While last night’s Academy Awards ceremony will forever be remembered for its onstage antics—an interesting discussion in its own right—there were some subtle surprises as well. For instance, after winning “Best Motion Picture—Drama” at the Golden Globe Awards and “Best Picture” at the Critics’ Choice Awards, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (2021) only managed to win a single Oscar last night. Despite a whopping twelve nominations, Campion herself was the lone winner, garnering her first “Best Director” nod. There has been some speculation that The Power of the Dog was, in the end, just too bleak for the Academy. This seems plausible. Clearly, Campion’s film came up short in a few major categories to “feel-good" movies such as CODA and King Richard. In a year that remains mired in a pandemic and is now facing the prospect of international war, maybe The Power of the Dog proved too cold, too pensive for the Academy’s voters.
Still, there are reasons to question this logic. When The Power of the Dog was released, critics hailed it as a story of deliverance. According to Noah Berlatsky, the genius of Campion’s adaptation of Thomas Savage’s eponymous 1967 novel is that it transforms a tale of “generational revenge” into a takedown of contemporary “toxic masculinity.” Set in Montana in the 1920s, The Power of the Dog centers on Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), a roughhewn rancher who physically and psychologically bullies those who seem to be weaker than him, including his tenderhearted brother George (Jesse Plemons), his new wife Rose (Kirsten Dunst), and her son from a previous marriage Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Although once a student at Yale, Phil has long since returned to his family’s land in Montana. Under the influence of now-deceased cattleman Bronco Henry, Phil has been transformed into an icon of “the American cowboy,” unkempt, laconic, capable, hard-bitten, and lonely. At first, then, it is no surprise (if anything, a bit too predictable) when Phil identifies Peter as an outsider. Willowy, delicate, and cerebral, Peter quickly becomes a target of Phil’s macho posturing. With George busy working, Rose feels powerless to protect her son, finding consolation only in the liquor she hides around the family’s manor. Campion’s sparse direction, accompanied by Ari Wegner’s sepia-filtered cinematography and Jonny Greenwood’s haunting score, creates a mood of dread. As Phil himself observes, it is as if the terrain itself is vicious: when viewed a certain way, the mountains that loom beyond the ranch’s property resemble a dog, no doubt a snarling one. For Phil, this serves as a tacit justification of his menacing behavior. He assumes Peter, who dresses foppishly and enjoys making paper flowers, cannot see the same thing.
Without offering any spoilers, it should be added that the film’s turning point comes when Peter discovers Phil’s suppressed vulnerability. The two only discuss this matter in oblique fashion—a tension that Campion handles suggestively. Still, it appears that this revelation forges a bond between them, until the film’s ending calls everything into question. Indeed, at the heart of The Power of the Dog is a power struggle. Phil represents the “Old West,” whose red-blooded strength smothers intellectual development and sexual fulfillment. Meanwhile, Peter epitomizes a modern form of erotic creativity and scientific erudition that seeks liberation from the past. They are doubles, cast into a duel. Moreover, as Campion frames it, only one side can endure this battle; there is no religion to mediate the brewing violence.
But herein lies a profound irony. The Power of the Dog has been seen as a much-needed critique of toxic masculinity, and yet it suggests, quite literally, that something just as toxic must take its place. As René Girard has argued, when two opposing parties want the same thing, and there is no scapegoat to absorb the tension, barbarity must ensue. As is made clear in the film’s final moments, The Power of Dog’s title is taken from Psalm 22:20: “Deliver my soul from the sword; / my darling from the power of the dog” (AKJV). But there is no deliverance in this film, only a world as forbidding and brutal as the barren landscape it invokes.
I read and enjoyed the book. I liked the subtlety of the story while addressing big topics. Enjoyed your review of the movie.
Great review. Lots I could say, here but I'll try to keep it brief: "Phil represents the “Old West,” whose red-blooded strength smothers intellectual development and sexual fulfillment. Meanwhile, Peter epitomizes a modern form of erotic creativity and scientific erudition that seeks liberation from the past. They are doubles, cast into a duel." Yes, this is true and well put. It's incredibly complex. I think that the figure and memory of Bronco Henry offered the possibility of a path, a kind of inherited way, that could mediate between both of them, and that Peter could have found a way to make his own, but Peter chooses revenge. I found Peter's character incredibly ominous. Scientific erudition - and the capacity for a cold analytic dissection of the world as a respectable means of channeling violence and domination while rising above into power (reminiscent of McCarthy's Judge Holden here, perhaps). To me, the most tragic aspects related to social class and masculinity. Phil's character though isolated, yet has camaraderie with the other ranch hands and their way of life on the land. Peter is able to utterly defy them (the astonishing scene where he walks past their mockery at the camp to view the birds in the nest) with an incredible amount of self-assurance which wins admiration from identarian audiences, but it comes with such a brutal edge to it. I grew up in a rural place (with ranchers even) and so have a great deal of sympathy for the incredibly difficult way of trying to find a way in between.