The film opens with a multitude of tight, unmoving shots of townspeople staring intently at the camera. Even a dog is shown absolutely unmoving and unblinking, staring straight ahead. Finally, it is revealed what they are staring at. The town’s children, led by Saffar, the resident bully, are torturing a man soon revealed to be mentally disabled. Most of the townspeople simply watch as Saffar smears what may be paint or blood all over his face, bring burning sticks dangerously close to him, and run him into the town well. Only one adult tells them to stop, and no attention is paid to his command. In this scene, framing is tight. There is often only one face in picture at a time. This serves to show a lack of town unity; as the townspeople are not united in stopping Saffar, nor are they united physically in the frame.

In contrast to the opening scene, a much more unified town appears when Hassan’s wife delivers the news that Hassan’s cow has died. When Hassan’s wife suffers her nervous breakdown and cries in the middle of the town, everyone rushes to her aid, offering prayers and helping her calm down. This scene establishes both Eslam, the de facto town leader and champion of active participation, and the unnamed man in the window, the pinnacle of voyeurism. Aside from him, the town is almost wholly unified in this scene, and the filmmaking reflects it. As Eslam and others try to decide what to do about the cow, they are framed less closely than previously: several people, working together, are in frame together. Because of this town unification, they are able to come to a solution regarding Hassan’s cow. The final evidence of this achievement comes when the men of the town pull the cow into the well. This scene displays a fully unified town. The only thing audible on the soundtrack is the men’s simultaneous “heave-ho” sounds, showing how total physical and mental unification can move an object one man could not move alone.

Shortly thereafter, however, the town unity seen here is shattered. When Hassan returns, so does the town’s voyeuristic aspect. This is immediately apparent in the contrast between the sound design of this scene and the cow burial scene preceding it. When Hassan returns, the town goes virtually silent. Visually, Mehrjui signals the voyeuristic dominance of the scene by showing the man in the window as one of the first characters to spot Hassan. His window is framed very two dimensionally, bringing to mind a television, or some other viewing screen. When Hassan passes, each of the townspeople hide behind something in turn, wishing only to watch and not actually interact with Hassan. Even Eslam, the film’s champion for community participation, lies to Hassan when Hassan asks if everything is all right. The concept of window as film screen comes back into play when Hassan’s neighbors look in on him as he begins his initial transformation into cowliness. They are framed in the cow shed’s rectangular window, which by no accident resembles a modern film screen. Through this screen, they watch Hassan for several minutes before finally deciding to go to his aid.

After Hassan descends into his madness, Eslam decides to take action in an ambiguous scene that is neither clearly either unified or voyeuristic in the way previous scenes have been. As the scene opens, women from the town are strewn about an otherwise empty field, praying. They are all in frame at once, yet dispersed, so that communication would be difficult without yelling. The soundtrack, again almost wholly silent (despite the field being very windy), seems to reinforce this chasm of communication. Eslam walks in to find his compatriots sitting around an old structure, doing very little of anything but watching the women. However, the voyeuristic aspect of the scene is tempered by Eslam’s insistence on taking action: he wants to bring Hassan to the city, to get help at the hospital. Two of the men reluctantly agree. This reluctance, combined with the silent soundtrack and voyeuristic imagery, foreshadows Hassan’s doom in the next scene, despite Eslam’s good intention.

Why does the village seemingly flip-flop from helpful to hidden so often? Mehrjui describes the film as “the plight of an individual versus the society around him.” With that theme in mind, one could take a cynical look at the help Eslam and others attempt to provide. When the mentally disabled person is attacked, no one bothers to help, because there is no profit in it for them. In fact, a particularly cruel punishment is served to this man when he is tied up underground later in the film: far away from the town’s action, he is denied even the act of voyeurism. On the other hand, when the cow dies, everyone is concerned because it was their only source of milk. One could also argue the sympathy felt for Hassan is simply borne out of their wish for him to get a new cow and continue his valuable service to the village.

However, it should be noted voyeurism is not the same as disinterest; far from it. Even the notorious man in the window shows a genuine concern for what goes on in the village, even if he seemingly never leaves his home. Mehrjui also states his desire to “catch the essence of village life.” This may be where Mehrjui succeeds most admirably, using composition and sound design to paint a three-dimensional, realistic village: always interested in the plight of their fellow townspeople, but sometimes going about it the wrong way.