Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is the closest thing we have this year to a Best Picture front-runner, although its status as favorite rests on the slimmest of margins according to Gold Derby. It appeared first on more critics’ year-end lists than any other film, and received more second-place votes than any other film received first-place votes except the acclaimed Japanese-language Drive My Car. Based on a 1968 novel of the same name, it follows a tense family drama on a ranch in Montana in 1925, with long, expansive shots of the landscape alternating with close-ups of characters, an auteur’s film that builds on several great performances and the slow burn of its plot.
Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) is one of the ranchers, a tough guy who refuses to use the bathtub inside the house he shares with his daintier brother George (Jesse Plemons), whom Phil thinks is soft and often derides as “fatso.” George falls for the widow who runs the local inn, Rose (Kirsten Dunst). Rose has a son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who speaks with a lisp, makes paper flowers, and generally acts and looks un-masculine, earning him the ire of Phil, who mocks and bullies the boy, a situation that only worsens when George marries Rose, moving her into the ranch while Peter attends boarding school. Phil bullies and torments Rose as well, driving her to drink, so when Peter returns from school, the situation threatens to boil over.
Campion directs the hell out of this movie. It cuts both ways; there are moments in this film when you just know it’s being directed, especially some of the lingering shots on characters’ faces (or sometimes hands) that last a few frames too long. It works for setting scenes, in the incredible landscape shots, or for framing segments like Phil’s awkward conversation with his parents and the state’s governor, shot from behind Phil with the other characters all facing the camera beyond him. There’s a solo scene with Phil on the side of the river that is so overwrought that it took me completely out of the movie. It may be the kind of direction that wins awards, but I prefer a subtler touch.
The acting shines across the board, starting particularly with Dunst, who does the most with a limited but critical role as a suicide widow who becomes the victim of Phil’s bullying, losing herself in drink and seeing her relationship with her son deteriorate in the process. Cumberbatch delivers, as he always does, although I found his American accent a little forced – but given some of the character details, that might be deliberate. Smit-McPhee may have the most to do, even though it’s a supporting role, as his character is the only one that truly evolves over the extent of the story, and the one we understand the least at the beginning, as Peter is far more than a weak, effeminate mama’s boy.
Much commentary on The Power of the Dog has revolved around the ambiguous ending – which isn’t ambiguous at all. You might argue that what comes next is uncertain, as is true in just about every movie, and the argument that what came before the film starts is now uncertain is even stronger, but there’s no doubt in my mind what happened at the end of the story. It simply casts what preceded it in a different light, and that is one of this film’s strongest attributes. You can see this ending coming if you watch carefully, but once it occurs, it should change your interpretation of the first ¾ of the film – and even some of what we were told about its prehistory. (If you want to discuss that part, throw it in the comments – I just don’t want to spoil anything here.)
I haven’t seen enough potential nominees yet to say what nominations the film and its people deserve, but it definitely feels like a movie that voters will support. It’s a movie that puts its movie-ness out in front of you, especially in the direction, for better and for worse. I think this is a very good movie, a B+ if I assigned letter grades (as my friends Tim Grierson and Will Leitch do on their superb podcast), but could have been an A- or better with a different director, someone whose fingerprints were less evident in the finished product. In hindsight, it’s the sort of film I should have loved – cowboy noir, in a sense – but that I respected and liked instead.
I have not seen that many movies this year but this is the best one so far for me. I am usually quite good at seeing the twist of movies but this got me (even if with all the clues after the fact).
SPOILERS BELOW
Even almost to the end, I was wondering if Phil would still destroy Peter even though he cared for him just to see Rose suffer even more. All the time thinking that Phil was the ultimate manipulative self-hating asshole with a strong side of misogny. While actually Peter was and is the true alpha (unclear whether he is more than the just a very strong protector). My daughter and I are still trying to decide whether Peter forced his dad to suicide. The discussion about Peter being too strong plays very different looking back. All the clues were there. Knowing now that Annie Proulx wrote the afterword on the latest edition of the book, also sheds some light on Brokeback Mountain. Might be time to get some Thomas Savage fiction as well.
Or, did Peter kill his father?
SPOILERS FOR THE NOVEL BELOW
In the novel, Phil berates and beats John (Rose’s doctor husband and Peter’s father), who lapses into alcoholism then kills himself, giving Peter a revenge motive in addition to protecting his mother.
Just watched. Funnily enough, I’m generally very bad at spotting twists, but as a microbiologist, I figured as soon as anthrax was mentioned that someone was going to get it. At first, I thought Peter might get it when he was skinning the dead cow (and I thought he was simply dissecting again at first instead of making rawhide strips). But once Phil’s wound hit the water with the hides (another lingering shot), I knew he was a goner. The only remaining question to me was whether it was deliberate on Peter’s part, and gingerly handling the rope with gloves answered that question (in hindsight, because he was training to be a doctor, I should have assumed that he would know about the anthrax risk).
As for the father, I don’t think Peter killed him, or is a budding serial killer. He is quietly strong and coldly does what he feels needs to be done, but he does possess empathy. For example, he didn’t hesitate to kill the wounded rabbit, but I did feel that he was genuinely comforting the animal beforehand. i don’t think he’s a sociopath, but instead is a very protective son who killed the asshole who has been tormenting his mother.
Pretty easy to fake a suicide via hanging. I thought Peter though likes to see people kill themselves via their own weaknesses (which they may even see as their strengths). I think he was chuckling that Phil’s hyper-masculinity of not wearing gloves was the main reason he died (with my limited knowledge of transmission of cow anthrax). Is Peter a current serial killer or just one in training? Maybe it just hit right, but the last 30-45 minutes of this movie were awesome to me (think it was a little slow at the beginning but was worth it).
After seeing this, I’ve now seen 5 of the 10 Best Picture nominees for the Critics’ Choice Awards (I am now permanently ignoring the Golden Globes) and obviously The Oscar nominations aren’t out yet. This one didn’t disappoint me in some way like Nightmare Alley, Dune and Belfast all did in some way, nor did it exceed low expectations like King Richard, but while I think it was the best of the 5 I’ve seen so far, I still felt it wasn’t GREAT. I think the climax was rushed a bit. There was definitely too much lingering on shots. The New Zealand Montana scenery was great to look at, though. The acting was top notch. I think this may have been Dunst’s best performance. I like how they made her look subtly older than she is to make her look old enough to be Smit-McPhee’s mother, but not too old, either. Cumberbatch, Plemons and Smit-McPhee were all very good. I’d definitely vote for Smit-McPhee for Best Supporting Actor, but that category is usually won by a “showy” performance, and his may have been too subtle. I agree with the B+/A- grade. I still feel like I haven’t seen a truly great movie since before the pandemic.