Weekend Watch: The Power Of The Dog
Benedict Cumberbatch goes ranching with director Jane Campion
Image Credit: Netflix
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Benedict Cumberbatch is a hard-bitten rancher in Jane Campion’s new film. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite
It was always going to be a compelling combination – the raw, cinematic power of Jane Campion with Benedict Cumberbatch in a leading role. And The Power Of The Dog proves to be a truly winning mixture of the two.
This is primarily the story of Phil Burbank (Cumberbatch), a rancher in Montana who has inherited his property and trained at the shoulder of an even tougher man. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, Phil and brother George (Jesse Plemons) meet Rose (Kirsten Dunst), the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, revelling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter – all George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form: he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil’s cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?
Campion offers no easy answers and doesn’t hold your hand through this tale – there are long stretches where she lets the characters’ body language and the imposing landscape tell the story (you don’t learn the meaning of the title, for example, until late in the film, when it has true impact).
Yet it’s not just Cumberbatch at the top of his game. Smit-McPhee impresses as the nervy, introspective Peter, while Plemons and Dunst have flinty, fragile chemistry (putting aside their real-life relationship for a mismatched pair who nevertheless make a go of it). Around them, Campion builds a realistic group of ranch hands and rich folk, the better to make the world of the film feel authentic. And then there are her creative collaborators: Johnny Greenwood keeps you off balance with a score that runs amuck with piano and other instruments, suggesting Phil and others’ changing mental states, while cinematographer Ari Wegner makes stirring use of the natural world around them.
You’d never expect Campion to make a basic Western, and with The Power Of The Dog, she most certainly has not – she’s injected something fresh into well-trodden ideas of masculinity, cruelty and fear. The writer/director explores nature vs. nurture and the hard truths of tough people in difficult situations. She and her star adeptly peel back Phil Burbank’s layers, exposing the vulnerabilities beneath. It’s a film that rewards patience and understanding, but the rewards are certainly worth it.
The Power Of The Dog is on Netflix now.