This is an advanced review out of the London Film Festival. The Power of the Dog will have a limited theatrical release on Nov. 17 and will stream on Netflix starting on Dec. 1.
Twelve years after the release of Bright Star, New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion returns to the big screen with this adaptation of Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel The Power of the Dog, though it’s a far cry from its romantic predecessor. In fact, this engaging two-hour psychodrama depicts a more brutal state of affairs where temperaments and egos collide to damaging effect.
Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his brother George (Jesse Plemmons) are co-owners of a cattle ranch in Montana 1925, where they’ve lived together, slept in their childhood bedroom together, and run the business together for several years. Phil is the more dominant sibling and his frequent references to the Roman mythology of Romulus and Remus only reinforces the power imbalance. Despite his gruff brother’s often relentless bullying, delivered with uncomfortable precision by Cumberbatch, the smart-suited George, well, he doesn’t grin but he certainly bears it. That’ until one day George courts Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), the young widowed mother of Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and takes her as his bride much to the outrage of his brother.
Dunst and Plemmons channel all their real-life marital bliss into their onscreen coupling. We can sense the natural affection and ease with which they navigate each other’s bodies while also displaying all the tender wonder of newlyweds. Of course, the honeymoon is short lived once Rose moves into the brothers’ ranch residence and Peter is enrolled at a boarding school to study medicine, like his late father. Often alone and contending with a housemate who really does not want her invading his space, the psychological warfare between Phil and Rose begins and Campion directs it with meticulous coolness.
Cumberbatch embodies a particularly vile sort of fragile masculinity. He’s a disdainful man who gave up urban sensibilities for rural roughness but takes pleasure in beating down those he perceives as weak because he himself is hiding his own secret weakness. There’s a real haughtiness to this character and a visceral misogyny can be sensed every time he covertly and overtly targets Rose for ridicule. A miniplot involving a grand piano is subtly built towards a painful realisation that makes Peter’s return to the story very welcome.
“When my father passed, I wanted nothing more than my mother's happiness,” he says in voiceover at the beginning of the film. “For what kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother? If I did not save her?”
Smit-McPhee’s mild-mannered demeanor might be a little too understated to effectively convince of his character’s determination to protect Rose but Dunst never fails to earn sympathy as a woman beyond the verge of a nervous breakdown. As a new manipulation takes form and additional plot devices become obviously signposted, however, the action reduces much of the tension established in the first half. The slow pace that once enhanced the uneasy tone becomes a little tedious as we wait for the inevitable events to take place. Twenty minutes could certainly have been knocked off the runtime, but it’s still a striking world to be swept up in.
Campion used her homeland to replicate the stunning vistas of Montana’s cattle country, and what a looming backdrop the various untouched plains, mountains, and woodlands provide this Western story. Cinematographer Ari Wegner captured the vast beauty of the landscape by making the most of magic-hour lighting to reinforce the mythic quality of this time and these people. Interior scenes inside the ranch house, designed by The Lord of the Rings Oscar-winner Grant Major, are coldly framed with lingering angles that only add to the unhealthy fog that hangs in the air — a fog that writhes in Jonny Greenwood’s foreboding score. Thematically, The Power of the Dog has a lot to say about the insecurity of manhood, class, and tradition and through costume designer Kirsty Cameron’s brilliant use of wardrobe, from decadent suits to plimsolls and wooly chaps, each character is set apart in a palpable way.
It’s great to have Campion back on the big screen; I just wish the second half of this movie struck up as much intrigue as the first.