The Strange Beauty of ‘The Cow’ Continues to Resonate
Join us in revisiting a landmark 1969 film by a recently deceased Iranian master
The late Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui's film, "Gaav," ("The Cow") centers on Masht Hassan (Ezzatollah Entezami), and his bovine companion.
Still frame from "Gaav"
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
On Oct.14, Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui and his wife, actress and costume designer Vahideh Mohammadi, were found stabbed to death in their villa in Karaj. Details remain sparse, but tragedy shook the film world at large, given Mehruji’s stature within cinema history. He was one of the progenitors of the Iranian New Wave, an artistic movement that began in the 1960s—in response to mainstream movies which failed to reflect lived realities—and continued to solidify until the Iranian Revolution of ’79, after which secondary and tertiary waves would arise courtesy of filmmakers like the late Abbas Kiarostami, and the still active Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi and Asghar Farhadi. In spite of ongoing government censorship, modern Iranian cinema has spread its wings far and wide, and one of the movies often cited as its stylistic and thematic flashpoint is Gaav, or The Cow, Mehruji’s 1969 black and white Persian-language drama co-written with Gholam Hossein Saedi, which holds up as one of the most moving examples of rural neorealism, and whose influence on modern Iranian masters can still be felt.
Gaav—one of only two productions at the time to receive government funding—was immediately banned by Shah Pahlavi for its realistic portrayal of an impoverished Iranian village (despite Mehruji whitewashing the exteriors of numerous buildings so they wouldn’t look as decrepit). However, it was eventually smuggled out of the country and competed at the Venice Film Festival in 1971, where it won the critics’ prize. The film centers on Masht Hassan (Ezzatollah Entezami), lovingly called “Mashti” by those close to him, a married middle-aged villager whose pride and joy (and economic backbone) is his bovine companion. When the cow mysteriously dies while Hassan is away in the city, his fellow townspeople—led by his friend Masht Eslam (Ali Nassirian)—conspire to bury her body and concoct a story of her escape, though Hassan doesn’t buy their tall tale, leading to a most despondent emotional and psychological breakdown.
While these broad strokes seem to hint at a tale of rural simplicity, in a story where superstition is also rife, Mehruji weaves a complex tapestry at every turn. His opening scenes, in which children in the village berate a mentally challenged young man, ride a discomforting line between playfulness and group-think cruelty, setting the stage for numerous instances where humor brushes shoulders with heartrending human drama.
Much of this is owed to Mehruji’s penchant for capturing the fabric of the village at large. For nearly the first half of the movie’s 100 minutes, Hassan is barely on screen, allowing for numerous supporting characters—each with their own idiosyncrasies, which soon become intimately familiar—to lay the groundwork for the strange and phantasmic story waiting in the margins. Hassan’s denial over the loss of his companion eventually leads to a twisted folktale where he begins to believe that he himself is the cow, and that Hassan is watching over him.
Following the death of his cow, Masht Hassan (Ezzatollah Entezami) begins to believe he is the cow in "Gaav."
Still frame from "Gaav"
The villagers are, of course, perplexed by this bizarre conundrum, but it’s one to which both Hassan and the actor playing him are staunchly committed. Entezami, who died in 2018, delivers a performance that runs the emotional gamut, from Hassan’s exaggerated, jovial pantomime when feeding his cow (he even mimics her chewing for fun at one point, perhaps portending things to come), to the character’s own emotional dilemma when first confronted with the shocking news of her demise. Despite the film’s tonal contours allowing for every actor to go big and broad, Entezami sells the story’s most vital beats with naturalistic flair, placing the audience right in Hassan’s shoes as he struggles to deal with tragedy so that, by the time he breaks entirely from the truth, it never feels a step too far.
All the while, Mehruji ensures through numerous close-ups of supporting characters—the film is occasionally out of focus in transitory moments, but it always lands precisely on distinctive expressions—that every possible emotional response to Hassan’s peculiar coping mechanism is woven into the edit. Friends and strangers alike are forced to confront their own dilemmas in the process, their own superstitions and religious beliefs over how best to approach the situation and to what degree they ought to humor Hassan. After all, the situation they’re presented with is a man convinced that he’s a gaav, which is ludicrous on its surface. And yet, each villager feels culpable to some degree, having concocted an illusion so easily broken that it breaks a man's psyche in return. Eslam, for instance, is the movie’s beating conscience, a role Nassirian adopts with thoughtful precision, as he struggles between hurting and protecting his friend. (The other villagers aren’t so thoughtful in their approach; others are downright callous).
The villagers play a large role in "Gaav."
Still frame from "Gaav"
The fragile nature of truth is front and center in Gaav, an ever-changing modality that Mehruji captures with his radical shifts in tone, especially when night falls. Courtesy of cinematographer Fereydon Ghovanlou and composer Hormoz Farhat, the film’s unassuming daytime comedy-drama shifts radically into borderline horror territory, with the village being enveloped in deep shadows and scored by eerie music that’ll set your teeth on edge, as the possibility of invaders looms. In the process, life in this township isn’t merely observed, but felt, as Mehruji forces us to experience the world through the villagers’ eyes.
This aspect of the film was arguably responsible for Iranian cinema’s survival after the Revolution. Gaav was allegedly a favorite of Ayatollah Khomeini, who was taken by its realistic portrayal of rural Iran, and allowed cinema as an art form to continue, rather than banning it outright (though it would continue to face staunch government backlash in the following years). Mehruji would go on to make a number of landmark arthouse movies, whose stories folded class examination into their purview, and he would go on making films until 2020 with La Minor, a film about a female musician (which also starred Nassirian in a supporting role). All the while, he would continue to strongly oppose government censorship of Iranian art, culminating in a fiery 2022 speech shared on social media, over permit issues surrounding screening La Minor, in which he said:
“Kill me, do whatever you want with me…destroy me, but I want my rights.”
"Gaav" (1969) is said to be the film that kicked off the Iranian New Wave.
Still frame from "Gaav"
As a preeminent voice of Iranian cinema, and a man who faced censorship at the hands of both pre and post-Revolution regimes, Mehruji’s proclamation saw an outpouring of support. The Association of Iran’s Film Directors even released a statement citing his work—Gaav in particular—as pivotal to the lifeblood of Iranian moviemaking in its current form, and upon revisiting the movie today, it’s easy to see why. It remains a moving, poetic work about the strange ways in which people are shaped by both love and socio-economic circumstances, a story which continues to resonate well beyond the confines of time periods or international borders.
Gaav (The Cow) is available to stream on YouTube and Prime Video.
Published on November 30, 2023
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Siddhant Adlakha is a critic and filmmaker from Mumbai, though he now lives in New York City. They're more similar than you'd think. Find him at @SiddhantAdlakha on Twitter