power of the dog movie review new york times

The Power of the Dog

Benedict Cumberbatch is perhaps not the first actor that springs to mind when thinking of casting a Western, but under the direction of Jane Campion in her stellar drama “The Power of the Dog,” he’s just what the movie needs. Covered head-to-toe in dirt for most of the film, he embodies a character in a masculine crisis. He has a constant need to prove he’s the roughest, toughest leader in a wolf pack of cowboys, possibly to hide his adoration and affection for the long-gone man who taught him more than just how to ride a horse. Phil (Cumberbatch) dominates the pecking order of any room he’s in through cruel remarks and an irreverence towards authority. His eyes are cold as mountain air; his face is a stone façade against the world; his tongue is as sharp as a snake fang. Gone are the quirky and endearing characters that Cumberbatch has played in the past. Here, coiled like a predator in wait, Cumberbatch is perhaps more fearsome than as his deep-voiced villains in “The Hobbit” and “ Star Trek Into Darkness .” He moves through the movie like an unsheathed knife, cutting anyone unlucky enough to get close. 

Cumberbatch’s Phil is the rough and tumble Remus to the movie’s kinder Romulus, his brother George ( Jesse Plemons ). Where Phil is calloused and mean, George is gentler and more soft-spoken, often at the mercy of his brother’s teasing. At a stop at a restaurant, Phil harshly taunts Rose ( Kirsten Dunst ), a widow running the joint, and her son Peter ( Kodi Smit-McPhee ), who Phil bullies until Peter walks off the job and leaves his mother in tears. George reaches out to comfort her, and ends up falling for her. This enrages Phil, who takes the loss of his brother to a woman quite badly. He steps up his intimidation of Rose and Peter, like intensifying heat with a magnifying glass. That is, until Peter tries to spend more time with Phil. The unlikely camaraderie unlocks a number of secrets and hidden intentions, changing everyone’s relationship to each other. 

Using New Zealand for 1920s Montana, writer/director Campion sets this quiet-yet-angry Western against a harsh background that’s both beautiful and imposing. For Peter, it presents a hardened masculinity he must learn to overcome. For Phil, this windswept nature is an escape from the life of privilege he wants no part of. It is on the back of a horse that he found himself, and it is on those cow paths, mountain passes, and hidden rivers that he learned to disguise his desires. 

Campion’s adaptation of Thomas Savage ’s novel of the same name strips out many details from the book and takes it back to its rawest in-the-moment elements. Backstory is filled in quickly and briefly in dialogue, if it’s ever filled in at all. There are no flashbacks, just a few scenes of characters sharing their past with each other. Campion and her cinematographer Ari Wegner write whole character studies in their close-ups. From this perspective, we get a sense of what the cast may never verbalize. It’s in the pained and panicked look on Rose’s face when she begins drinking after another round of Phil’s harassment. It’s in the steely glares Peter shoots Phil when he’s being picked on. It’s in George’s downward gazes at the floor, knowing he is helpless to stop his brother’s torments. It’s in the rage on Phil’s face as he realizes his tight-knit relationship with his brother is coming to an end with George’s marriage to Rose. It’s an approach Campion has used in her earlier works like “ An Angel at My Table ” and “ The Piano ,” the latter of which follows a main character, Ada ( Holly Hunter ), who cannot speak, but uses her face and sharply gestured sign language to get her point across. There is no doubt when Ada has something to share in “The Piano,” and through Phil’s movement, body language and reactions, Cumberbatch also speaks volumes with every scowl and every defiant smile. 

Many of Campion’s movies also focus on shifting power dynamics between characters: who has power, who loses it, and how they gain it back. Sometimes, this is in the form of women fighting to be heard, like in “ Sweetie ” or “ Bright Star .” But in “The Power of the Dog,” Rose’s entrance into the family is perceived as a threat, a challenge to established order. Phil extends her no kindness, slyly creating a toxic environment that poisons her, in order to retain power over his brother, their business and who is in charge around their stately mansion. She’s like an existential threat to him: she represents the sex he doesn’t desire and someone he doesn’t yet have under control. The truce between Phil and Peter unnerves Rose more, afraid of the influence he may have on her son. She loses herself in the bottle, just as Peter stands up to Phil’s bullying. It’s a riveting dance between them all, waiting to see how it all will end once the music stops.

Speaking of the music, “The Power of the Dog” contains some of the best use of music in a movie this year. Jonny Greenwood ’s work underlines and emphasizes many of the actions playing out on-screen. String compositions twist and turn as sharply as the movie’s plot, like a jagged undercurrent pulling our emotions in certain directions. The sounds of sweet violins sour, while softer notes swell into intense waves. The changes are quick, a nod to the tense dynamics between the brothers, the widow, and her son. Many of the songs use plucked strings to create an air of uneasy anticipation, as if cantering into danger. Rows of violins join in to heighten this uneasy feeling, almost awakening our fight or flight response. The music doesn’t stray too far from the prototypical Western sound yet adds these extra layers of foreboding throughout.

“The Power of the Dog” revels in this suspenseful place much like Phil prefers working with cattle than dealing with high society. Though the movie starts at a gentle pace, it doesn’t stay there long. There is so much layered desire, hatred, and domination that soon comes rolling out to disturb everyone’s uneasy peace. The game of wits between Phil and everyone else is a chilling one to watch, and it’s exactly the kind of end-of-the-year movie to finish things with a bang.

In theaters today and on Netflix on December 1st.

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

• Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank
• Kirsten Dunst as Rose Gordon-Burbank
• Frances Conroy as Old Lady
• Jesse Plemons as George Burbank
• Kodi Smit-McPhee as Peter Gordon
• Keith Carradine as Governor Edward
• Thomasin McKenzie as Lola
• Genevieve Lemon as Mrs. Lewis
• Adam Beach as Edward Nappo

Cinematographer

• Jane Campion
• Jonny Greenwood
• Peter Sciberras

Writer (based on the novel by)

• Thomas Savage

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Rugged masculinity takes a dark turn in 'The Power of the Dog'

Justin Chang

Benedict Cumberbatch is the picture of rugged American masculinity in The Power of the Dog. Kirsty Griffin/Netflix hide caption

Benedict Cumberbatch is the picture of rugged American masculinity in The Power of the Dog.

The great New Zealand writer-director Jane Campion has long been acclaimed for her films about the complex inner lives of women, notably in 19th-century dramas like The Portrait of a Lady , Bright Star and especially The Piano. Her tense and gripping new movie, The Power of the Dog , thus marks something of a departure. It stars a superb Benedict Cumberbatch as a 1920s Montana rancher named Phil Burbank who's the very picture of rugged American masculinity.

Phil seems at one with the land and all its living creatures, whether he's riding a horse, leading a cattle drive or bathing in a muddy river. He's also a sadist, a fascinatingly conflicted monster, and one of the scariest characters you're likely to meet this year.

The movie, which Campion adapted from a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, looks a lot like a Western, full of somber gray skies and craggy vistas that are magnificently shot by the cinematographer Ari Wegner. But it's more like a tightly wound psychological thriller that just happens to play out on an epic canvas, and it's full of secrets and surprises that it's slow to reveal.

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'sherlock' star benedict cumberbatch saves cyclist from muggers.

We first meet Phil and his brother, George, played by Jesse Plemons, who's his opposite in every respect: gentlemanly, polite, neatly dressed. The two run a ranch together and get along fine for the most part, with George genially absorbing every casual insult, like "fatso," that Phil throws his way.

But everything changes one evening when they're traveling with their men and stop for dinner at an inn. They're served by the owner, Rose Gordon, played by Kirsten Dunst, and her son, Peter, played by the Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee. As they're being waited on, Phil sneers at the intricately cut paper flowers decorating the table, which Peter made, and then mocks the boy's neat and precise manners.

Rose is devastated by Phil's humiliating attack on her son, and George, who knows all too well how cruel his brother can be, is there to comfort her. They soon fall in love and marry. It's worth noting that Dunst and Plemons are a couple in real life, which makes the tenderness of their on-screen marriage all the more touching.

George proves a considerate and generous husband, even paying for Peter to attend medical school. But he's unable to protect his new wife from the wrath of his brother. When Rose moves onto the ranch, Phil dismisses her as a gold digger and launches a vicious campaign of psychological abuse, driving Rose into depression and alcoholism.

The Power of the Dog really hits its stride in these moments; nothing overtly terrible happens, but the emotional violence that Phil inflicts on everyone in his midst is brutal to watch. Campion draws out the tension with exquisite subtlety, aided by an unnerving score by Jonny Greenwood and by four actors who could not be more ideally cast.

Few performers can break your heart like Dunst, whose face becomes a landscape of pain as all Rose's initial happiness drains away . Plemons is sympathetic as the decent but ultimately helpless George. In some ways the most intriguing character here is Peter, who eventually returns home from school to visit his mother and once more becomes a target of Phil's scorn. But Smit-McPhee's watchful, intelligent presence suggests that Peter is a more formidable adversary than he appears.

Before long, Peter and Phil strike up an odd sort of friendship, with Phil teaching Peter how to ride a horse and other cowboy rites of passage. But both men's motives remain ambiguous.

Cumberbatch has always been a marvelous actor, but he simply outdoes himself here. It's remarkable how easily this elegant British heartthrob, known for playing brainy types like Sherlock Holmes, Alan Turing and, yes, Doctor Strange, slips into the boots and spurs of a man of the Old West. But without giving away too much, there are deeper, more subversive layers to Cumberbatch's performance that feel consistent with Campion's past explorations of gender.

It's been 11 years since Campion made a new movie, though in the meantime she's co-written and co-directed two seasons of the crime drama series Top of the Lake . It's wonderful to have her back making gorgeously unsettling psychodramas in which the wildness of her landscapes matches the inner turbulence of her characters. And speaking of landscapes: The movie was actually shot in New Zealand, which does a pretty good job of passing as Montana. It's just one more way The Power of the Dog reminds us that appearances can be deceiving, and the most startling truths are often hiding in plain sight.

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“The Power of the Dog” is Jane Campion’s Anti-Western

The new film from Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog,” is based on Thomas Savage’s novel of the same name, published in 1967. The title echoes the Twenty-second Psalm, in the King James Bible: “Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.” As the movie ends, you can’t help asking yourself: Who exactly is the dog, and who’s the darling?

The year is 1925, and the place is Montana, which is played onscreen by Campion’s native New Zealand. Whether it fulfills the role convincingly—not least in regard to trees and vegetation—is a question that only Montanans will be qualified to answer. What’s undeniable is the glory of the hills, camel-colored and weirdly folded, that loom in the backdrop of the tale. We are in ranching country, though where we are, at any given moment, isn’t always clear; it takes a while to get one’s bearings, economic as much as geographical. As Annie Proulx has noted, in an afterword to Savage’s book, few of us can understand “the combination of hard physical work and quiet wealth that characterized some of the old ranches.”

This is especially true of the Burbank clan. Their bastion is a mansion, richly furnished, with dark wood panelling, like a gentlemen’s club. But look at the gentlemen. George Burbank (Jesse Plemons) is stout, compliant, and ill at ease; even on horseback, he wears a black suit. By contrast, his brother, Phil ( Benedict Cumberbatch ), cuts a lean and leathery figure and spurns the trappings of his affluence, preferring the great outdoors. We learn that he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale, yet refinement of any sort disgusts him; when the governor of the state comes to dine, George requests that Phil clean himself up beforehand. No luck. As Phil says, “I stink and I like it.”

This rub of the rough against the smooth—of wilder ways confronting more cultivated ones—will be familiar to followers of Campion. Who can forget “The Piano” (1993), and the sight of Holly Hunter, in her bonnet and her billowing skirt, being borne ashore, amid a surge of waves, and deposited on the alien sands of New Zealand? As for ill-matched siblings, they were crucial to Campion’s début film, “Sweetie” (1989), whose title character trampled on the life of her sister. Yet something about the clashes in “The Power of the Dog” feels overworked and set up. On a prosaic level, I never quite believed in George and Phil as brothers, and the movie’s closeups tend to belabor a symbolic point: artificial flowers, crafted from cut paper; a hand caressing the curves of a well-buffed saddle; a bull calf being castrated. On the page, mind you, Savage describes the discarded testicles being tossed onto the fire, where they explode like popcorn, so moviegoers get off lightly.

The pivot of the plot is Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst), a widow who runs a boarding house. She has a son, an otherworldly creature named Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee); as thin as a sapling, and flitting to and fro in white shoes, he is the one who makes the flowers. When the ranchers stop at Rose’s place for a meal, Phil taunts Peter, to the amusement of the tough guys, and to Rose’s evident dismay. George, abashed by his brother’s bluntness, offers his apologies to Rose, and that’s not all. Reader, he marries her! The upshot is that Rose and Peter move in with George and Phil. The latter, as you might imagine, despises the intrusion; he calls Rose “a cheap schemer” to her face. Campion now has her principal characters where she wants them.

And there they stay. Do not be misled by the setting into construing this movie as a Western. It’s more of a chamber piece with chaps, largely roam-free, and you soon realize that it ain’t going anywhere. Rather, it’s sticking around and digging into the various cruelties and miseries on display, like a surgeon exploring a wound. Rose, humiliated by Phil, and socially out of her depth, takes to drink, her features increasingly ruddied by liquor and tears. (It’s a major role for Dunst, yet so oppressive as almost to grind her down.) George dwindles from view. Phil, for reasons that he chooses to conceal, draws unexpectedly close to Peter, and takes him out riding. Peter, in return, has secret ambitions of his own.

One way to measure “The Power of the Dog” is to lay it beside Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden” (1955)—another saga of fraternal rivalry, laden with Biblical overtones. (Kazan’s leading man, James Dean, reads out the Thirty-second Psalm.) Both films are too inward-turning, and too sombrely shadowed, to count as epics, despite the grandeur of their landscapes. Why, then, in terms of momentum, should “East of Eden” be so much the stronger? Perhaps because of Dean, and the twisted, unslackening, near-laughable grip of his presence; he doesn’t seem to know what he’s going to do next, and the suspense is contagious. Though Cumberbatch, too, can be compelling, and though you constantly wonder what is stored in reserve behind his wintry gaze, he is at heart a master of urbanity, and not everyone will be convinced that he’s truly at home on the range. Still, you should certainly seek out the movie, and relish its central standoff: Rose, downstairs, stumbling through an awkward tune on a piano, versus Phil, plucking away on his banjo, without mercy, in a room overhead. The scene is as tense as the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Guess who wins.

There are helicopter parents, and then there are tennis parents. Tennis parents are more like the choppers in “Apocalypse Now” (1979), overcoming every little setback with the help of napalm and Wagner. Even among tennis parents, however, few have matched the firepower of Richard Williams, the father of Venus and Serena Williams . He is now the hero of the modestly titled “King Richard,” a new film from Reinaldo Marcus Green, which follows Venus and Serena—played with robust good humor, and stinging forehands, by Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton, respectively—from girlhood to the brink of stardom. Yet the movie isn’t really about them. How come?

Because Richard is played by Will Smith . It’s one of Smith’s all-consuming performances. He’s often alone in the frame, and, when other folks do cluster around, he remains the hub of dramatic attention. Hunching his shoulders, lowering his head, and thrusting out his jaw, Smith looks ever-primed for the fray—startlingly so, because we know how loose and gangly he can be. He still gets plenty of laughs, but there’s a militant edge to the comedy. Simple shots of him, at the wheel of an old camper van, show a soul no longer capable of repose. At night, Richard works as a security guard, and carries a weapon; by day, he favors tennis shorts and sneakers. Either way, he’s like a soldier who won’t get out of his uniform. The call to action can come at any time.

Richard and his wife, Brandi (Aunjanue Ellis), live in Compton with their five daughters. I kept hoping to hear the other three girls talk among themselves about Venus and Serena, but no such scene occurs. (Any whisper of disunity would be inimical to the purpose of the film; solidarity is all.) The domestic regime is stern, with obligatory straight A’s at school. Tennis practice continues even in a downpour—volleys and smashes only, since the balls won’t bounce. Now and then, Richard falls foul of local thugs. “Daddy got beat up again,” the girls report, with a sigh. When cops and social services come by to check on the family, Richard responds by commanding his kids to spell the word “civilization.” He declares, “We got future doctors, and lawyers, plus a couple of tennis stars in this house.” For Venus and Serena, he has a particular plan. It runs to seventy-eight pages. He wrote it before they were born.

The movie’s big reveal is withheld until the end credits, in which Venus and Serena Williams are named as executive producers. So much for objectivity. Yet audiences know when they’re being sold something, and they would balk at “King Richard” if it were merely a slab of promotional P.R. As it is, when I saw the film, with a big crowd, you could sense people leaning into the story and feeding off its verve. The atmosphere that is brewed by Green and his director of photography, Robert Elswit, is a blend of the aggressive and the benign. Nothing is more welcoming or more sun-smothered, for example, than the Florida tennis academy to which Venus and Serena are invited by a leading coach, Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), with their sisters and their parents in tow; no sooner do they arrive, however, than Richard announces that Venus will not be competing on the junior circuit. She will bide her time and then, at his behest, turn pro.

Is there madness in Richard’s method? Unquestionably. Even if he began by deliberately pushing two of his children into a super-white sport, could he honestly have foreseen that they would indeed conquer the field? Surely not. What makes Green’s film so persuasive is that other characters—above all, the redoubtable Brandi Williams—are alive to everything that’s absurd and overbearing, as well as noble, in the hero’s cause. “You are the most stubborn person I’ve met in my life,” one guy says to Richard. “And I coach McEnroe .” ♦

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Benedict cumberbatch in jane campion’s ‘the power of the dog’: film review.

Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee also star in this study of blistering family tensions in the American West, adapted from Thomas Savage's novel.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Twelve years after her last feature, Jane Campion makes a thrilling return with The Power of the Dog , a work as boldly idiosyncratic, unpredictable and alive with psychological complexity as anything in the revered director’s output. For a filmmaker who has predominantly focused on forensic investigations of the female psyche, this riveting adaptation of the 1967 Thomas Savage novel represents an assured thematic shift to corrosive masculinity and repressed sexuality. The intimately uncomfortable drama is a chamber piece on an epic canvas, driven by transfixing performances from Benedict Cumberbatch , Kirsten Dunst , Jesse Plemons and, in a stunning breakout turn, young Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee .

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Following a festival tour that begins with a Venice competition launch, the film will be released in theaters and on Netflix in the fall.

The Power of the Dog

Venue : Venice Film Festival (Competition) Cast : Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie, Genevieve Lemon, Peter Carroll, Alison Bruce, Keith Carradine, Frances Conroy Director-screenwriter : Jane Campion

Campion has always been an expressive visual filmmaker, getting the most out of collaborations with a number of talented cinematographers. Remote country on New Zealand’s South Island stands in for sparsely populated 1925 Montana in starkly beautiful images captured by DP Ari Wegner ( Zola , True History of the Kelly Gang ), notable for their striking depth of field and the hypnotic play of light over the mountains. Those aspects reward the big-screen experience, though the thorny psychodrama of four people isolated in a sprawling landscape will be equally enthralling to streaming viewers.

Though Campion made the New York City thriller In the Cut and dissected the social mores of Americans in Europe in The Portrait of a Lady , this kind of fine-grained Americana is entirely new to her and will no doubt draw fresh attention to Savage’s mostly forgotten novel. The time and place are superbly evoked in Grant Major’s production design, dominated by a cattle ranch homestead reminiscent of the Sam Shepard character’s in Days of Heaven , only darker and more oppressively Gothic with its heavy oak interiors, surrounded by grassy plains and backed by mountains.

The place is home to wealthy ranchers the Burbank brothers, who could not be less alike. Phil (Cumberbatch), with his coarse vernacular, is a rugged man of the land, coating himself in mud and swimming naked in a secluded river retreat rather than using the house bath, as his gentlemanly brother, George (Plemons), recommends. While Phil is seldom seen in anything but boots and spurs and dirty sheepskin chaps, George is nattily dressed at all times in tweedy three-piece suits and bow ties. (The character-defining costumes are by Kirsty Cameron.) He takes care of the business side of the ranch, leaving the physical labor to Phil and his cowhands.

They still share a bedroom like children, and “Georgie boy” seems almost immune to the sneering taunts of his brother. Any discussion of their citified parents, referred to as the Old Gent (Peter Carroll) and the Old Lady (Frances Conroy), suggests there has never been much love in the family. Only when Phil speaks of “Bronco Henry,” who taught them the ranching trade and died two decades earlier, does he soften into a kind of haunted reverence that takes on deeper meaning as the story progresses.

In a scene of knife-edge tension early on, George, Phil and the latter’s rowdy crew stop for dinner on a market day at the Red Mill, another eye-catching structure of weather-beaten splendor from designer Major that looks like something out of a Walker Evans photograph. While the restaurant’s pianola and its proximity to the local saloon attract drunks and whores, widowed proprietress Rose (Dunst) strives to keep the place respectable, helped only by her sensitive beanpole son, Peter (Smit-McPhee), who waits tables and makes intricate paper flowers to decorate them.

Such signs of gentility in a place that seems hostile to refinement bring out the worst of Phil’s bullying. His cruel mockery of Peter’s perceived effeminate delicacy, played up for the benefit of his adoring cowhands, prompts the young man to retreat into nervous behavioral tics while reducing Rose to tears. George stays behind after the dinner to apologize for his brother and comfort Rose, marking the beginnings of a gentle romance.

Leaning into the material’s literary origins, Campion breaks up the story into five chapters, marked only by Roman numerals. An unspecified amount of time has passed when the third of them begins, and George’s courtship of Rose has proceeded away from the eyes of his mean-spirited brother. Phil is quietly enraged to learn of their marriage only after the fact, when George brings Rose to live at the mansion. Meanwhile, Peter has begun medical school, following in the footsteps of his doctor father, who took his own life. Phil shares his disgust with his brother in a letter to their mother: “Got himself tangled up with a suicide widow and her half-cooked son.”

George, by contrast, visibly lightens up with the introduction of warmth into his life. “I just wanted to say how nice it is not to be alone,” he tells Rose in one of several scenes where the rapport between real-life partners Dunst and Plemons adds lovely authenticity to the depth of feeling between their characters.

Phil’s malicious campaign to make Rose feel unwelcome and undermine her stability begins by openly calling her a “cheap schemer” and proceeds by ridiculing her nervous efforts at the piano George has purchased to surprise his new wife. Plucking out the same piece — Strauss’ “Radetzky March” — on his banjo with greater dexterity, Phil takes pleasure in signs of her unraveling as she begins drinking, hiding bottles of bourbon around the house. He deliberately humiliates her at a dinner George throws for the governor and his wife (Keith Carradine and Alison Bruce), where Rose also meets her visiting parents-in-law for the first time.

The mounting dread embedded in the narrative and enhanced by the increasingly agitated strings of Jonny Greenwood’s atmospheric score — which is right up there with the Radiohead musician’s powerful work on There Will Be Blood — seems to have set the story on an inevitable trajectory toward sorrow. But Campion keeps shifting expectations, even after Peter comes to stay on his summer break, giving Phil a new target for his cunning psychological assaults.

This is where Smit-McPhee’s layered characterization reveals intriguing surprises; the actor’s edgy scenes with Cumberbatch are among the movie’s most nuanced. When Phil takes Peter under his wing, teaching him to ride a horse and braiding a special rope from cowhide strips for him, it seems at first like a tactic to further distress Rose and ridicule her son for sport. But as Peter stumbles onto evidence that provides a window into Phil’s bitterness, the younger man begins to grow more confident around his unlikely mentor.

The queer undercurrents that ripple throughout the drama are most acutely felt in the taut final chapters. You sense clearly that something terrible is destined to happen, but right up until the startling conclusion, the nature of that tragedy remains unclear. Both Cumberbatch and Smit-McPhee feed the ambiguity over whether hardened Phil has opened himself up to genuine affection or is playing a vicious game — and whether Peter, who has more intelligence and human understanding than anyone gives him credit for, has discovered an affinity with the older man or is manipulating him.

This is an exquisitely crafted film, its unhurried rhythms continually shifting as plangent notes of melancholy, solitude, torment, jealousy and resentment surface. Campion is in full control of her material, digging deep into the turbulent inner life of each of her characters with unerring subtlety.

Cumberbatch hasn’t had a role that makes such stimulating use of his unique qualities as an actor in years. His Phil is a darkly charismatic man, more cultured than he cares to show. He’s cold almost to a reptilian degree but damaged and yearning for something beneath his unfeeling exterior, which emerges in the sad sensuality of his scenes alone by the river. Dunst makes Rose as fragile as fine porcelain, adhering to codes of womanhood imprinted on the era; her spiral into alcoholism and paranoia is quite shattering, as is her palpable fear of every interaction with Phil. Plemons’ George is soft-spoken and even-tempered, initially making him seem weak, but there’s strength and integrity in his refusal to descend to his brother’s toxic level even if his inattention to his wife’s unhappiness points to his unfamiliarity with the workings of a loving relationship. And Smit-McPhee is simply extraordinary, maintaining Peter’s mystery until the very end.

Among the supporting cast, Carradine brings indelible associations with the American West to his brief appearance, while Thomasin McKenzie is a lively presence as a young maid, and longtime Campion collaborator Genevieve Lemon (the star of the director’s first feature, Sweetie ) makes the Burbanks’ housekeeper a no-nonsense woman unfazed by her employers’ odd ways.

The title of Savage’s novel comes from Psalm 22:20 in the Bible: “Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.” That Old Testament prayer for the protection of loved ones from enemies has clear correlations within the story. But the film’s enigmatic qualities are fueled also by a rock formation in the mountains behind the homestead, which only Phil is able to see, until Peter immediately identifies the outline of a barking dog. That mystical element connects the human drama of these four conflicted people to the landscape itself in ways that echo the classic Western while also providing a bracingly modern take on the genre.

Full credits

Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition) Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie, Genevieve Lemon, Peter Carroll, Alison Bruce, Keith Carradine, Frances Conroy Distributor: Netflix Production companies: See-Saw Films, Bad Girl Creek, Max Films Director-screenwriter: Jane Campion Based on the novel by Thomas Savage Producers: Jane Campion, Tanya Seghatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Roger Frappier Executive producers: Simons Gillis, Rose Garnett, John Woodward Director of photography: Ari Wegner Production designer: Grant Major Costume designer: Kirsty Cameron Music: Jonny Greenwood Editor: Peter Sciberras Casting: Nikki Barrett, Tina Cleary, Nina Gold

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‘The Power of the Dog’ Review: Jane Campion’s Psychodramatic Western Is Impeccably Crafted but Lacks the Major Voices of ‘The Piano’

Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons play brothers dueling over the theme of tolerance.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Jane Campion is a great filmmaker who has always marched to a different (at times dissonant) drummer. But I suspect I’m far from alone when I say that I’ve long yearned to see her make another movie that can speak with the populist poetry and passion of “The Piano” — her most famous and successful film, and also (tellingly) her most artful. I raise the issue because “ The Power of the Dog ,”  Campion’s eighth feature in 30 years, is a frontier Western made with a stately and austere poker-faced modernist classicism, and roiling undercurrents, that sometimes bring the earlier film to mind. It’s a movie in which Campion, who shot it in her native New Zealand, works with a full-scale, at times painterly precision and control. It’s also a socially conscious psychodrama that builds, over time, to a full boil.

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Yet there’s a key difference between this movie and “The Piano.” In the earlier film, Holly Hunter played a woman who chose not to speak but declaimed her spirit with the most enthralling inner voice of any movie character that year. In “The Power of the Dog,” the characters have secrets, buried motives, hidden drives, yet the filmmaker treats them all, in a certain way, like puzzle pieces, fitting them into a grand scheme that connects with the audience in an overly programmatic way. The film’s message is unassailable, but that isn’t the same thing as devastating, which is what “The Power of the Dog” wants to be.

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Reaching back to a Hollywood tradition built on films like “East of Eden,” and also to Terrence Malick’s rural art-house parable “Days of Heaven,” Campion, who wrote the script (based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel), centers the tale on two adult brothers who have spent enough of their lives intertwined to know just how different they are. The movie is set in 1925 in the mountain wilds of Montana, where the Burbank brothers, Phil ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) and George ( Jesse Plemons ), preside over a sprawling property on which they raise livestock and train horses. They’re successful ranchers, with money in the bank and a farmhouse mansion done up in mahogany paneling, with art on the walls right next to the trophy heads.

But these two are fatal opposites. Phil, played by Cumberbatch as a drawling cowboy monomaniac with a mean leer that makes him seem at times like an evil Dennis Quaid, is a haughty macho customer who rolls his own cigarettes, taunts his brother by calling him “Fatso,” and likes nothing better than to ride the range and go boozing and whoring with his stable of hired hands. He’s also got an over-the-top fixation on Bronco Henry, the cowboy from their youth who taught them everything they know. By contrast, George, played by Plemons in bow ties and bowler hats, is a mild officious type who’s the civilized superego to his brother’s rawhide id.

The tension between these two is already simmering when fate, in the middle of a cattle drive, takes them to a rooming house run by Rose (Kirsten Dunst). She’s a widow with a teenage son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), an aspiring medical student who speaks with a lisp, carries his folded wine napkin just so, and has a yen for crafting intricate fake flowers out of paper. As the cowhands sit down to their fried-chicken dinner, Phil zeroes in on the slender boy like a predator. “Ain’t them purdy,” he says of the flowers, then mocks the boy’s lisp with savage sarcasm. The contempt on display needs no explanation, but George, while he stays silent, is of a different mind. He’s not a homophobic macho in chaps. He’s a courtly nerd who knows he’s approaching middle age, and he makes a decision that shocks Phil and gets sprung on the audience so that we’re caught off guard too. He pays a visit to Rose, and the next thing you know the two are married. He’s bringing Rose and Peter to live on the ranch. Which, from Phil’s point-of-view, kind of throws a monkey wrench into their manly cowboy paradise.

“The Power of the Dog” starts off as a testy romantic fable of sibling rivalry, with Phil, in his crafty way, hellbent on destroying the domestic tranquility that his brother has found, and that he doesn’t believe in. It’s not clear that George believes in it either. He buys Rose a baby grand piano and tries to give her the life she wants, but he’s not around enough to make that stick, and she turns to nipping from bottles of bourbon she hides around the house. Kirsten Dunst does depressive fragility with consummate grace, but I wish the movie gave her something to play besides tremulous ragged despair. I also wish that Jesse Plemons, after a good first act or two, didn’t fade out of the center of the story.

The movie becomes a kind of showdown between Phil and the people he sees as interlopers. Rose ups the ante when she gives Phil’s cowhides away to their Native American neighbors; it seems that Phil doesn’t like indigenous traders any more than he likes lisping flower makers. There are good sinister scenes like one in which Phil sits playing the banjo, mocking the piano piece that Rose is rehearsing in nervous anticipation of a dinner party with the governor (played by a wily Keith Carradine). The crucial twist is that Phil, under his nastiness, is playing out his own buried longing. That reverence for Bronco Henry? It starts to look like an eroticized obsession — or maybe the twisted response to abuse. When Phil, to our surprise, starts to take Peter “under his wing” (and starts to weave a phallic rodeo braid), we’re primed to look for dark echoes of that relationship.

All of this should build, slowly and inexorably, in force and emotion. But for a film that’s actually, at heart, rather tidy and old-fashioned in its triangular gamesmanship, “The Power of the Dog” needed to get to a more bruising catharsis. In its crucial last act, the film becomes too oblique. Cumberbatch has the showpiece role, and he’s good, but there’s not enough dramatic layering to Phil’s repression and violence. Campion has made a movie whose dramatic upshot is to denounce homophobia — an unassailable message. But maybe, at this point, not a revelatory one. “The Piano” was wrenching because it channeled the passion that social oppression couldn’t hold back. “The Power of the Dog” is more like an artful diagram of passion.

Reviewed at Digital Arts, Aug. 19, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 125 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release, in association with New Zealand Film Commission, Cross City Films, BBC Film, and Brightstare, of a See-Saw Films, Bad Girl Creek, Max Films production. Producers: Jane Campion, Tanya Seghatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Roger Frappier. Executive producers: Simon Gillis, Rose Garnett, John Woodward.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Jane Campion. Camera: Ari Wegner. Editor: Peter Sciberras. Music: Jonny Greenwood.
• With: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie, Genevieve Lemon, Peter Carroll, Alison Bruce, Keith Carradine, Frances Conroy.

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‘The Power of the Dog’ Review: Jane Campion Creates a Magnificent Western from the Threads of Masculinity and Loneliness

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How far is the distance between cruelty and kindness? On first glance, these concepts would seem to be polar opposites, but through the lens of Jane Campion ’s stunning Western The Power of the Dog , we see that they’re frequently intertwined in a tragic confluence of intent and identity. Like the gorgeous vistas that permeate the backdrop of the film, we know that despite their beauty, these landscapes are treacherous and unforgiving to those who don’t know how to traverse them. In Campion’s hands, love is the deadliest weapon because it’s so beguiling, and to live in loneliness creates a desperate heartbreak where anything is possible. The emotions swirling around this masterpiece constantly bewitch and beguile the audience as we’re drawn deeper into the desires consuming the main characters. With incredible performances from Benedict Cumberbatch , Kirsten Dunst , and Kodi Smit-McPhee , The Power of the Dog is easily one of the best films of the year and a poignant examination of where we choose to leave ourselves vulnerable.

Set in 1925 Montana, brothers Phil (Cumberbatch) and George Burbank ( Jesse Plemons ) run a successful ranching operation. While Phil prefers the rough-and-tumble life of a rancher, George prefers the refinement his wealth has brought him. He turns his eye towards Rose Gordon (Dunst), who runs the local inn with her quiet, introspective son Peter (Smit-McPhee). Phil shows no compunction towards mocking the feminine Peter and believes that Rose is only after George for his money. Nevertheless, George marries Rose, who quickly feels even lonelier next to a man who may be nice but wants her to perform a social role she feels ill-equipped to handle. Meanwhile, the aloof Phil feels disdain towards this new family unit, but when he’s spotted in a vulnerable state by Peter, he chooses to befriend the young man even though that only causes more strife for Rose.

RELATED: Benedict Cumberbatch on ‘The Power of the Dog’ and How the Film Rewards Repeat Viewing

At the center of The Power of the Dog , you have the acute loneliness of both Phil and Rose. Phil is college-educated and a successful rancher who gets along well with his employees, but he’s also ruthless, mean-spirited, and frequently cruel. His heart longs for Bronco Henry, the man who mentored him twenty years ago and taught him what he knew. As the film goes on, it’s abundantly clear that there was some kind of romantic relationship between the two men, but it’s one that could never be disclosed and now that Bronco is gone, Phil can’t even mourn honestly. He has to simply cheer on Bronco as a great cowboy rather than the man who had his heart. That loneliness has curdled into bitterness, and Phil now has no reluctance to lash out anyone who has the bonds he lacks.

Cumberbatch has never been better, and it’s a sly bit of casting from Campion. Cumberbatch is no stranger to playing sharp-tongued geniuses, but Phil Burbank is a different animal. In previous works, Cumberbatch played characters whose cruelty was to emphasize that they were the smartest person in the room, but deep down that cruelty masked a heroism or at least a good nature. There’s something broken inside Phil Burbank, and that sadness forces Cumberbatch to go places we’ve never seen him head before. It’s also a neat trick that Campion cast a man, who, with his lanky frame, doesn’t immediately scream “cowboy masculinity”, which only serves to emphasize the performance of that masculinity and how it has only serves to further isolate Phil from those around him.

His conflict with Rose emerges not because of anything she does in particular or even because she’s “stolen” George away from him. It’s because her loneliness reflects his own. In one poignant scene, she struggles to play some tunes on the piano, and Phil mocks her by playing a similar tune on his banjo. But the scene emphasizes how similar the two people are and how alone they feel even though they both have the love of George and Rose has the love of Peter as well. Their self-loathing and loneliness is causing them to cause harm, but whereas Phil lashes out at others, Rose turns inward and starts drinking. While toxic masculinity can still be seen as socially acceptable—like Phil’s cruelty towards Peter being cheered on by the ranch hands—Rose has no outlet for her pain, especially as she feels like she can’t be the woman that George wants her to be.

Dunst is, as usual, amazing. She continues to be one of our most underrated actors, and I have no idea why. You can’t look at the incredible performances across her career in films and TV shows like Marie Antoinette , Melancholia , Bachelorette , and Fargo Season 2 and deny her range. In Power of the Dog , she’s playing well beyond years as a woman who had carved out a way to live on her own a single mother on the frontier, and then is thrust into a world where she feels like an outsider, a feeling only exacerbated by Phil’s cruelty. The brilliant element of Dunst’s performance is how we understand Peter’s desire to protect his mother, but she’s not simply a frail object but someone who is now forced to look at her own fears and perceived shortcomings and why that would lead her to hide at the bottom of a bottle.

The way these characters’ loneliness manifests and the way that Peter chooses to insert himself as an emotional barrier by playing to Phil’s need for companionship makes The Power of the Dog absolutely mesmerizing. The story stakes are fascinating because while Phil is ostensibly the “main character”, Campion’s script turns that power on its head to tragic effect. There’s little “triumph” in The Power of the Dog as every beauty seems to hide a dagger. You can see it in Ari Wegner’s gorgeous cinematography and hear it in the haunting strings of Jonny Greenwood’s alluring score. Everything Campion does in this film leads to an emotionally complex place where nothing is a matter of “good” and “bad” but rather the love we seek and how it can turn against us.

The Power of the Dog is now in theaters and on Netflix.

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Jane Campion Makes a Triumphant Return to the Big Screen With The Power of the Dog

It has been 12 years since Jane Campion released a feature, and we’ve certainly missed her voice on the big screen — missed the compassion with which she draws her twisted dreamers and the overwhelming cinematic wonder of the spaces those characters inhabit. In The Power of the Dog , an adaptation of Thomas Savage’s acclaimed 1967 novel, Campion trains her lens on the American West (1925 Montana, to be exact), and the results are as majestic and unnerving as you’d imagine. If in the past her locations had a lush, sinister beauty — think of those overgrown gardens in The Portrait of a Lady , the muddy and windswept shores of The Piano , the cluttered streets of In the Cut — this time the menace lies in the wide expanses of the American wilderness.

The universe of The Power of the Dog (which just premiered at Venice and will do the rounds of the fall festivals before premiering theatrically in November and on Netflix December 1) is a big but barren one with not a lot of people in it. The story begins with rancher brothers Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons) bringing their herd through the small town of Beech and overnighting at an inn run by overworked widow Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a gawky, sensitive teen devoted to his mother and fond of making delicate paper flowers. (“What kind of man would I be if I didn’t help my mother, if I didn’t save her?” he says in the opening narration, words that will come to haunt the rest of the picture.) The tense, quiet George takes a shine to Rose, while the crude, loud Phil cuts the earnest, awkward Peter down to size, much to the guffawing amusement of his fellow cowboys. Once George and Rose are married, she comes to live with the two brothers on their ranch, and Phil continues to terrorize both mother and son. The ensuing psychological siege isn’t subtle or subdued or symbolic; it’s surprisingly savage. Phil’s cruelty takes your breath away at times.

It’s a perfect role for Cumberbatch, whose gentle features and angular physique have always made him seem assembled from competing impulses. We think we know who Phil is at first: rough, judgmental, sadistic, an absolute villain. But Campion doesn’t do absolute villains, and there’s a twitchy neediness to Phil too, one the actor summons with almost supernatural precision. Despite being the alpha dog in their relationship, he clings to his younger brother (even as he angrily calls him “fatso”) and clearly knows more about the world than he lets on. Even the way he struts across his own ranch has a performative quality that betrays his inner uncertainty.

Little by little, we realize Phil has embraced the role of a rugged cowboy because of a need to belong to something, having found it years ago in this way of life that may itself be slowly disappearing. (When a snatch of the Charleston plays on a pianola, it feels as if the characters have suddenly been transported into the future — until we remember, Oh right, it’s the Roaring ’20s .) Smit-McPhee, by contrast, portrays Peter as someone who can’t be anything but himself, even if that infuriates the men around him. He seems incapable of putting on airs or trying on identities and postures. Peter is who he is, and Phil sees that as a direct threat to who he wants to be.

Campion preserves the simplicity of Savage’s prose with the understated ease of her own storytelling, and she even finds a compelling way to navigate the novel’s somewhat outdated dime-store Freudian conceits. She has always managed to enter her protagonists’ minds by focusing on the external, on the things they see and touch and the thick air around them. In her work, the environment is a force in itself, both reflecting and fueling the characters’ psychological states. The Power of the Dog was shot in New Zealand, and I can’t speak to how much it resembles rural 1920s Montana but it’s a hell of a setting: sensuous, unreal, foreboding, with hills that weave in and out of one another like ropes, and shadows that form strange, captivating patterns. At one point, not long after they’re married, Rose teaches George to do a few dance steps with her on a hillside. He starts to cry, muttering about “how nice it is not to be alone.” And yet they are alone against this infinite landscape stretching before them. One is reminded of the existential deserts of movies like The Sheltering Sky with their shattering clarity. You can implicitly understand why these people would cling to each other, to their families, to their codes and desires. You can also understand why they might be repulsed by these very same things, and why they might all be doomed in the end.

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Kodi Smit-McPhee walks us through that ‘Power of the Dog’ ending

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Spoiler warning: The following interview discusses key details of Netflix’s “The Power of the Dog,” including the ending. If you haven’t yet seen the film, come back when you have, and check out our review , profile of director Jane Campion and interview with co-star Kirsten Dunst .

Five minutes into “The Power of the Dog,” we meet Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a frail-looking young man sitting alone in his room, painstakingly crafting paper flowers that will be placed as table centerpieces in the restaurant inn that his mother, Rose (Kirsten Dunst), owns.

Later that evening, those flowers will turn to ash, burned by the bullying cattle rancher Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), the first in a series of threatening acts directed toward Peter and his mother, menace that gives Jane Campion’s chamber piece western a mounting, almost unbearable tension — which Smit-McPhee felt acutely when first reading the script.

“I felt sorry for Peter the whole time,” Smit-McPhee, 25, says during a recent conversation at a Santa Monica restaurant. “I had so many judgments about the way he carried himself. Eventually those judgments solidified and I just had this sense of impending doom coming toward him.”

And then we come to understand that perhaps we weren’t seeing Peter clearly.

Smit-McPhee is right there with us. When he reached the end of his first pass through the script, he flipped back a few pages to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

“I didn’t miss anything,” the intense Australian actor says, smiling.

If you’ve seen “The Power of the Dog” — and, again, if you haven’t, bookmark this page for later reading — you might be wondering if you missed anything too. Smit-McPhee, a newly minted New York Film Critics Circle supporting actor winner, is here to answer all your questions, from the reasons behind Peter’s choice of footwear to the movie’s astonishing ending.

Review: ‘Power of the Dog’ reasserts Jane Campion’s mastery and reveals a new side of Benedict Cumberbatch

Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee co-star in this superlative Netflix adaptation of Thomas Savage’s novel.

Nov. 16, 2021

When does Peter decide to murder Phil?

It’s ambiguous, so this is just me ... but I think it’s when he sees him burn the flowers.

It goes all the way back to the flowers? I thought it was prompted by seeing his mother descend into alcoholism, thanks to Phil’s cruelty.

Sure. But Phil’s certainly on Peter’s radar from that first night. It’s a beautiful metaphor. Phil’s burning roses, which he is about to do to Peter’s mother, destroying her. But I think Peter’s also upset that Phil brought him almost to the point of crying on that first encounter. He didn’t know he could get hurt that easily.

Yes, Peter goes outside and we see him spinning the hula hoop, which I initially saw as a coping mechanism, like those fidget spinners that were so popular a few years ago.

It looks like he’s trying to soothe his anxiety. It feels like he’s lost control. But it’s quite the opposite. He is managing. He is absolutely in control.

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Same with him running his fingers across the teeth of the comb, which we see him doing during times of apparent stress. The initial impression is he’s trying to cope ... or annoy his mother. Or both!

You know, doing that with the comb calmed me down when playing him. But I think for Peter, it’s a way of managing his thoughts and emotions. It’s a physical manifestation of the way his mind works, sparking off different thoughts and plans. Same with the hula hoop. Go back and watch it and I don’t think you’ll ever see someone spin a hula hoop with that much anger.

OK. So you think Peter always planned to kill Phil and when he learns about the calves dying from anthrax, that tidbit sparks the idea to put the plan into action?

Cutting the anthrax out of the cow, much like killing the rabbit in his room, is partly fulfilling his ambition toward becoming a doctor. But Peter is an improviser. He goes with the flow. And when he sees that Phil has nicked his hand, that gives him the idea to contaminate the rawhide and infect him.

Peter is constantly assessing, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. I guess that’s in the nature of many animals, but for Peter, I chose the fox to assimilate his character with. They’re so light on their feet and they’re pretty and they look delicate and sweet. And yet they can tiptoe up to a hole and pounce right in and you’re a goner.

Which brings us to the scene in the barn where Peter infects Phil with the anthrax. It’s such a delicate dance between these two men, and dare I say ...

You felt bad for Phil? I’m right there with you. Phil’s walls, the walls that have solidified for so long, are gone and his mask is removed. We learn the truth about his love for Bronco Henry. And, yes, he may have been groomed, but I think what he had with Bronco Henry was genuine. He was in love. And he had to hide that from the world. Whereas Peter ... Phil envies Peter because he can completely be himself. It’s interesting how they swap roles. Peter becomes the darker, crueler figure and Phil the more innocent child with a great deal of trauma. When Peter’s holding the contaminated rope with his gloves on, I believe he’s thinking about Phil. And it hurts.

Do you think Peter ever considered scrapping his plan and sparing Phil?

No. It was the same thing with the rabbit he killed so he could dissect it. He’s going to do what he has to do. And even though for Peter this might possibly his first interaction with intimacy or love for another person, he’s willing to sacrifice that for his mother.

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Nov. 28, 2021

You mentioning Phil envying Peter because he’s so self-possessed reminded me of Peter’s white shoes. They look so out of place on the ranch ... which, again, is a bit of misdirection, isn’t it?

Yes! The shoes symbolize Peter’s confidence and his unwavering spirit in the face of judgment. He likes those shoes, and he doesn’t care if you don’t. And I love that after he kills Phil, he puts away the cowboy boots and the hat and slips on the tennis shoes again. He jumps right back into who he is and who he always was.

Who do you think Peter is in 10 years?

A lot of us have that question. Norman Bates, possibly, in “Psycho”?

He’s running a hotel with Rose’s skeleton in a rocking chair upstairs?

I think he just became an acclaimed doctor. Very good at his job. And I think it’s even more fascinating that this just becomes one of the stories of his past and no one ever finds out. He goes out and does exactly what he wanted to do, which is to become a good doctor, like his father was. That’s how much more eerie. Killing Phil was just something he had to do, and now he’s gone on with his life. Probably still wearing those white tennis shoes.

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Jane Campion's  The Power of the Dog has had a great run since it first premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival in September 2021. Nominated for 12 Oscars in total,  The Power of the Dog ultimately won Best Director for Jane Campion, who made history in 2022 for being the first woman nominated twice for that particular Academy Award. Clearly,  The Power of the Dog  has enjoyed success at the popular and critical levels, with a Certified Fresh ranking on Rotten Tomatoes.

Set in 1925 Montana, The Power of the Dog follows wealthy ranch owners Phil ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) and George Burbank (Jesse Plemons). Phil is a charismatic rancher who inspires fear and awe in those around him, but when George brings home a new wife, Rose (Kristen Dunst), and her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love, while those around them struggle with their own demons.

Related:  How Did Phil Die In Power Of The Dog?

The Power of the Dog got a limited theatrical release in different countries before arriving on Netflix on December 1, 2021, and it quickly garnered plenty of praise from critics. Currently,  The Power of the Dog has a 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 338 reviews. What critics tend to point out as the strengths of The Power of the Dog are the story’s pace , Campion's direction, and the cast’s performances that project the story’s sense of melancholy and solitude. Here’s what some of the positive reviews of The Power of the Dog  have to say:

“Cinematographer Ari Wegner captures the vistas of Campion’s native New Zealand, doubling as Montana, in lucid, breathtaking detail, while Jonny Greenwood continues his journey as a maverick composer, bookending the narrative with scuffed, low guitar notes and sorrowful strings. Cumberbatch is at his peak here. This is the first time that Campion has presented her filmmaking through a male perspective, and with all of Phil’s flaws and foul nature, the actor is completely engaging.”

“The dialogue is sparse and the scenery obscenely beautiful, the wide-open vistas of her native New Zealand standing in for circa-1925 Montana. Cumberbatch at first feels like he might have been miscast — too intrinsically British and cerebral for the cruel Marlboro Man swagger of his character. But as he and Smit-McPhee begin to circle one another, the odd thrumming chemistry between the actors clicks in in a way that feels almost inevitable.”

Screen Rant :

“Campion’s film is subtle, deeply layered in its approach to both men, their views of each other, and what it really means to be a masculine figure in society. To that end, The Power of the Dog provides a measured, profound analysis of its characters and subject matter.”

“With Smit-McPhee’s Pete, Campion bets on his immutable poker face; the young actor is terrifyingly remarkable. [...] A formidable Dunst, also making her grand re-entrance into cinema after a few years away, melts into the part of a woman weakened by harassment and driven to alcoholism. [...] Cumberbatch wrangles an earth-shattering performance, perhaps his best ever, with an excessive bravado that seems to consume Phil from within.”

The AV Club :

“Although he’s playing a character who’s feared by everyone around him, Cumberbatch refrains from showy outbursts, opting instead to convey Phil’s rigid worldview through stiff posture, hateful words, and an intense, beady stare. Dunst hides Rose’s despair until she can’t anymore, fear and sadness tumbling out of her as she drunkenly stumbles barefoot across the ranch yard wearing nothing but a slip. [...] Smit-McPhee’s sensitive, scholarly Peter similarly contains turbulent inner depths, as we learn when a pet rabbit becomes a dissection model for the aspiring physician.”

Not all praise goes to the performances of the cast of The Power of the Dog – Ari Wegner’s cinematography has also been pointed out as one of the best elements of the movie and with good reason. The scenarios (in this case, those of New Zealand posing as Montana) are key in telling a Western story, and it’s no exception in The Power of the Dog , as they bring more power and also a sense of loneliness to the stories of Phil, Rose, Peter, and George. Although The Power of the Dog 's cast delivers strong performances all around, some critics have highlighted the lack of screen time of Jesse Plemons’ George and Kirsten Dunst’s Rose as a weakness. Likewise, the pace of  The Power of the Dog 's final act (and the movie in general) received some critique for being too slow. For many, however, these factors weren't a problem at all. Here’s what some of the negative reviews of The Power of the Dog have to say:

Discussing Film :

“The core problem lies in the film’s largely lackluster story. Surely, this narrative could have been retooled to be more engaging. The Power of the Dog starts slow and never really picks up, in spite of its all-around promising cast and crew. Additionally, due to this, the film starts to come across as dull. It flutters back and forth over the line of boredom as it occasionally reignites the spectator’s attention”

Midwest Film Journal :

“Frustratingly straightforward and shallow, it is the sort of film that requires the audience to bring a lot more insight and thought than the movie itself is willing to provide.”

Film Inquiry :

It was always expected that some criticism would arise from Campion's distinct narrative style, Phil's secret sexuality (predictable or not), and the various ways in which  The Power of the Dog  subverts typical Western masculinity . However, the strengths of the movie clearly overshadow its minor flaws.  The Power of the Dog has established itself as a very solid film at the critical and popular levels, even if it only won one of the 12 Oscars it was nominated for.

Related:  The Power of the Dog Wasted One Of Its Biggest Stars

Did Jane Campion deserve her Best Director Oscar?

Of all the Academy Awards it was nominated for, it makes sense that  The Power of the Dog 's win ultimately came in the form of Jane Campion's Best Director Oscar. Every aspect of the film is well-executed, which includes the acting, writing, production and sound design, and editing for which The Power of the Dog  was recognized in its 12 nominations. While the credit for these successes undoubtedly goes to all of the talented people who made them happen, the sum total of  The Power of the Dog 's meaning and resonance is largely due to Jane Campion's vision and her ability to direct the rest of the film's contributors towards achieving it. As such, it seems clear that her Academy Award for Best Director was well-deserved.

Was Power Of The Dog Robbed At The 2022 Oscars?

Given that  The Power of the Dog was nominated for a whopping 12 Oscars but only won one, it's easy to wonder if the film was snubbed at the 2022 Academy Awards. Its ratio of nominations to victories is quite low, but it's also important to remember that very few films are nominated for so many categories in the first place.  The Power of the Dog could very well have won more Oscars than it did. But, at the same time, it was up against many worthy competitors like CODA, King Richard, and Dune . Whether or not  The Power of the Dog was robbed or victorious at the 2022 Oscars is therefore simply a matter of perspective. Regardless of how it fared during awards season, the film has certainly established itself as an excellent, enduring piece of cinematic art, which is ultimately more important and better for Campion's legacy than a golden trophy.

Next:  The Power Of The Dog Ending Explained (In Detail)

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The Power of the Dog

Where to watch.

Watch The Power of the Dog with a subscription on Netflix.

What to Know

Brought to life by a stellar ensemble led by Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog reaffirms writer-director Jane Campion as one of her generation's finest filmmakers.

If you're ready to saddle up for a slow ride, The Power of the Dog 's great acting and interesting ideas make the journey worthwhile.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Jane Campion

Benedict Cumberbatch

Phil Burbank

Kirsten Dunst

Jesse Plemons

George Burbank

Kodi Smit-McPhee

Thomasin McKenzie

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