Andrea Arnold's 'Cow' Examines Animal Consciousness Through Dairy Farm Realism

Andrea Arnold's 2021 documentary 'Cow' presents a socio-realist portrait of dairy cow Luma on a Kent farm, focusing on her experiences of birth, separation from calves, and commercial exploitation. The film avoids animal-rights polemics, instead maintaining an intimate, eye-level perspective on Luma's world. Arnold's approach echoes through contemporary cinema, with works like Valdimar Jóhannsson's 'Lamb' (2021), Michael Sarnoski's 'Pig' (2021), Kelly Reichardt's 'First Cow' (2019), Victor Kossakovsky's 'Gunda' (2021), and Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed's 'My Octopus Teacher' (2020) exploring nonhuman relationships. Unlike Kossakovsky's black-and-white, idyllic portrayal in 'Gunda', Arnold captures urgent, balletic movements within fluorescent-lit milking machinery. The film engages with philosophical concepts from Jeremy Bentham's 1780 question about animal suffering to Donna Haraway's 'more-than-human' kinship and Timothy Morton's eco-philosophy. Scientific context includes the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness affirming animal awareness. Arnold's documentary resists anthropomorphization while extending kinship to working animals within industrial systems.