The Cow Who Sang a Song into the Future, a film by Francisca Alegria

Somewhere in the South American jungle, a river deposits thousands of dead fish on its banks. And a woman in a motorcycle helmet and muddy clothes emerges, gasps on the bank, then makes her way into town. She is Magdalena. She committed suicide decades before by riding her motorcycle into this river, but here she is. The only clues to her otherworldliness are the energy she emits that interferes with electrical objects, and her muteness. 

The family she left owns a dairy near the river, run by her hapless son Bernardo under the critical eye of her former husband Enrique. When Enrique glimpses her through a shop window he collapses and is hospitalized. Their daughter Cecilia, a doctor, collects him, her trans teenage son Tomas and younger daughter, and off they go to the dairy farm. Magdalena appears to her grandchildren, who seem comfortable with her. Cecilia, who witnessed her ride off the pier, screams at her to go away. The old woman servant who looks after everyone takes note of her presence, undisturbed. 

At night, Magdalena opens the gate of the cows’ enclosure and they escape into a field. The next day they’re all sick and dying. The owners of the pulp mill on the river deny having anything to do with the fish kill or cattle deaths, or for that matter the disappearance of the bees, which occurred after fumigation. She may have been sent by the river to warn people about the toxins, and to press them to action. Her family, with its own disharmony, suffers a sickness of anger and contempt. But her grandchildren welcome her, and accept her presence without hesitation or doubt. 

Cecilia is angry at her return, perhaps because she had no way to call her mother back, to receive an explanation or apology. But Enrique is also angry, with the same intolerance that has crippled his family. He blames Bernardo for the deaths of the cows – their livelihood – and seeing the belittled man’s shoulders slump as he rides away on his motorcycle is truly wrenching. Told he is too stupid to do anything but farm, he is also castigated for not running the dairy perfectly. Enrique does none of the work but finds plenty to criticize. We understand Magdalena better. 

And yet, Bernardo is quite comfortable with Tomas, accepting his earrings, lipstick, feminine clothes. The place is strange, the energy Magdalena gives off is strange – what is she after? Is she a ghost, or…? Tomas goes to a gay bar to dance, and Magdalena joins him. She dances too, and flirts with a man. Later she and Tomas sit on a boat together. He asks about the afterlife – how was it? Wet, she conveys – as close as she comes to speaking. Images appear on his phone from her mind, leaving viewers space to decide what they mean. 

Not every story is rational. Sometimes we just ride along to see where it goes, and take in the sights and sounds of what may be unreal. Why not? A song, woven through the opening and again at the end, is sung by some fluid voice, possibly a cow’s.

An Evening with Mark Mothersbaugh - a Denver Film Festival Event

As part of the 45th Denver Film Festival’s MOFFOM (Music On Film – Film On Music), the organizers invited Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh for an evening in conversation with Jonathan Palmer. Mothersbaugh’s many compositions include soundtracks for TV shows Peewee’s Playhouse and Rugrats, and movies starting with Neil Young’s Human Highway, then later the Rugrats movie, which was so successful that Mothersbaugh became sought-after in film scoring. He did TV commercials, adding subliminal messages to Hawaiian Punch ads saying “Question Authority” and “Sugar is bad for you” which the companies didn’t catch, though kids likely did. 

He met Wes Anderson, who had very specific ideas about the sound he wanted, and they worked together on many movies starting with Bottle Rocket. That movie was previewed for a test audience of spoiled Santa Monica adolescents who came for the free sodas and candy then left in droves – Mothersbaugh said the movie became notorious for having the highest walkout rate of any preview. 

He worked with Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who turned the children’s book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs into a movie. Later, Lord and Miller made 21 Jump Street, which he also scored. When he was approached by producers of the first Lego movie, he introduced them to Lord and Miller, and used a combination of synthesizer and orchestral sounds to blend Lego brick noises with the natural world. He has worked with New Zealand director Taika Waititi on What We Do in the Shadows and Thor Ragnarok.

He was asked to score the $150 million documentary This is not a House for which he got to use many fun instruments he’d accumulated, including dozens of bird calls and one-of-a-kind instruments such as his “orchestrium” which forced air through organ pipes and doorbell chimes using a calliope organ base, to produce mechanical natural sound. 

From 40s and 50s radio composer Raymond Scott he was able to rescue an “electronium” along with dozens of acetate recordings from Scott’s many years in radio – Ella Fitzgerald, many other shows, and cartoon music, which wasn’t copyrighted until 1954. Mothersbaugh referred to Devo’s music as “Fisher-Price toy songs” – simple melodies with odd lyrics. 

As a boy he watched old movies on a small black-and-white TV, sometimes capturing soundtracks on his family’s answering machine recorder – when he played them back later, he could re-watch the movies in his head. In the monster movie Island of Lost Souls he heard the mad scientist’s half-animal/ half human creations crying out, “Are we not men?” From Inherit the Wind he absorbed the image of a chimpanzee in front of a poster declaring Devolution Man – but with his head in the way of some letters, the image said Devo Man. 

This humorous iconoclast, whose band has been rejected yet again from induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, says his final wish is to be buried in the HOF parking lot, with one leg sticking up.