The Cow
Director: Dariush Mehrjui
Year Released: 1969
Rating: 2.5
A villager (Ezzatolah Entezami) with a curiously strong attachment to his pet cow can't cope when his pet is killed by a neighboring mob and his fellow villagers put their collective heads together to bury the cow and tell the man his cow ran away - the man then loses his mind and starts to believe he is the cow (even going so far as to live like one ... and be treated as such). Psychologically implausible, its sole strength is as an allegory for the feeling of despair and betrayal when someone knows that his/her entire community has teamed up against him/her ... but even then Mehrjui doesn't make it clear that the Bovine Lover is aware he's being tricked and lied to by his (wrongheaded but well-intentioned) peers. What's alarming - on another level - is how the title creature is given more respect and care than the man's wife - if she was murdered by bandits and chucked in an old well, would he start believing he was her?
