OnScreen Review: "The Power Of The Dog"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
Believe it or not, it has been 12 years since the last Jane Campion film. While not a mainstream director, she is someone with a certain level of clout from her previous, award-winning work. She hasn’t exactly been idle during that time, creating two seasons of the critically acclaimed New Zealand crime drama Top of the Lake. The Power of the Dog is an adaptation of a novel by Thomas Savage and is being called Campion’s best work since her most notable film, The Piano, and rightly so.
This adaptation is a western set in 1925 Montana. At the center of the story are two brothers who run a ranch, Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons) Burbank. The two brothers are practically polar opposites of each other. Phil is a nasty man; a demeaning bully who is revered by his crew, regaling them with stories of the old west and Bronco Henry, the man who trained him and taught him everything he knows. George on the other hand, is quiet and reserved; a soft-spoken and plain-stated kind of man. In fact, George seems to move through life at his own pace, and it is a pace that often seems to make Phil bristle.
While Phil is someone who delights in humiliating just about anyone, he seems to take particular glee in humiliating Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the young man who is serving Phil and his men dinner at what is likely the only restaurant in town while they are driving their cattle through. Peter’s mother Rose (Kirsten Dunst) runs the establishment, widowed by her husband’s suicide. George takes an interest in her, eventually marrying her, and bringing her and her son to the ranch, causing an increasingly hostile environment with Phil’s presence.
Filmed in New Zealand, this is one beautiful film to take in, with breathtaking mountain views and landscapes. It immediately reminded me of another recent western that was filmed in New Zealand that also starred Kodi Smit-McPhee, 2015’s Slow West. It never ceases to amaze how New Zealand can stand in for Middle Earth as well as the Old West. The plains here are as wide as the forests are thick in The Piano.
The tale placed in this exquisite landscape is cold and harsh with little room for kindness. Cumberbatch is the epitome of toxic masculinity, though it is all a façade. His gruff exterior is adopted for survival in a world that he was born into and chooses to hide in. His tormenting of others is used to deflect from people seeing the real him. It creates a palpable tension between the two brothers. Phil is constantly wondering where George is, his nickname for him is “fat man” and he is almost always put out by him. George exhibits the patience of a saint. He also shows a gentleness and kindness toward Rose that is chivalric, but at times calls into question how well he really knows her, which is borne out when he insists on her playing the piano for the visiting governor.
Dunst and Smit-McPhee round out the lead roles in this film with equally fine performances. Cumberbatch is the constant thread through the narrative, but the focus shifts over the course of the film from focusing on the brothers to focusing on Phil and Rose before finally focusing on Phil and Peter toward the end. Outside of George, it is revealed that each of these characters is harboring a secret to some degree. Some of these secrets are hid better than others, while some are far more easily discovered by their increasing erratic behavior. One ends up being far more sinister than anyone realizes.
Campion does a tremendous job of keeping the viewer engaged in the characters, in the psychodrama that is unfolding among them, and the twists in turns in their relationships to one another. There is also a Chekov’s gun plot device that is introduced that has a pivotal role in the outcome of the story. Campion gets clearly defined performances out of her cast. This is arguably her best film since The Piano and it might be on par with that film in terms of overall quality. This is a film that could be an award season contender.
The Power of the Dog is likely to draw comparisons to at least one other western from the past twenty years, but it is worth considering on its own merits free of comparison. Campion has delivered a film that is deftly balanced between its four leads, all of whom turn in fine performances. And it is a film that surprises in how it unveils the strengths and vulnerabilities of its characters.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars