TIFF 2021: The Power of the Dog
TIFF 2021The Power of the Dog is a gorgeous-looking new film from Jane Campion. Set in Montana and shot in New Zealand, it features a vast, barren landscape. There are rolling hills in the background, but in the fore, there’s a lonely, singular ranch in the centre of a flat, trampled plain. This is a wonderfully visualised space for this film, the story of a nasty rancher Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), his dandy brother George (Jesse Plemons), and George’s new wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and stepson Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Although it takes place in front of an elegant backdrop, The Power of the Dog is a slow-moving affair that believes that it gets somewhere by its end. Honestly, it doesn’t, or at least not as far is it thinks it does.
The centrepiece of the film is Benedict Cumberbatch’s bombastic, moody cowboy Phil and his journey to reconcile his lack of an ability to connect with people. He’s crass and rude, and is deeply mean-spirited at times. During his softer moments, he’s a short-tempered, unlikeable brute. Cumberbatch burst onto the North American scene about a decade ago via a flurry of roles that spoke to a thespian with great range. Roles in Sherlock, War Horse, 12 Years a Slave, The Hobbit, and Star Trek Into Darkness made his casting in Doctor Strange and Oscar nomination for The Imitation Game palatable, if not expected. However, despite his résumé, he’s yet to show his talent is without limits. In this, he’s regrettably inconsistent and, at times, awkward, frequently feeling as if he’s going through the motions as a stage actor trying to project his cowboy persona to the last row. In fairness to him, some of it is in the script, as he’s tasked with making lines like the following not sound stupid: “Bloody tootin’”; “Well, open your talker”; and “What’s in your noodle?” At the same time, though, he physically embodies Phil with an awkward wide-gait, western-mosey and an attitude that stealing the scene involves yelling loudest. There is no nuance to Cumberbatch’s performance that would justify his loud, bullish behaviour – and this is a film that by its end needs some inwardness to buy into its emotional climax.
The Power of the Dog feels like a big arthouse film primed for an awards season push. It’s attractive looking and not without merit in the technical categories. However, it’s a slow-churning relationship drama. Phil’s slow retreat from being a complete bully may be the main journey, but his rivalry for George’s time and attention with Rose is another important subplot that brings with it a hard look for meaning in Rose’s alcoholism. Even though there’s a strong and useful subtext of ‘life equaling misery’, Rose’s alcoholism doesn’t otherwise resonate in a meaningful way. It feels like an extract from the source novel, and that it may have had richer value on the page.
Smit-McPhee, whose young medical student is of great significance to the film, also feels like an awkwardly developed piece. He’s a caricature to begin with, and rather than finding some depth for him, Campion doubles down on his weakling stereotype. For instance, even after Smit-McPhee’s character Peter is adequately conveyed as a wimpy bloke whom the cowboys are going torment, Campion goes ahead excessively making the point with a brief scene showing him playing with a hula hoop. Meanwhile other things don’t quite gel. For instance, Thomasin McKenzie distractingly shows up in an absolutely empty walk-on role as a housekeeper. She pops in to makes the bed a couple of times and delivers a couple of lines in an accent. What is she doing here, unless she lives down the road from the production and popped by as a favour to Campion?
The Power of the Dog reaches for powerful connection between its characters, but never really achieves it. Jesse Plemons, quietly, is the standout, but he unfortunately doesn’t have an identifiable arc. He’s Phil’s foil – he’s an effective one, brilliantly so, but that’s it. As it grapples with its story of love – romantic and otherwise – relationships, and coping mechanisms on the plains, The Power of the Dog tries its damnedest to wrestle with the myth of the American cowboy and expose the humanity and reality within cowboys’ lives of the time. However, Cumberbatch regrettably tackles this role and does the exact opposite. He excitedly jumps into the saddle, but overreaches with his ‘giddyaps’ and toxic male heritage while engaging way too little in the feelings and emotional struggles that existed on the range.