Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog.
Jane Campion is an embarrassing hole in my cinematic experience. I’ve never seen any of her movies. I owned the soundtrack to The Piano once upon a time and somewhere along the way I picked up a blu-ray set of the first season of Top of the Lake, her crime drama with Elisabeth Moss, but I never watched that one either. If The Power of the Dog is any indication, it’s well-past time for me to dip into her filmography. Campion’s crafted a real masterpiece here, a slow-burn psycho-drama in Western garb, a surprising meditation on masculinity, sociopathy, manipulation and the survival of the fittest that goes a level or two deeper on some of those subjects than you might at first expect.
There’s something almost classical about the central quartet of characters and the way they work on each others’ nerves. The story at its most simple is about two brothers, one domineering & unstable, the other quiet & unsure; when the quiet and unsure one marries a widow and brings her and her teenage son to the ranch, the domineering brother begins a war of psychological torture on these newest victims. So far, this almost feels like something you might see in the 1950s, though the 1950s version of this story would leave out some of the sexual dynamics at play here certainly or, at least, leave them more ambiguous. But there’s a real pleasure to this plot and playing along with it, trying to figure out exactly who is up to what and why. There’s tension and suspense here almost from the jump; Phil Burbank is established as a character that is unpredictable and dangerous and as an audience we simply never know what he might do or say next and this can make as seemingly mundane an occurrence as a family dinner crackle with tension and dread.
Of course, one has to talk about the performances and those central four performances, all Oscar-nominated and rightfully so, are absolute masterclasses. Benedict Cumberbatch is quite probably career best here, playing against type as a crude and raw cowboy. He embodies in everything from his body language to his cruel and strangely empty eyes that he’s a man filled with rage; he wants control over everything and everyone in his environment and he has the alertness of a predatory animal, aware in a moment when a potential victim has wandered into his vicinity. Kirstin Dunst is also quite possibly career best as the good-hearted widow that finds herself coming unglued under the constant disdain and disrespect of Phil. She’s the figure of empathy in the film and watching her descent is heartbreaking and painful. Kodi Smit-McPhee first caught my attention a few years back in, coincidentally, another revisionist Western, Slow West, with Michael Fassbender. That was a movie that was also very invested in exploring masculine archetypes, though its tone was more comedic than, you know, dread-soaked like The Power of the Dog. I liked him a lot there, but nothing really had prepared me for the level of his performance here, which is a finely tuned, perfectly calibrated performance within a performance; watching his character take some unexpected turns and watching him nail everyone of them was very satisfying and his performance gets better with repeated viewings (I’ve seen the movie twice now and found it even more enjoyable the second time). Jesse Plemons is just always reliable, having made a career of turning in pitch perfect supporting performances in everything from Black Mass to Judas & the Black Messiah to Vice . . . well, okay, not Vice, but that wasn’t his fault. He has the least showy role here, so I was glad to see that the Academy recognized that his performance was also worthy of award nomination. His performance is the smallest and the quietest in the film, but it’s a lived-in, completely realized characterization.
I don’t want to get into spoilers here; if I did, I’d probably still be writing two hours from now. I find that last hour in particular to just have incredible thematic and emotional depth and that final scene just really unlocks everything about the movie and also, while putting a nice bow on this story, creates a feeling that there are more stories to be told about these characters. I’m not saying I want a sequel or a PCU (Power-Dog Cinematic Universe), but rather that the lives of these people are so fully realized here that they continue off screen for me. I’ve seen some people say that the movie ultimately glorifies one of the four main characters and I disagree; I think as the movie wraps that character in particular seems poised to go down a very dangerous and frightening path. Will I talk about this more if someone wants to go behind spoiler tags or into PM? You bet I will.
Anyway, end of the day, I don’t understand the people who say that this movie is dull or that nothing happens in this movie. Unless, of course, they’ve genuinely just missed a couple of crucial plot details; second time around I watched this movie with someone else and when it ended, she had missed the significance of the ultimate fate of one of the main characters. She remarked on the ending seeming random and anti-climactic, until I pointed out to her what had really happened in those last couple of scenes. So I suppose the film is ambiguous enough that if you look away at the wrong time only a couple of times, it’s possible for a viewer to feel that, you know, the ending is rather random and unsatisfying. Regardless, I think it manages to be a fantastic character study while also having a multi-layered plot; it explores its themes in a smart way and creates a real sense of emotional dread. I’ve failed to mention Jonny Greenwood’s atonal and atypical score; it’s key to the movie in my opinion and the atmosphere of unease it has. It’s beautifully shot and brilliantly acted. It’s a hell of a movie and one I think will stand the test of time. 4 stars.
tl;dr – gripping & unsettling psycho-drama explores masculinity & sociopathy in a smart & multi-layered way; quartet of truly excellent performances creates a rich character-study. 4 stars.