The Power of the Dog (2021 | New Zealand | 126 minutes | Jane Campion)
After an extended break from feature filmmaking (a stretch that included helming the incredible crime drama Top of the Lake) Jane Campion is all the way back with a twisty new Western, the Power of the Dog. Adapted from Thomas Savage’s novel of the same title, it’s a simmering exploration of cruelty, duty, and revenge. Amid conventions of the Western genre, she nevertheless finds surprising ways to uncover fresh ideas in classic archetypes of masculinity. Filmed by cinematographer Ari Wagner against a stunning New Zealand landscape doing its best impression of 1900s Montana, the intimately personal story showcases Campion’s remarkable grasp of capturing both the grand sweep of natural beauty as well as a keen eye for the insightful details of places and personalities.
The tale concerns a a central pair of old money brothers who have taken over their family’s sprawling cattle ranch. Benedict Cumberbatch’s Phil Burbank is the perpetually scowling, relentlessly cruel older sibling who has spent the last quarter century running the business and establishing his bona fides as prickly and proficient leader of their annual cattle drive. Phil is the widely-admired alpha in leather chaps and workwear to their coterie of cattlehands, who all curry for his favor and magnify his insults to any perceived weakness in their midst.
Jesse Plemmons brings a sense of faded longing to the role of George. With a manner more aligned to his family’s wealth, the softer-spoken often-suited brother seems less of a natural fit for the dusty trail. Unlike his calloused brother, George hasn’t yet abandoned hope of finding a less disappointing existence than an eternity in a squabbling fraternal relationship. The balance of their yin-yang arrangement of daytime horseback riding and bickering bedtimes is thrown out of balance when the kinder brother strikes up a relationship with Rose, a widowed innkeeper played with steadfast sincerity by his real life partner, Kirsten Dunst.
Their marriage marks a moment of flowering happiness for the two lonesome souls, but their bliss can only wither under the heat of Phil’s ever-spiteful simmering glare. Back at the family house, Rose soon begins to sink into tragic anxiety and renewed alcoholism. When her sensitive and scholarly Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee, in a quietly commanding performance as Rose’s misfit son) arrives for a summer on the ranch he’s an immediate outlier, complete with stiff factory-fresh blue jeans, an oversized hat, and crisp white athletic trainers in place of cowboy boots.
An immediate target for Phil’s harassment, the clever teen slowly establishes curious respect from the spiteful rancher by showing a clumsy openness to learning the skills of the frontier and keen perceptiveness of the operation’s interpersonal power dynamics. Amid the day-to-day work of running a ranch with a mood set by Jonny Greenwood’s eerie score, they develop an uneasy dynamic via a delicate yet dangerously uncertain dance. Through fits and starts, it reveals the source of Phil’s bitterness and sets up a suspenseful final act. Here, Cumberbatch finds space to develop a character that initially threatened to be a single unpleasantly dull and dark note, granting what might have been an overly-mannered character a layered portrayal with hidden depths.
The film started slowly, but by the end I was completely sold. Once it reaches its midpoint, the pieces are all in place for a suspenseful character study with a series emotional and narrative twists. With Phil’s ever-present penchant for menace looming, his intentions for the teen remain opaque. From scene-to-scene, the trajectory of their interactions remain unsettlingly uncertain. In establishing tension and resolving it, Campion exhibits a mastery of control navigating the simmering suspense with exceptional dexterity to its sharp, surprising, and revelatory conclusion.
The Power of the Dog is playing in select theaters and is available on Netflix today.
An earlier version of this review appeared as part of our coverage of the Telluride Film Festival; header image credit: Kristy Griffin, courtesy Netflix.