Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Director: Jane Campion
Oscar History: 12 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director*, Actor-Benedict Cumberbatch, Supporting Actress-Kirsten Dunst, Supporting Actor-Jesse Plemons, Supporting Actor-Kodi Smit-McPhee, Adapted Screenplay, Score, Sound, Production Design, Cinematography, Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars
(Spoilers Ahead-and I mean it, so stop & bookmark if you haven't watched yet as we're discussing the whole movie) The movie takes place in five acts, focusing principally on four characters. The first are Phil (Cumberbatch) and George Burbank (Plemons), two brothers with an uneasy relationship with each other. Phil appears to be the alpha of the two, to the point that when George falls madly in love with the recently-widowed Rose Gordon (Dunst), he has to marry her in secret for fear that Phil might find a way to stop it. This makes sense, because in the opening scenes we see Phil make Rose cry, not because of how he treats her, but how he treats her son Peter (Smit-McPhee). Peter is "different," preferring books and making his own paper roses to the rough-and-tumble life of the Burbank brothers. He is meant to read to modern audiences as gay, but as the film goes it's clear that Phil is the one who is attracted to men. His obsession with the deceased Bronco Henry, another cowboy who took hold of Phil when he was young, becomes a driving conversation for him, something he won't stop talking about (it's clear from the opening scenes that an uneasy George knew of the relationship, but has said nothing through the years due to the strange grasp his brother has on him).
The film's second half, though, doesn't take the twists you'd think. Rose, at one point a teetotaler (we learn late in the film that her husband was a drunk who killed himself), becomes an alcoholic under the weight of Phil's constant pressure, tormenting her & making her feel less than while her son is away at school. George doesn't know how to fix this, but strangely Peter does, though we don't know it right away. When he returns from school, he understands that his mother whom he adores has become ill, but instead of confronting Phil, he starts to meticulously seduce him. He emulates the likely behavior that a curious young Phil experienced with Bronco Henry, sending off signals that Phil might finally be able to express himself once more. What we find later, though, was that Peter was using his sexuality to seduce a tempted Phil (it's never actually confirmed if Peter is gay or not), only to kill him. Peter convinces Phil to use rawhide and water that he provided, and with that, we get a callback to an earlier scene where Peter carefully skinned a diseased cow. Phil, always careful in other moments, with his libido up and his guard down, uses the skin and dies from anthrax poisoning, thus freeing Peter's mother from Phil's bind.
The story is perfectly executed. Much of The Power of the Dog is about an impending crescendo, which lesser writers might falter under-there's intense amounts of buildup to the climax, to the moments where we will see what happens to these four intertwined figures. I called pretty quickly that we were leaving a lot of enigma around Peter, that much of what Campion's screenplay was providing on him was the impressions of him that others were providing, not any sort of data we got from the character himself, but Smit-McPhee plays him well enough that even as he unfolds his plan, we still don't know what happened, and that works here (ambiguity is this story's friend). We don't know if Peter is gay, or if he on some level found Phil's offer attractive (Benedict Cumberbatch has never been hotter, the camera lingering over his chiseled frame & unkempt beard almost as if it wants us to get caught staring)...Peter remains a mystery even as everyone else's motives become clear. The only hint we have in those final moments is that we know he knew what he was doing, a telling pair of gloves being worn as he handles the rope that Phil made for him, something he pushes underneath his bed for unknown futures.
Power of the Dog, helped by this script, is a universal triumph. The cinematography is spectacular, with Ari Wegner understanding the beauty of a longshot; frequently there are two different things happening onscreen in the same shot, something you rarely see in movies today but it works because it's indicating to the audience that there are multiple wheels going on in this story. The Jonny Greenwood score is yet another marvel from one of the most distinctive composers in movies today, and the editing is judicious and riveting.
Of course, the acting needs mention as well. Benedict Cumberbatch is not an actor whom I love, and he feels on-paper to be an ill-fit for this story (that posh London accent doesn't feel at-home on a Montana ranch). But the actor totally uses that to his advantage, foraging a specific, unique figure that defies all convention & feels so uneasy with his own world that a British accent would be the least peculiar aspect of his Phil Burbank. Kirsten Dunst is appropriately tragic; you can practically see the happiness drain from her body the further into the movie we get, the life force aching for someone to help her. And Kodi Smit-McPhee gets the movie's toughest part but keeps it appropriately chilling...only in the lit cigarettes do we finally understand the grandness of his long con, and after that it vanishes, potentially never to be seen again. All of these actors combine to a spellbinding good time, one I hope you see in theaters, as all westerns are better on the big-screen.
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