The Power Of The Dog
“The Power of the Dog” is a tactile, sensual and stirring film.
Benedict Cumberbatch in Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog
It’s a movie about a barren land, with barren people. Where everything is grasping for life. It is a drama about suppression, about destroying the beautiful and how it can give birth to something benign that turns to be quite dangerous.
And it is a story about the love of a child for their mother. In many ways this film is the direct opposite of Jane Campion’s other masterpiece, The Piano, in which the child is the cause of the misery. In this one, the child looks miserable but is a dark source of salvation.
Taking place in Montana in 1925, the stunningly shot film, begins with brothers Phil and George Burbank, and the run of their ranch. In this film, Phil, is the miserly trouble maker, that looks to make everyone as unhappy as he is. We later find out why.
Into their lives, George brings, Rose Gordon, Kirsten Dunst, in a career defining role. Rose marries George, in part to be able to send her son, Peter to school.
And so here they are, these fragile characters, in their own bubbles, attempting to live in this brutally beautiful landscape. Phil finds pleasure in disturbing Rose’s peace of mind, and no more so, when he begins to seduce her son away from her. Which sends Rose down a spiral of alcoholism.
This is one of my favorite films of 2021. And Jane Campion brings a unique vision to the entire process. Every shot is sensual, because the characters are pining for something that exists in their surroundings but can’t quite grasp themselves. She recognizes the primal need to exist in every shot, right down to the fly on a bull’s rump. Very few filmmakers alive understand how to use a slow touch to titillate and reveal. It is a movie about both the pleasures and damages caused by restraint. All of this sublimely underscored by Jonny Greenwood, which avoids the florid for something far more truthful and shattering.
The acting is superb across the board, with Cumberbatch, Dunst, and Smit-McPhee giving Oscar worthy performances. But I found Dunst to be the stand out, in a performance that is a revelation.
And the ending is perfection, giving us both the ending of a story and the beginning of a much more devastating one, which we get to imagine.
