Netflix is going all in on Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, clearly seeing it as their best shot for a Best Picture nomination and perhaps a victory. They’re probably right. Campion’s first movie in twelve years has been critically acclaimed since debuting in Venice, with star Benedict Cumberbatch looking like a frontrunner for Best Actor and his co-star possibly up for awards, as well.
The film is a Western, but not your typical entry in the genre, as it explores themes familiar to Campion. Identity, particularly of a sexual nature, are at the heart of a story about two cattle rancher brothers of very different dispositions. Cumberbatch’s Phil Burbank is a surly, cruel man who takes to torturing Rose (Kirsten Dunst), the new wife of his easygoing brother George (Jesse Plemons). But entering into this mix is Rose’s son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who is going through an identity crisis of his own that will test what it truly means to be a man in the Old West.
Also in this terrific ensemble are Thomasin McKenzie, Keith Carradine, Francis Conroy, Peter Carroll, and Adam Beach.
I absolutely loved this film when I saw it at Middleburg just weeks ago, and can’t wait to see it again in a few days.
The Power of the Dog opens in select theaters on November 17th, then Netflix streaming on December 1st.
Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil’s romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides.
The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, revelling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter – all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her.
As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form – he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil’s cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?
