The Power of the Dog
Benedict Cumberbatch is astonishingly good in Jane Campion’s intelligent, chilling neo-Western.
There will be blood: Benedict Cumberbatch
If the title, taken from the twenty-second psalm of the King James bible, feels enigmatic, then that is as it should be. A muscular mystery and ambiguity imbues every frame of Jane Campion’s adaptation of Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel. Ms Campion, only the second woman in history to be nominated for an Oscar for best director (for The Piano), is in the running again for the honour, at this stage almost a given. Her film is one of enormous grace and force, a four-hander in which each character gradually reveals more of their inner lives as the film inches towards what is an unknown finale. Although set seven years after the end of the First World War, the film is a Western, located in the wilds of Montana in 1925. It is here that we first meet the coarse, insensitive demon that is the wealthy ranch manager Phil Burbank. One’s first intuition is that Benedict Cumberbatch is the wrong man for the job, an imposter in the saddle of this Marlboro Man who castrates cattle during the day and plays mind games with his sister-in-law at night. He is a beast, and yet Cumberbatch brings something to the screen that we have not seen from him before: a palpable menace and danger. You just don’t know what the man will do next. If one has ever doubted the actor’s talent, this film should change your mind. After a while, Cumberbatch becomes so subsumed by his character that we completely forget the English actor behind the chaps and swagger.
Earlier this year, Netflix brought us a new look at the Old West with Paul Greengrass’s News of the World. Now the streaming giant boards the same bandwagon with a film featuring real cowboys but no guns. In the year that F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby and New York overtook London to become the biggest city on the planet, cattle drives continued across the North-West and women knew their place. Phil Burbank’s complete opposite is his brother George (Jesse Plemons), a gentleman who is courteous to the opposite sex and appreciates the finer things in life. Even so, the brothers share a bed on their trips away and George suffers the insults dispensed by his older sibling, who calls him ‘Fatso.’ Then, after Phil has insulted the son of the owner of a local hotel, Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), George takes her under his wing and makes tenuous steps towards a deeper friendship. Meanwhile, Rose’s son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) – who is mocked by Phil’s cowhands and dubbed a ‘nancy’ – dreams of a classical education and soon enrols in college to study medicine…
Divided into chapters with Roman numerals, The Power of the Dog exudes an air of There Will Be Blood, courtesy of its powerful central performance and dissonant score by Jonny Greenwood, an evocative, unsettling companion to the action. It would be easy to heap all the praise on Cumberbatch, but Campion allows all her contributors to shine, from her first-class actors to the sensuous cinematography and exquisite production design. She also has a terrific eye for detail and everything from the sparse dialogue to the telling close-up radiates a stamp of authenticity. And so the film continues to surprise with every scene, and even as we wait for the next revelation, the atmosphere and visuals are there to beguile.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie, Genevieve Lemon, Keith Carradine, Frances Conroy, Peter Carroll, Alison Bruce, Kenneth Radley, Alice Englert, Adam Beach.
Dir Jane Campion, Pro Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Roger Frappier, Jane Campion and Tanya Seghatchian, Screenplay Jane Campion, from the novel by Thomas Savage, Ph Ari Wegner, Pro Des Grant Major, Ed Peter Sciberras, Music Jonny Greenwood, Costumes Kirsty Cameron, Sound Dave Whitehead, Dialect coaches Joy Ellison and Jim McLarty.
New Zealand Film Commission/Cross City Films/BBC Film/See-Saw Films/Bad Girl Geek/Max Films/Brightstar-Netflix.
127 mins. New Zealand/Australia/UK/USA/Canada. 2021. Rel: 19 November 2021. Cert. 12A.
