OSCARS 2022: The Power of the Dog (2021)

I’m always intrigued by the evolution the western has undergone in the last thirty years. From the early days of cinema, it was the dominant populist genre. In the classic age of Hollywood and television, when there was a lot less content overall than there is now, hundreds of westerns were made. I’m guessing it was this pure saturation that lead to the genre’s slow decline in the seventies. By the time I was a kid, the western had dwindled to a handful of examples a year. And now, the western has migrated from crowd pleasers to the other end of the spectrum: The art house. “The Power of the Dog” is the first film in ten years from Jane Campion, the director of beloved artsy classic “The Piano.” Unsurprisingly, it is a meditative experience and not a white-hat vs. black-hat story. 

In 1920s Montana, brothers Phil and George Burbank run a successful ranch. While the belligerent Phil endeavors to live the life of the rough-riding cowboy forever, inspired by a long-gone mentor named Bronco Henry, George seeks to settle down. Inn owner Rose catches his eye and the two are soon married, much to Phil’s consternation. Phil torments Rose, driving her to alcoholism. When her eccentric son Peter returns from school, Phil starts to bully him too. Yet Phil and Peter soon develop an unusual bond, riding out into the countryside together. The boy and the man uncover each other’s secrets. 

“The Power of the Dog” is a film that interrogates the myth of the American West. Which is also the myth of American masculinity. Phil fancies himself a hardened tough guy but, in actuality, he’s just an asshole. In the very first scene, he calls his brother “fatty.” When frustrated, he abuses his horse. While at the dinner table in Rose’s inn, he insults Peter, who has a lisp and a slightly effeminate manner. His attempts to train the boy in horse riding and roping is merely an excuse to humiliate him. Moreover, Phil delights in bullying Rose. A key scene has him mocking her attempts to learn piano by perfectly mimicking the song she’s playing on the banjo. He is the textbook definition of what we now call toxic masculinity. 

What makes Phil’s sadistic posturing even more obnoxious is that the film reveals it all to be a put-on. We soon learn that Phil went to college, where he studied the classics. For all the talking he does about riding and roping, he’s depicted doing very little ranch work. (The sole exception being a graphic scene where he castrates a bull, a moment full of symbolic implications.) He wasn’t born a cowboy, but merely adopted a persona that exists in the silent movies that are obliquely referenced a few times. And like “Brokeback Mountain” before it, “The Power of the Dog” takes the hyper-macho cowboy lifestyle to its natural conclusion. Phil disdains women. He very awkwardly shares a bed with his brother, something George is clearly uncomfortable with. It eventually becomes clear that his relationship with Bronco Henry was not just a platonic mentor/protégée partnership. 

Yet “The Power of the Dog” doesn’t just seek to reveal the classical idea of the American cowboy as a sexist, toxic, homoerotic fantasy. Despite all his vicious behavior, the film clearly has sympathies for Phil. His invented rancher persona is a shield around his own insecurities, the hinted-at resentments that exist between his brother and parents. As much as he bullies Peter, he also sees himself in the boy. Much like him, Peter is a college-educated intellectual in an inhospitable land. Phil hopes to educate him in the ways of ranching, much the same way Bronco Henry did for him. (Which certainly opens up the possibility of some homosexual longing between the two, something else the film hints at.) Ultimately, Phil’s story is of the biggest prick in the west slowly opening himself up to the possibility of being loved again.

Phil recreates himself in his image of an idealized western tough guy. This is how he deals with his pain. Everybody in the film handles it in their own, frequently unhealthy ways. Rose is reduced to a nervous wreck by her brother-in-law’s constant bullying. She turns to drinking, hiding bottles around the house and constantly being intoxicated to numb the pain of her situation. Peter, meanwhile, carries with him the memory of his father’s suicide, whose body he discovered. He buries himself in his studies, staying up in his rooms and dissecting animals. In one moment, he angrily hula-hoops outside the inn. Which may be the first clue that Peter is an unconventional young man, something the film’s last third runs with in a far darker direction than I anticipated. 

I’m not sure how I feel about that last reveal but “The Power of the Dog” is obviously a beguiling, absorbing film. The cinematography is gorgeous, the camera often luxuriating on the rolling landscapes. (Though not the Montanan ones, as the film was shot in Campion’s native New Zealand.) The soundtrack creates a subtle sense of unease throughout. The performances are all excellent. Benedict Cumberbatch makes Phil an equally intimidating and fragile character, emphasizing the artificiality of his cowboy act by pronouncing words in a ridiculously Texan style. Kristen Dunst is a weeping raw nerve as Rose. Kodi Smit-McPhee makes Peter just inscrutable enough that the viewer is uncertain if the boy is merely a socially awkward outsider or something more sinister. 

I suspect cinephiles will be turning “The Power of the Dog” over in their minds for some time to come. The film also has quite a lot to say about the measures women had to leap through to insure the safety of themselves and their children, feeding into the overall theme of gender roles. Among a number of other topics. It’s a fascinating, well executed motion picture that gives the viewer plenty to think about. [8/10]