What was already, from the outset, a village life tale carrying some atmosphere and menace in the form of the three silhouetted figures of thieves from a neighbouring village, becomes a genuinely unsettling film when we begin to view events not through the protagonist but through those around him. This shift in point-of-view is done so matter-of-factly so as to invoke a vague anticipation of something more supernatural that is constantly at odds with the film's overall realism: suddenly denied internal access, we're never quite sure whether or not Hassan genuinely believes he is a cow, for instance, or whether the cow is even dead, even though we've seen the narrative events leading to this... At one point, there's a genuinely disturbing visual suggestion that Hassan has indeed begun to transmogrify into cattle, when the three neighbouring thieves come to steal the cow in the night, only to find it is its owner, lying in weird lighting. Events unfold against a vivid sense of community and what this livestock means.
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