The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog

This will be short as there isn’t much to criticize.

The Power of the Dog is probably Hollywood’s second-best advertisement for traveling to New Zealand, next to Lord of the Rings. Here, NZ is subbing for Montana, and the landscape is NatGeo gorgeous, absolutely stunning, and the cinematography is very Every Frame a Painting level delightful. Lots of artsy shots of people silhouetted and perfectly framed in windows and doorways, very symbolic “inside looking out"/"outside looking in” shots for a psychological drama all about feelings that have been repressed and buried inside.

It’s glacially paced though, and extremely small stakes, so I can see this won’t be for everyone. Climactic scenes involve someone asking his brother to wash up before dinner, a dude playing the banjo in his room, and someone braiding rawhide into a whip. There are no guns at all, only two deaths, neither shown on-screen, and only one body. It's a movie that will have you as physically far from the edge of your seat as possible, real middle of the cushion stuff. Still, it’s a brilliant script, particularly adept at Show Don’t Tell, managing to communicate immense depth and turmoil to these characters without saying a word.

This is horribly unfair of me, but I’m afraid all that subtlety also makes the rare head-thumpingly obvious scenes stand out all the more, such as finding a secret stash of illicit magazines that the owner has—in a fit of self-destructive madness perhaps—carefully and self-incriminatingly written their own name on, or alcoholism being communicated by the tired trope of finding a whiskey bottle in the bed.

I don’t quite buy Benedict Cumberbatch as a charismatic bully or tough-as-nails cowboy with psychological insecurities though. I’ve seen lots of praise for his performance, but I don’t think he really has the physical presence for it. Director Jane Campion said there were lots of actors who can do tough, but not many who can also do vulnerable, and while she is an award-winning director and I’m a dipshit rambling online, Imma disagree and say Benedict can do vulnerable, sure, but asking him to play an American cowpoke was a stretch too far.

Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons both slip right into their roles, but the one performance I was impressed with was Kodi Smit-McPhee as Dunst’s son. He’s very good at the gawky, painfully uncool kid who seems like an absolute wimp, then gives us a peek at his startling and alarming knack for violence.

All the obliqueness and opaqueness means it’s a movie that’s up to you to interpret in some ways, especially the relationship between Benedict’s guy’s guy cowboy and mama’s boy Kodi, and it’s nice that the movie never comes out for or against any of these characters.

It’s up to you to decide what you make of it, and I make it to be a damn fine advertisement for New Zealand.