NYFF 2021 Film Review: The Power of the Dog
Jane Campion returns to the big screen with the simmering, volatile The Power of the Dog
Jane Campion’s first film in over a decade, The Power of the Dog, is making waves at the New York Film Festival. A simmering domestic drama amidst the rolling mountains of cowboy country, Campion’s welcome return to cinema delivers poetry in motion and Benedict Cumberbatch’s career-best performance. Upending the rawhide masculinity of turn-of-the-century Montana, The Power of the Dog’s seeping venom sneaks up on you in an arresting slow burn. Minor spoilers ahead…
A two-time Palme d’Or winner - one for her 1982 short Peel, one for her 1993 feature The Piano - Jane Campion hasn’t made a feature-length film since 2009’s Bright Star. The Power of the Dog, a simmering Western drama with hidden teeth, marks her triumphant return to the silver screen. Featuring a transcendent Benedict Cumberbatch as the abrasive Phil Burbank, Campion’s cinematic resurgence is a fascinating powder keg of shifting power dynamics and gender roles, and a deeply complicated character study set against its gorgeous Montana backdrop. Haunting and evocative, The Power of the Dog is a poetic cross-section of masculinity and subdued tenderness.
Jane Campion has spent her storied career, from her 1989 feature debut Sweetie all the way through her stint helming Top of the Lake, drawing full-bodied portraits of complex women. The Power of the Dog may mark her first narrative with a male lead, but using familiar brushes, Campion pulls upon the same powerful threads of intimacy, control, and repressed desire as the rest of her filmography. Breathing life into Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, The Power of the Dog centers around Phil Burbank and the chaos of his orbit. A hard-as-nails rancher who works the cattle fields with his kind-hearted, soft-spoken brother George (Jesse Plemons), Burbank practically worships at the altar of the deceased Bronco Henry, a legendary cowboy. Romanticizing the good ol’ days, he clings to the skills that his dead hero taught him: riding, roping, and tanning hides. But when George falls for and marries a local innkeeper named Rose (Kirsten Dunst), Phil’s latent venom begins to seep through as he launches a campaign of intimidation and manipulation against the young woman and her sensitive, peculiar son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee).
“Haunting and evocative, The Power of the Dog is a poetic cross-section of masculinity and subdued tenderness.”
Benedict Cumberbatch has become so adept and prolific at inhabiting brilliant-but-damaged heroes that his heel-turn in The Power of the Dog is nothing short of revelatory. A magnificent bastard of the highest order whose man-of-the-earth posture belies his sadistic shrewdness, Burbank’s relentless vendetta against Rose and Peter makes for a cruel, yet captivating, gauntlet. Peter, the quiet artist and scholar who likes to fold paper flowers for her mother’s tables, is instantly labeled as effeminate and unbecoming by his new “uncle” and his blatant homophobia, and Rose is quickly driven to the bottle by Phil’s encroachment of her space and his torturous button-pushing.
But Jane Campion is nothing if unpredictable. During the press conference after the screening at the New York Film Festival, Campion bristled against the use of the buzzword “toxic masculinity” to ascribe to her movie, instead pointing at the more nuanced forces at play. And it’s The Power of the Dog’s second act that opens up in unexpected ways, digging deep into the layers underneath Phil Burbank until lines start forming in his hardened craquelure, revealing his own illicit desires that bubble beneath the surface. Uninterested in moralizing or a redemption arc, the film roils in its swinging power dynamics. Resentment, contempt, and toxicity build amongst its spectacular cast, but it also invites grace notes of tenderness with the surprise pairing of Phil and Peter. Following a heavy moment of vulnerability, Phil opens up a whole new avenue within the narrative as he teaches Peter to shed some of his perceived “dandy,” while Peter extracts a little softness from this man that has tormented him and his beloved mother. These are moments of poignant human connection, but The Power of the Dog never lets us forget its acridity: With its rolling Montana plains flanked by paradoxically suffocating mountains, accompanied by a stinging, atonal score from Jonny Greenwood, there’s something sinister afoot. How will these characters’ complexities resolve themselves? Campion sprinkles clues at a drip’s pace, only baring the film’s fangs at the most opportune moment to give its big reveal a sudden, gobsmacking impact.
“Benedict Cumberbatch has become so adept and prolific at inhabiting brilliant-but-damaged heroes that his heel-turn in The Power of the Dog is nothing short of revelatory.”
As Phil Burbank comes roaring to life, it’s the characters of George and Rose who quietly recede into the background. Yet, Plemons and Dunst are formidable as ever; as a real-life couple, their tender chemistry is palpable and rich, especially during George’s whirlwind courtship which gives us the film’s sweetest moments. Dunst, in particular, is excellent opposite Benedict Cumberbatch, turning on a dime from assured hostess to sopping puddle amidst his cruelties. The Power of the Dog transforms Savage’s prose into visual poetry, framing these disparate characters and their mercurial positionings with rhyming stanzas of parallel composition. Ari Wegner’s sumptuous work as director of photography is phenomenal, sculpting the South Island of New Zealand into the perfect, mythological Montana to capture the rhythm of the characters.
The Power of the Dog is a work of quiet effectiveness. In a genre that typically incorporates its lawlessness into high drama, Campion forgoes gunfights, bombastic confrontations, and resolute violence. A mix of sweet, bitter, angry, and humane into a caustic - yet delectable - poison, it balances its environment and its pent-up emotions upon a knife’s edge - a juggling act that has practically become second nature for the esteemed filmmaker. If anything, The Power of the Dog is resounding proof of one thing: 12 years is too long to wait between Jane Campion films.
