"Vacas" consists of four separate parts: "The Cowardly Lumberjack", "The Axe", "The Glowing Deep Hole", and "The War in the Woods", based on the story of three generations of the Manuel family, combined into a complete history.
This film is one of the representative works of Julio Mittan (" The Red Squirrel ", "Lucia Lover"), a famous young director of The Kingdom of Spain. " Cow " is a film with strong Magic Realism colors, showing the reincarnation of the two families in the period from 1875 to 1936, which is quite rich in meaning. The cow is a symbol of totem worship in the culture of The Kingdom of Spain, and the film also endows it with divine light, leading people to swim in the complex and ever-changing stream of consciousness.
The time span of the film is very large, but the rhythm is not dragged at all, and the characters have always been on the cusp. In the vicissitudes of this era, the cow has served as a witness to history from beginning to end, and its symbolism is quite innovative.
"Cow" is the debut film of Julio Medem , the famous young director of The Kingdom of Spain , and his famous work. He won the Goya Award for Best New Director at The Kingdom of Spain, the Best Debut at the Montreal Film Festival and the Gold Award at the Tokyo Film Festival. From then on, the Kingdom of Spain newcomer became famous and became the successor of Almodóvar. With a magical expression, the film shows the story of three generations of blood feud between two families on the land of The Kingdom of Spain between the two civil wars. The young director's focus on farmers in his country's history is more ambitious than those of his peers who only describe personal experiences with a narrow vision. The film intercepts several time segments from 1875 to 1936, during the two civil wars in The Kingdom of Spain in the past sixty years. The division of flowing time and the relative stagnation of space scenes form a basic space-time tension. For the closed peasant life, this method of expression is still very appropriate.
The cow is obviously a symbol in the film. The simplest understanding is of course that it symbolizes the generations of farmers living on the land of The Kingdom of Spain. But this symbol is not rigid, immutable, symbolized for symbolism’s sake. Manuel, who is already old and disabled, keeps painting the cow. His paintings are largely in the surreal style of The Kingdom of Spain, like the cow bleeding, fighting, etc., all implying It is a foreshadowing and reflection of the historical reality of The Kingdom of Spain. The middle-aged Ilyikibu family's daughter Inacio and the Mendaloz family's daughter eloped to the United States, which happened on the night the cow died, and it was also a profound arrangement.
