The Power of the Dog demands attention.

But will Oscar voters concentrate long enough to notice Jane Campion's genius?

The Short Take: 

Full of visual poetry and narrative depth, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog slowly and subtly tells a chilling, Hitchcockian tale. This is NOT a Western in the action adventure sense; it’s a spiritual reckoning of self-loathing and self-acceptance. And it requires the viewer’s full attention. 

Image Credit: LA Times

The Long Take:

I want to be up front and realistic in my endorsement of this film: it may be a cinematic masterpiece, but it also is a film where I need to have separate conversations about its artistic merit and its entertainment value. This is not to say I don’t want everyone to see this movie, because all I want to do now is parse out what everything in it means. But I need to acknowledge that this Oscar contender is not going to be for everyone. I would not, for instance, have said the same thing about King Richard, which is both deserving of awards and entertaining for wider audiences.

Who is The Power of the Dog “for,” then? Anyone who likes movies as puzzles. Most of the enjoyment I derived from the film stems from Director Jane Campion’s refusal to explicitly tell you what’s going on. There are breadcrumbs and clues everywhere, and it was very rewarding to try to piece them together. Similarly, there’s a lot to infer about the complex characters based on their actions and words exchanged. The tension is palpable, but the exact source of that tension is not obvious. And, like reading a great literary work, watching The Power of the Dog affords the pleasures of interpretation and analysis because there are so many layers of meaning. (If you’ve seen the film already, stick around and I’ll offer my own take on what I think is happening and why later on.) But, if someone doesn’t find that level of engagement with a film rewarding, I can see how they might not want to sit through this. 

Campion’s adaptation of Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel is NOT for fans of Westerns in the traditional sense. The film takes place in the West (Montana), and the cinematography, from sweeping landscapes to close-ups of livestock, is jaw-droppingly bold in a way that celebrates the harsh beauty of terrain we associate with Westerns. Other critics, however, have labeled The Power of the Dog a neo-Western or anti-Western if they invoke the genre at all. Campion’s film, I think, is more for anyone who would like a very suspenseful, dread-inducing psychological thriller, and doesn’t mind a slow burn story. Helpful comps might be Hitchcock’s Vertigo or Rebecca, or Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, which I would characterize as a direct descendent of Hitchcock’s films. (Johnny Greenwood wrote gorgeously foreboding scores for both The Power of the Dog and Phantom Thread, so that’s partly why I’m thinking of it here.) Again, this is not Far and Away (1992). This is not A River Runs Through It (also 1992, apparently). This isn’t even News of the World (2020). There’s no feel good frontier narrative to be found. 

I would hesitate to label this as any kind of Western — even a neo-Western — because while Campion certainly engages with the trope of the tough, hyper-masculine cowboy, the psychological drama at the core of the film could arguably take place in any place and at any time. Brothers Phil and George Burbank run a ranch, and the implication is that they have been doing so co-dependently — even sleeping in the same room with adjacent twin beds — for decades. When George marries Rose, a local innkeeper with a teenaged son, Phil’s world comes crashing down and he wages a psychological war on his brother’s new family. Many of the relationships in the film are unhealthy, twisted, and emotionally abusive in a way that I found disheartening but also completely fascinating.

I’m slightly worried about Netflix being the primary platform for this film because I think in order to appreciate it, I had to really focus and pay attention. I tried watching parts of it while I was doing dishes or on my phone when I had a few moments to spare, and I always had to wait until I had large swaths of uninterrupted time to go back and rewatch. There’s a distinct possibility that some may see Benedict Cumberbatch’s face when they fire up Netflix and blindly hit play. My concern is that once they try to multitask, they’ll ultimately quit on the film because when interacting with it at the surface level or “half-watching” (we all know we do it) it can seem boring. So, please, if you’re still reading this and are still interested, make sure you give The Power of the Dog a fighting chance. It will suck you into its dark web, but only if you let it.

A quick Oscar race aside before I move on to a spoiler-y discussion: While I’d put Jane Campion at the top of my Best Director Oscar pool right now — even though my heart wants to put Denis Villeneuve right there with her — I can’t exclusively credit Campion with the film’s success. Benedict Cumberbatch, giving what many call a career best performance, should share a lot of that credit. Only his nuanced acting could have made me want to understand Phil Burbank and consider him anything other than a monstrous bully. The range he utilizes throughout the film feels well-planned and well-paced. He babbles along with twangy, ornery dialogue a lot, but then, when it makes the most sense, he cranks up his performance for a violent outburst or a rare exhibition of vulnerability.

I don’t think he can beat Will Smith for Best Actor, though. King Richard is a more accessible crowd-pleaser, Will Smith has the “he’s overdue” narrative working for him, and Smith’s Richard Williams is a much more likeable character than Benedict Cumberbatch’s Phil Burbank. I’m torn about who I want to win. Both roles were tough assignments because so easily could they have, in the hands of lesser actors, turned into caricatures. This feels like it’s going to be Will Smith’s best shot at an Oscar; I’m not worried about Benedict Cumberbatch winning an Oscar in the near future. So maybe that means I’ve boarded the Will Smith train. But it’s very close.

Image Credit: Indiewire

[Here’s where we part ways with those who have not seen the film. If what I’ve described above piques your interest, go watch the film and then come back to see if I can help you break it down. In other words, SPOILERS HO!]

…last chance….

…I’m not kidding, there are huge spoilers as soon as I resume the review…

The ending of this film is nothing short of spectacular because I suspected what would happen but was still shocked that it actually did. Once I saw Peter taking his surgical knife to a dead cow lying in the middle of the woods, I was pretty sure that he was going to try to murder Phil with anthrax. In that specific moment there was a spark of connection where I remembered him telling his mother that he would make it “so she wouldn’t have to” suffer and, mentally rewinding to one of the earliest scenes in the film, I recalled Phil telling his crew not to touch random dead cows because they had anthrax. There are no words. We just see Peter cutting open a dead cow. And yet so much of the story exploded for me in that moment.  

I’ve come across a lot of “explainer” articles for the film’s ending, and most notably, the New York Times had a piece about how the ending was not clear, placing that approach in the context of Campion’s past work. I can see how some details might pass others by, but to me this was like the most perfectly constructed puzzle or a whodunnit I could figure out before the detective reveals their solve. Peter skins the Anthrax-ridden cow corpse, appeals to Phil’s vanity by saying he had this extra hide because he wanted to be more like him, and then offers the diseased hide to Phil so Phil can finish making a rope he’s been making just for Peter…yikes! I won’t soon forget the shot of Phil’s hands, with all his open wounds, plunging into the bucket of water, the thin strips of rawhide floating around them like tentacles. The imagery is not only haunting, but extremely functional from a storytelling perspective.  

Even after I suspected how the story would end, each subsequent scene became an escalating confirmation that made it thrilling to watch. I might as well have had my hand over my mouth for the entire final 20-30 minutes of the film. When I saw Phil looking pale and sweaty, donning a suit for the first (and final) time because he needs to go into town to visit the doctor, I felt everything clicking into place and so many little details from earlier in the film illuminated in new ways. I was most in awe of one of the earliest lines of the film. As the opening credits roll, Peter’s disembodied voiceover says, “What kind of a man would I be if I didn’t help my mother? If I didn’t save her?” I initially assumed this was about coping with the loss of Doctor Gordon — Rose’s husband and Peter’s father —  to suicide. But no, he was actually talking about saving his mother from Phil’s torment. Campion hid in plain sight what would happen in literally the first two minutes. That is a director that knows exactly what they’re doing and is 100% confident in it.

Clever construction aside, what does this film actually say about any of its characters? For me, masculinity spins at the center of the story, especially as the it narrows in on a showdown (although Phil doesn’t realize it’s a showdown) between Phil and Peter. Campion challenges a stereotypical definition of masculine strength through Peter. Early on the film, various characters call Peter all kinds of names to mock his physical features and mannerisms, pejoratively characterizing them as effeminate. We watch Peter meticulously making flowers out of paper as a table setting for his mother’s restaurant, and Phil callously asks (knowing the answer is Peter) what “little lady” made them. So there’s a sense that everyone in this world views Peter as feminine and therefore weak. 

Phil, on the other hand, commands every room that he’s in with bravado and rustic charm. All of his lackeys seem to adore him and anyone not in his inner circle fears him. It’s clear that being a stereotypical alpha male has worked really well for him, and that his aggression, his disavowal of more civilized practices, like a “wash-up” before dinner and his adoption of the ruggedness associated with his blue collar work as a rancher — despite, or perhaps in spite of being a Yale grad with a classics degree — has allowed him to achieve acceptance. This makes the reveal that he is a closeted gay man mourning the death of his former lover, Bronco Henry, all the more tragic. As the film goes on it’s clear that he bullies Rose and Peter in order to reassure those around him that he is a “manly” man. The extent of his cruelty and pettiness, to me, seem rooted in self-loathing. He wants to make everyone else around I’m as unhappy as he is.

If Phil represents self-loathing, Peter, in contrast, represents self-acceptance. Phil has had to repress his sexuality and live a double life in secret, and while we don’t know what he was like before Bronco Henry, before he became a rancher, there are enough references to how Phil met Bronco Henry when he was Peter’s age to imply that he went through some kind of transformation. I also think that the reference to Phil being a great intellectual mind and a classics major at an Ivy League school may also refer to a former self that the American West then melted down and reformed into the domineering, macho rancher we meet in the film.

Peter, meanwhile, does not try to change who he is at all. He unapologetically goes about his business, especially in the back half of the film when he arrives at the ranch for his summer off from medical school. I just started listening to The Next Best Picture podcast review of The Power of the Dog, and Nathaniel Rogers tells a story from an interview he had with editor Peter Sciberras that supports my reading of Peter. For the scene where Peter walks across the rancher’s camp to study a bird’s nest in a tree, Campion and Sciberras decided to hold on Peter walking for the entire walk to the tree and back, all while random cowboys catcall him, to establish his strength and power. He doesn’t care what others think about him, he has confidence and purpose in his steps. Rogers says, “They had shot that with a ton of coverage in different angles, but they decided the most powerful way to show that was to not edit. So you’re forced to stay with Peter for that entire walk, and basically what that does is gives all the power to Peter. He controls the scene.”

Similarly, the final shots of Peter running around with a dog not only evokes the biblical reference in the film’s title, but it reinforces Peter’s self-assurance and victory over Phil. Earlier, Phil tries to mold Peter in his own rugged rancher image, telling him that he needs to ditch his white tennis shoes for boots. Peter does so, but only in order to flatter him; once Phil is dead he goes right back to his tennis shoes. He’s in total control. 

Image Credit: New York Times

That contrast between self-loathing and self-acceptance hinges on Phil and Peter being mirror images — opposing reflections — of each other. We see Peter scrapbooking and collecting specimens for dissection, and, later on, we see Phil tuck away a sample of something (I feel like it was a piece of tree bark? A rock? I’d have to go back to know for certain.) in a glass case, fastidiously labeled. Phil thinks he is the only one on the ranch who can see the barking dog imagery in the mountains, but then shows visible shock and surprise when Peter can see the same outline almost immediately. Peter, of course, exploits his connection with Phil to manipulate him into falling for the poisoning ploy, but Campion may draw so many parallels between them and may draw them closer together to a.) show how differently they’ve reacted to the world’s rejection of who they are and b.) to catch us out on our assumption that Peter is weak and helpless at the hands of Phil.

Rose certainly fears for Peter’s safety when he starts to spend more time with Phil, and until signs pointed towards anthrax murder, I’ll admit that I was too. This makes the flipping of stereotype-informed expectation all the more powerful. I got chills when I realized how calculating Peter had been in using both his medical/scientific knowledge and what he learns about Phil against him. His sharing of his cigarette with Phil is an act of pure aggression and dominance, it just doesn’t look like what we’ve been taught by society to recognize as such. 

The one scene I can’t quite pin down with an interpretation is at the end when undertakers prepare Phil’s body for his funeral. They wash him, shave his beard, and cut his hair. When the camera reveals his final look, he actually looks a lot more like Peter. Is this supposed to be what Phil has been masking this entire time? Or is the undertaker’s “service” actually an undermining of Phil’s authority, taking away the identity he chose for himself and instead restoring the identity society wanted him to have?

There’s so much I could say about the themes, so much more I could read into. Any scholars out there may want to consider how this film represents The American West as a homosocial institution, for instance. (Homosocial is not to be confused with homoerotic because homosocial refers to same sex group activities or bonding that does not necessarily imply desire…but homosocial behavior can provide opportunity for a homoerotic awakening. I’m reaching back to my undergraduate modern literature survey class, so please correct me if I’m wrong.) There are certainly enough men gleefully gallivanting and roughhousing together, especially in a river bathing scene that I’m thinking of, to support an argument for it.

An alternative to my interpretation of Phil could be that rather than using his tough rancher persona to mask his sexuality, he might find that, especially through his fond memories of Bronco Henry, the West is the only place he can be free; the only place remote enough for him to be himself, under the cover of vast, empty land. Perhaps he would not have found any joy or happiness at all if he had not spent time in an all male environment where men can bathe together in the nude or sleep in the same sack under the guise of surviving the cold. Maybe the binary I’ve created between rugged and civilized speaks to my own implicit bias. A man can be gay and rugged, gay and aggressive, gay and unwashed, without it being all for show.

The fact that I have found so much fertile ground for analysis and generating different ideas is a testament to Jane Campion’s genius. If you’ve made it this far down the rabbit hole I’ve created, please share your thoughts. What do you think this all means?