It’s interesting how quickly a film can be forgotten.
Based on a novel by Thomas Savage, The Power of the Dog was one of the most anticipated films of 2021. It was considered to be a front runner for Best Picture even before it was released. Even though everyone knew 2021 was going to be the year that the Academy finally got around to giving Will Smith the Oscar, there was still a lot of excitement about the idea of Benedict Cumberbatch playing a sinister and closeted cowboy named Phil Burbank. The first teaser featured Cumberbatch being wonderfully creepy. I remember that I was certainly looking forward to it.
When it finally showed up in theaters and then premiered on Netflix, the reviews were …. respectful. They were positive but they weren’t exactly enthusiastic. This was the type of film where people noted that it was well-made and well-acted but it seemed to just be missing a little something. The film was nominated for a lot of Oscars but, in the end, it only won one, for Jane Campion’s direction. (And Campion, unfortunately, had to spend the days leading up to the ceremony dealing with a stupid controversy over a very mild joke she made to Serena and Venus Williams about how making a movie was more difficult than playing tennis.) People admired the skill that went into The Power of the Dog but, in the end, it was CODA that captured the hearts of the Academy. CODA may not have been as technically well-made as Power of the Dog but CODA was a film that made people cry. And, in 2021, voters who had spent an entire year being told that they would die a horrible death if they even dared to leave their house without putting on a mask, decided to vote with their hearts.
Taking place in 1925 Montana, The Power of the Dog centers on two prominent ranchers, the Burbank brothers. Phil Burbank is a man’s man, a bluff and hearty type who lives to conquer the land and who doesn’t have much use for women. Phil looks down on anything that he considers to be a sign of weakness, like showing emotion or making paper flowers. And yet, Phil is also fiercely intelligent and Ivy League-educated, a man who is capable of playing beautiful music but who has decided not to. Phil is cruel and manipulative. Perhaps the only person that he’s ever respected is his mentor, Bronco Henry. Phil’s admiration for Henry and his collection of gay pornography tells us all we need to know about why Phil is so obsessed with maintaining his “manly” image.
His brother, George (Jesse Plemons), is a much more sensitive soul than Phil and yet, he allows himself to be dominated by his brother. It’s not until George meets and marries a widow named Rose (Kirsten Dunst) that he starts to come out of his shell. Angry that Rose seems to be freeing George from his domination, Phil goes out of his way to make her life miserable, even preventing Rose from playing the piano. In her loneliness, Rose starts to drink. Phil, meanwhile, sets himself up as a mentor (and potentially more) for Rose’s sensitive and introverted son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who does like to make paper flowers but who also has an obsession with his late father’s medical books….
The Power of the Dog is a film that I had mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I did respect the craft that went into making the film. The Montana scenery was both beautiful and ominous. And I thought that both Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst gave award-worthy performances. Dunst, especially, really captured the pain of Rose’s life on the ranch. Plemons, meanwhile, made George’s gentle nature compelling, which is not always the easiest thing for an actor to do. At the same time, Benedict Cumberbatch was miscast as Phil and Kodi Smit-McPhee’s performance was a bit too cartoonishly creepy for the film’s ending to really be as shocking as it was obviously meant to be. Ultimately, the main problem with the film was that Campion, as a director, kept the audience from really connecting with the characters. The film was well-made but almost as emotionally remote as Phil Burbank and it left the audience feeling as if they were on the outside looking in. While the book leaves you feeling as if you’re actually in Montana and allows you into the hearts of all of the characters, even Phil, the movie leaves you feeling as if you’ve just watched a really carefully-made film that ultimately treated you as scornfully as Phil treated Rose.
Because it is such a well-made film, The Power of the Dog is a film worth watching but it’s not necessarily a film that leaves you with any desire to watch a second time. For all the excitement that the film generated before it was released, it was largely forgotten after it lost the Oscar for Best Picture to CODA.
Through the Shattered Lens 