The Power of the Dog reminds us of the incredible complexity and beauty Campion brings to the silver screen through a complex web of human behaviours as vast as the Montana mountains at the film’s heart. The Power of the Dog arrives in cinemas nationwide on 19th November and on Netflix on 1st December.
It has been twelve years since Jane Campion last sat in the director’s chair of a major feature film with Bright Star (2009), exploring the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Since Campion shifted her focus to TV, we’ve missed her big-screen presence, and my god, it’s good to have her back. Adapted from Thomas Savage’s 1968 novel of the same name, Campion exquisitely explores masculinity, secrets, lies, and oppression through a film that pays homage to Hitchcock with its riveting, sweeping, and complex exploration of gender, sexuality and control.
The Burbank brothers, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), run a successful cattle ranch in the hills of Montana. The year is 1925, but the brothers are stuck in 1900, the spit-and-sawdust nature of their work leaving little time for emotions, feelings or conversation. The brothers hold different personalities and natures in the dustbowl they call home. Phil could be described as the archetypal cowboy, his hands as rough as his demeanour. At the same time, George is a businessman, his soft and sensitive side sitting in the shadow of his brother’s overbearing influence.
Meanwhile, not far from the ranch, the widowed Rose (Kirsten Dunst) runs a restaurant and boarding house with her teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Peter loves science, nature and creativity; his demeanour is a world away from Phil and George when they visit for food and shelter. Phil believes that the young Peter is gay, calling him ‘Miss Nancy’ while jeering at his love of nature and flowers with a barrage of homophobic slurs. However, unknown to Phil, George has asked for Rose’s hand in marriage, and it’s not long before Rose and her son move into the creaking, cold and silent Burbank family home.
THE POWER OF THE DOG: KIRSTEN DUNST as ROSE GORDON in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. © 2021 Cross City Films Limited/Courtesy of Netflix
Cumberbatch lights up the screen as the grizzled, chain-smoking, hard-edged rancher who writhes with secrets. There is an air of the hunter held within his portrayal as his eyes sweep the land, looking for any weakness before pouncing on his prey. Yet behind Phil’s brutish behaviour hides the mind of a scholar, his intellect above and beyond that of his brother. However, when Cumberbatch’s Phil meets Kodi Smit-McPhee’s Peter, The Power of the Dog becomes an outstanding psychological thriller.
Peter’s silence hides a deep understanding of Phil’s toxic behaviours, his outward weakness a mask for his calculating and sharp intellect. Smit-McPhee’s Peter is an enigma to Phil, who irritates and captivates in equal measure. As Phil and Peter toy with each other, Campion’s film sparkles, their shared intellectual prowess and hidden desires bubbling and writhing under the surface.
Campion’s stunning film is both intimate and vast, joyously playing with space in the exploration of isolation through cinematographer Ari Wegner‘s use of panoramic vistas and close-up photography. The tangled web of lies and power play Campion creates dovetails with a stunning exploration of jealousy and control as Jonny Greenwood’s haunting score lingers in the mind.
The Power of the Dog reminds us of the incredible complexity and beauty Campion brings to the silver screen through a complex web of human behaviours as vast as the Montana mountains at the film’s heart.
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