After taking a break from film-making for 12 years, highly regarded writer and director Jane Campion has made her return to the movies with Netflix’s, The Power of the Dog. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, and Kodi Smit-McPhee in an achingly patient reformation of the West, and the psychophysical power plays of its star players. In a career best effort from Cumberbatch and McPhee, The Power of the Dog is a difficult movie to turn away from. Where most direct to streaming movies work well while you handle some chores, this film earns your attention and deserves it. Very few directors understand the significance of patience in their stories, and Campion’s greatest trait is the backbone of this narrative.
Set in Montana 1925, Campion charts a course in disassembling our decades long history with heroes from the wild west. All of their stature, machismo, swagger, and charm is still present within Cumberbatch’s Phil Burbank, but it is refiled under how that identity can be weaponized. We know who Clint Eastwood and John Wayne were outside of their movies, but audiences still loved the hum of their vocal cords and incredible screen presence. Cumberbatch maintains that with his own low hum of a voice that feels like an echo of past icons, but it’s within a story where that persona has been vilified. From the beginning you feel every step in his boots, the clacking of spurs, and daggers shot from his eyes. As he commands the screen, Campion uses this to submerge everyone around him. His voice booms, his physicality towers, his whistling haunts, and there is a resounding sense of fear with every step he takes to and fro. This comes from Campion and cinematographer Ari Wegner allowing his presence to exist outside the immediate image. Oftentimes you’ll hear or feel Phil looming beyond the frames, and it opens up the rolling hills of Montana where herded cattle will part like the Red Sea as he passes through, and you can’t help but feel the pressure of the film (due to his presence) taking over.
Sometimes we debate whether the beginning or ending of a film is more important, but that is neither here nor there in a film that corrals its tone and audience in a heartbeat. Today, many film-makers feel lost in trying to establish a tone and sticking with it, but Campion’s approach is devilishly detailed and immediately confident. It straddles the line between the slow burn of the West and the improv of a French film, where Campion gives the characters the ability to exist beyond the restraints of plot. It’s the type of movie that finds a way to reward the viewer by looking forward to feeling what comes next instead of waiting to see how the plot antes up. The entirety of this film is rooted in making sure that it doesn’t lose focus of what it wants to do and how it wants to get there. It’s structure like that of a novel gives this narrative a sense of punctuation and flow to its developments until the last frame of the movie.
When it comes to Oscar contention, The Power of the Dog should be in the running for anything above or below the line. Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay, Score should be shoe-in nominations. We could argue until we’re blue in the face about whether or not this film will be taking home multiple awards over other fantastic films, but the fact that it is deserving of those ranks at all is telling. With how much the market of film has been inflated with the rise of streaming services, weeding through the bad films has made it harder for those great films to rise above the rest. Thankfully, The Power of the Dog had a wonderful release strategy and earned great word of mouth to generate excitement for one of the year’s best films. Which, to be quite honest, is mildly annoying to think about. In a bygone era, a movie like this would have thrived, and made plenty of money at the theater. Grandmas would be reading 4.5 star reviews in the paper and referring it to everyone around her. Now, unless you keep close tabs on the year’s Awards season darlings, they nearly get buried under movies like the Red Notices and Free Guys of streaming services. Watching this movie made me miss how special small, intimate movies could be overwhelming with its emotion, and everyone would talk about it and make time to see it. It’d be criminal not to mention Jonny Greenwood’s score here. The sounds of a violin or guitar are unnerving as they fill the skies above Montana with an unsettled feeling. It puts the audience in a state of mind where we’re unsure of what’ll come next. In most Westerns you’d typically find the music romanticizing this era with light guitar stringing, but Greenwood discombobulates it. It accompanies the nature of Phil and the ripples he sends out with every step. It’s a score that underlines the entire movie and every narrative pivot it has throughout.
The Power of the Dog is an extraordinary achievement. With Jane Campion returning to film, there is a breath of fresh air refreshing the current slate of releases. Its strengths come from character, the world, intimacy, and patience. All of these aspects work hand in hand in exploring the tightly knit threads of emotional suppression within the icons of the West. As a singular story it’s an avenue of punctuated storytelling. As a reformation of the genre, it could be a milestone. Which is huge considering we’re in the “content era”. An era hellbent on redundant storytelling mechanics to generate emotion based only on what we want, rather than what the story deserves. This takes a genre and resurfaces it with its stereotypes but defies every trait that usually defines these stories. Cigarette smoke has never been more affectionate. An afternoon bath in an eden obscured by tree lines is a finite space to infinitely express your most human self. The honor that comes with learning to ride a horse is like earning your sword as a samurai. The bodies of these beautiful icons of the West are incised with delicate hands and forged into tools and utensils fit for survival. There is a brilliant number of emotional undercurrents within this movie that compliments each other as it finds new ways to overwhelm you with each step towards its conclusion. If you’re going to take the time to watch a movie at any point this season, a candlelit living room with a glass of wine by your side, and fresh air infiltrating that space from a nearby window as the sun sets into the evening would be the way to do it. This would play well in a theater, but since it’s been limited, take what you can get and experience The Power of the Dog. An earthen and staggering study of the flesh and how that pertains to asserting psychophysical dominance within the intoxicating plains of Montana 1925.