The Power of the Dog

Jane Campion is surely the greatest Antipodean film director, only George Miller's work approaches her achievements. So it was with both hope and trepidation that I viewed her latest, an adaptation of Thomas Savage's novel, The Power of the Dog. It fits Ms. Campion almost too snugly, like a rawhide glove. Campion has fashioned the novel into a film of five acts and given the scenario some needed ambiguity. Savage's novel is overly schematic and the film suffers from this. Both works center on two brothers living on a ranch in Montana in 1925. One brother, Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) is mercurial, proactive, full of caustic comments, seething with malice and a frustrated homosexual who mourns the loss of lover and mentor, Bronco Henry. The other brother, George (Jesse Plemons), is stolid, passive, silent, but suffused with charity. When he suddenly marries a downtrodden widow named Rose (Kirsten Dunst), brother Phil reacts badly. We see him whipping a mare and calling her a "bitch" after his brother has embarked upon nuptial bliss. An example of the film's (and book's) major flaw: overstatement.

Phil does everything he can to rattle the newlyweds and Rose is soon hitting the bottle. Dunst is not a particularly convincing drunk, but is expert at conveying feminine vulnerability ( not only here, but, especially in Melancholia and the Spider Man films). When George attempts to comfort her, the viewer can't help but sympathize with his clumsy attempts at chivalry. Dunst would have made a great gamin for DW Griffith. Plemons and Cumberbatch are pluperfect for their roles. Campion has fun emphasizing their physical disparity. Phil is introduced vertically, as a ramrod straight, strutting cock caked with dirt from the range. George is introduced horizontally, reclining in a bathtub. A fleshy, clean baby lolling indolently. 

The third act brings Rose's son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to the ranch. Peter has been away at school studying to be a doctor. Phil and his cowhands ridicule the gawky teen, but Phil, seeing something in Peter's stoic countenance, begins to befriend and groom Peter. Peter, Rose, and George are all fairly passive characters, the rest of the cast are barely sketched in. Thus, the actor playing Phil must provide a vivid villain and this Cumberbatch does in spades, glowering like a prairie dog and snorting like a wild mustang. As an actor, he does seem like the parts he has been typecast as: a cold and overly rational technician. Yet, he is enough of a technician to have played Dr. Frankenstein and the monster. His American accent in The Power of the Dog is passable and he is never less than convincing whether he is in the saddle, braiding a rope or rolling a cigarette. Everybody else stands around, but he is always doing bits of business. Campion loves utilizing men's bodies and Cumberbatch, like Harvey Keitel, is game. The riverside bathing sequences with Phil and his cowhands have the beauty and homoerotic aura of a Thomas Eakins painting; particularly "The Swimming Hole". Campion, who started out as a painter, and cinematographer Ari Wegner shoot the buildings and landscape in a fashion that heightens our sense of the alienation and loneliness of life on the range. The effect is similar to the paintings of Edward Hopper or Terence Malick's Days of Heaven. 

Jonny Greenwood's score, full of pizzicato strings, and David Ward's banjo playing also work to heighten the lonesome prairie feel. New Zealand is a suitable stand-in for Montana. The Power of the Dog gains from Campion's choice to end the film more ambiguously than the novel. The film's message is obvious, if not as explicit as the novel: Campion has come to bury machismo, not to praise it. I would place the film in the middle ties of Campion's oeuvre, which I have indicated I hold in high regard. What The Power of the Dog lacks is the humor and tonal variety to leaven this ant-patriarchal screed. Something Harvey Keitel and Holly Hunter were able to provide in Campion's best work. Certainly, it is a more successful work than In the Cut, The Portrait of a Lady or Bright Star. I would put it alongside An Angel at my Table and the second season of Top of the Lake as a success, but ranking below such masterpieces as Sweetie, The Piano, Holy Smoke!, and the first season of Top of the Lake.