The Moo Man is coming . . . .

By Thea Lenarduzzi

 

The world is
divided into those who have milk in their coffee and those who take it black.
For Louis Untermeyer in his poem of 1915 “Gilbert K. Chesterton Rises to the
Toast of Coffee”, it distinguishes the sort of “men who will never be drunk” from
the rest:

“So, gentlemen, up with the festive cup, where Mocha and Java unite;

It clears the head when things are said too brilliant to be bright!

It keeps the stars from the golden bars and the lips of the tipsy town;

So, here's to strong, black coffee – drink it up, drink it down!

With a fol-de-rol-dol and a fol-de-rol-dee, etc.”

(It should be
noted that Mocha here refers to a coffee bean of the Arabica family, not the coffee/chocolate beverage
favoured by those who Untermeyer would, I presume, class as men who get drunk,
or, worse, women.)

Now, The Moo Man, a documentary directed by
Andy Heathcote and Heike Bachelier, adds another dimension to our daily
anxieties, for, if you’re confident enough in your sense of self and social
standing to admit to taking milk in your coffee, you had better think long and
hard about what sort of milk drinker you want to be.

The film,
which made the official selections at both the Sundance and Berlin
International festivals earlier this year, offers an intimate and episodic portrait
of life on a small, independently-run dairy farm on the Pevensey marshes in
East Sussex, with insights into the relationship between man, beast and,
ultimately, milk: there are scenes showing Farmer Hook reminiscing on the life and
death of Kato, a young steer, as he counts out the vacuum-packed cuts of meat he
has become (unlike most other dairy farmers, the Hooks keep males rather than
killing them at birth); a seaside photo-shoot with Ida, a star heifer (pictured above), intended
to publicize the benefits of raw, organic milk; the mixture of tenderness and practicality
with which Farmer Hook tends to an ailing cow (a metal detector is involved);
and the family’s excitement as automization – in the form of a mini milk
bottling plant – arrives on the farm, bringing with it hopes of reaching new
markets (an opening sequence showing the brothers filling and capping bottles
by hand in their kitchen is indicative of the size of their operation).

Filmed over
four years, the narrative observes Farmer Hook and his herd of fifty-five heifers
as they struggle to stay afloat against a backdrop of disappearing traditions,
changing tastes, health scares, and the supermarket behemoths that call the
shots. We learn that, in Britain, one family-run farm closes every day, a
statistic echoed around the world; of course, this isn’t to say that we’re
shunning milk en masse, in our coffee, tea or otherwise – it doesn’t take a
social anthropologist to banish any idea of Britain as a nation of
Untermeyer-style strong men.

Add to this
that the cost-price of a litre of milk is 34p, but that most supermarkets pay only
27p per litre and it becomes apparent that to opt into this system is to condemn
the farmer to a life of poverty and reliance on tax-payer subsidies.  

A general UK release
for The Moo Man is scheduled for July
12 but, in order to achieve this (“releasing a film is an expensive business”,
the directors point out), a Kickstarter campaign has been set up – to cover the
cost of production (“We’re planning the best trailer you’ll ever see”),
promotion, distribution, and, one hopes, enough hay to keep the cows happy for quite
some time; an opportunity to wipe away your milk moustache and put your money
where your mouth is: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1438468236/bring-the-moo-man-to-uk-cinemas