1158 The Power of the Dog

[knives]

I mostly liked this, but the film seems to collapse under the dull weight of Cumberbatch’s character who is a generic villain for so long that the final hour’s attempt to make him a sympathetic character (as perfectly outlined above) ring false. The script I think is primarily to blame, but Cumberbatch as well seems unable to handle the necessary nuances. Someone more like Harry Dean Stanton could have worked this reverse Death in Venice a lot better. The gay stuff in addition to be being outre homophobic (could you imagine the same plot line between a younger black man and an older white woman!) just shows a lack of confidence in making the film about Dunst which is unfortunate as she gives a pretty stellar (though weak by her standards) performance. Bette Gordon’s Luminous Motion does a lot of the same things far better to my eyes.

[therewillbeblus]

I found him anything but generic- that's clearly a ruse and pretty realistic to how the 'villains' in the narratives of our own lives are more comfortably schematic to label as two-dimensional via all-or-nothing thinking, which is often our default, but in reality their 'villainy' is a symptom of something deeper, more complex, and worth fleshing out. I still think the film's greatest strength is the bait-and-switch in initially making us think that Plemons and Dunst are the worthy couple of love, with Cumberbatch as the variable destroying said love, but in reality he's correct that they are weak and not accessing the depths of what love really means, and to devolve into alcoholism or other meek, self-destructive withering behaviors soberly declares that to pawn these off as Cumberbatch’s "fault" is pathetic and reinforces his silent proclamation (if you read it differently re: he is actually to blame for others' actions, I suppose I could maaaybe understand a homophobic reading, but that feels like a stretch- or perhaps I just don't understand what your argument is there; certainly we can't suppose that Cumberbatch is being assigned blame by the filmmakers- an apology that takes away Dunst's agency and a problematic declaration of childlike finger-pointing!) It's a perverse ethos to embrace- and directly subverts our expected and comfortable allegiance towards the 'innocent', 'persecuted', more outwardly 'moral' couple. Too bad the ending ruins all the nuance and ambiguity that made the film so rich before it was pigeonholed into an absolutist resolve aided by absurd contrivances.

[knives]

I took it as homophobic with regards to McPhee’s character as well, but specifically with regards to that triangle I took Dunst’s turn to drink to be over her attraction to Cumberbatch and inability to get him to see her as human.

[therewillbeblus]

I still don't understand where you're coming from, sorry. So do you think it's homophobic because you think Dunst is the victim and becomes an alcoholic because Cumberbatch can't change his internal sexuality to service her desires? Not only did I not read her character's motives that way whatsoever (is there evidence of this that I'm missing?), but nothing would lead me to believe that Campion would take such a position blaming his innate sexuality, or even provocative behaviors, for her behavior. I think the film is so clearly about taking life by the reigns and accessing possibilities of action, perversely so given the twists and ultimate character allegiances, that to coddle Dunst over her projected desires not becoming actualized would not only be problematic as a principle, and out of step with the characters of interest who get fleshed out/screen time over her, but against the entire ethos of the film.

[knives]

I do think that it is what the film is getting at in its pity of Dunst. I don’t really see the film in support of a negative reading of Dunst’s character who to the end is sympathetic although surrounded by three different kinds of toxic masculinity.

[therewillbeblus]

To be clear I don't think the perversity is in condemning her character in some absolutist position- I think the film finds greater sympathy for her as she rises above her wallowing and does engage in action regarding the selling/trading of the hides. Campion instead proposes that there is merit in Cumberbatch's assessment of morality, harsh as it may be, and weighs that forcefully against the space we find most comfortable to place our sympathies entirely. I refuse to believe that we are meant to play the blame game from Dunst's perspective and coddle her maladaptive behaviors by sourcing the responsibility onto the toxic men in her life. We can still have sympathy for her over the will-depleting conditions and also hold some bitter truth to the other perspectives together, but a uniform front that endorses her fantastical projections to the point of becoming homophobic... I'm still lost there. Cumberbatch is the main character for a reason, and sidelining Dunst and Plemons is a clear choice as to where the interest lies. If I'm reading your interpretation correctly, which I'm being very cautious not to assume, then that would be to support Dunst's solipsism as the definitive stance of the narrative- and even the film grammar/time and energy granted to other characters, regardless of how rigidly immoral you see them (again, this seems contradicted by all that Campion is doing to explore here, but even to entertain that it is indeed black and white judgment..), gives evidence against that as the focal point of morality or perspective.

I do think Campion is holding sympathetic space for Dunst by demonstrating how her finite will power is being depleted without resources, so I don't mean to pejoratively dismiss her when I use terms like "wallowing"- she is certainly in a situation that systematically challenges her ability to rise up, and isn't being devalued on some level playing field without acknowledgment of that. Rather, the bitter pill being inserted into the mix simultaneously is that conservative attitude of pulling yourself up by your emotional bootstraps; something I don't personally like but the value placed in 'strength' is interesting to uncomfortably thrust upon us and make us stew in ambiguity, instead of solely being engulfed in empathy for Dunst. The difference between sympathy and empathy is key here, as we can pity Dunst with some distance without being let in to empathize with her position- which encourages this salad bowl reading of holding multiple seemingly incongruous positions together, and resisting such a default into overly simplistic categorization of Cumberbatch as wrong and Dunst as right.

[knives]

I think I get our difference now. I don’t read the second half’s sympathy of Cumberbatch being based around his morality, but rather his depth as a person as is slowly revealed to us largely through his sexuality (intending to turn the earlier fingering of the flower into something deeper) rather than anything relating to his morality which came across to me as so unidimensionally wicked as to necessarily in the eyes of the film be bad. He developing reveal of his history with homosexuality and the death of his previous lover only served to suggest that his morality was a defense from ever getting hurt again.

Additionally I viewed Dunst as the primary main character (this is a real ensemble after all) or at least the audience identification character as we are thrust into the strange world of these brothers. So while the film doesn’t agree with how she copes with her pain from the banjo scene forward it does seem to agree with her that Cumberbatch’s sexual teasing is cruel and keeps him in the place of a complicated villain. That compounded with the focus on his sexuality is what causes the film, accidentally I’m sure, to become homophobic in its construction.

[therewillbeblus]

Interesting, I can now see where you're coming from but I can't get behind the reading or logic. I can appreciate how the reveals with his sexuality are what ignite a devolution from ambiguity towards hackneyed resolutions, but I'm mostly shocked that Dunst could be seen as an "audience identification character." Beyond the clever and deliberate mechanisms Campion uses to deter us (gradually, against our will) from this expectation of magnetic alignment with her, she's sidelined from the narrative and always kept at enough of a distance to obstruct identification on a narrative level. I think Campion holds space for both truths in some respect, but this is clearly a maneuver that has been unsuccessful for many of us viewers- and apparently creating polar opposite comprehensions of which truth is preferred in the process! It's a challenging ambition to pull off to begin with, so I give her credit for efforts on that front, but my biggest gripe continues to be the ending, which in hindsight after zedz' post really rubs me the wrong way for destroying all the ambiguity she's taken great pains to set up as an inclusive worldview before that 'a-ha' directive sabotage.

I'll be rooting for this for the BP statue if it's competing against the likes of Belfast once the odds get tighter, but I hope a much better dark horse overtakes it. This is a film that is so close to being a masterpiece that it makes me all the more resentful in how and why it fails.

[knives]

Admittedly I’ve only seen two nominees so far, but for now I’m also rooting for it as even with reservations noted it’s still at least an interesting picture aiming to be a great example of its type which is more than can be said of CODA.

[brundlefly]

I'm guilty at taking a lot of things at face value, and for me one of the triumphs of the construction of the this is how we're told exactly whose film this is from the start

Spoiler

-- Pete's narration opens it, tells us exactly what he's going to do (save his mother), what his concerns are (what kind of man he is) -- and then the film by focus and Cumberbatch's performance neatly hides the protagonist behind the antagonist. And some of the things at which I hear people bristling -- mechanical plotting, deliberate pacing, chapter titles, etc. -- have to do with being in the hands of a methodical, manipulative narrator. (I have not read the book, but the online samples suggest it's written in the third person; if so, the pov is particular to the film.) The first time we see Pete he's working on a fantasy album that’s basically the film -- there's a bride, there's a mansion that's "too much to clean" but comes with helpers, high society visitors etc. -- but without Phil; his mother, minus the psychological torture, would be a glorious/hilarious butterfly. (I too enjoyed the camp elements. There's nothing less subtle than Phil placing fence posts.) So yeah, she's there as an object of sympathy, not identification. She's there to be humiliated and then saved, to make a hero out of a calculating murderer, even as the murderer’s own view of his victim evolves from first-blush cartoon villainry to a something more intricately woven. There's craft at work, as well as appreciation of craft. Pete's paper flowers leave his bedroom so Phil can simultaneously admire and mock them; Pete can watch the rope-making, simultaneously admiring both his and Phil's handiwork, and then bring it back to his bedroom as treasure/evidence.

[senseabove]

The awards angle feels surperfluous, but otherwise this write-up lays out one argument against the idea that the film's homophobic.

[knives]

I don’t think it’s very successful in presenting its argument or at least tries too many counters based in insulting the holders of the original argument. For example of both at once the author suggests that misogyny is to blame pointing to the female authorship of this and Brokeback for a pattern which is insulting on its own, but is undermined in the essay with the discussion immediately preceding concerning similar criticisms given to the gay male made Call Me by Your Name and also following it by bridging a defense based around the original text’s queer male authorship.

[senseabove]

Agreed that the discussion of other movies is spurious, but the part that felt relevant to this discussion was the section on Phil toward the end, since it still sounds to me like your argument for the film's "accidental" homophobia boils down to Phil being both ultimately a villain and gay, and that that is somehow necessarily homophobic. Yes, there's a well-documented history of non-heterosexuality being used as an easy shorthand for evil, but villainy and "perversion" are not passively equated here. Phil is still a layered character whose cruelty does not spring innately or simply from his sexuality, but from its suppression, and the extremity of his coping mechanism is not solely symptomatic of his particular sexuality, as the primary development of every lead character is how their frustrated sexuality leads to varying degrees and forms of self-destructiveness, except for Peter, who is empowered after he finds something like romantic fulfillment ("He calls me doctor and I call him professor because that's what we want to be!") while he's far from the threat of Phil. (Which, to take it another step, is why I share Campion's shock in the video I linked above that Smit-McPhee and Dunst decided their characters shared a secret knowledge about Peter's father's death; however beneficial that may have been to the pleasing ambiguity of how the movie shifts characters along its axis of "good" and "bad," I think it's very thematically and narratively incongruous. Peter's awareness of his capacity for action and the malleability of categorical good and evil only makes sense as mutually dawning realizations, which doesn't work if half of it is "goddammit, not this again.")

[Red Screamer]

Didn’t outrageous Freudian westerns used to be fun? This looks distressingly like A Netflix Movie coming from such a high profile director—pale, horribly lit images in sloppy continuity—and Campion’s general approach is to always go heavy, symbolic, self-conscious. Her tasteful, elliptical approach seems largely to be an effort to soften the rip-roaring broadness of her material. So The Power of the Dog is a commentary on toxic masculinity in/and westerns, fair enough, but the conception Campion and Cumberbatch have of masculinity comes less from westerns or history than from the bullies of 80s teen movies (which would also explain Cumberbatch’s stash of porn mags hidden in the woods).

And so it goes, the film giving its over the top stereotypes a coy, moody gloss. Worse, Campion mostly just leans on Greenwood’s score to establish that mood. Her direction has little visual cohesion or tonal control and while some of her compositions are strong (if typically overdetermined), she rarely builds the shots into purposeful sequences with definite shapes. Scenes just drift along uncertainly. One thing I did like was Smit-McPhee, who makes his cartoon compelling through sheer physicality and whose performance has the most range of any in the movie. Most everything else, from Dunst to the ineffective use of Greenwood’s music, was a disappointment.

As a side note: I don’t mean to keep being a downer when I post about new films, but last year’s slate has seemed pretty dire to me. Maybe my year+ away from new releases thanks to Covid made me a harsher critic, in part because it immersed me in older films and made me expect a baseline of formal robustness that most studio films in the age of shaggy realism and “refreshing the screen” just aren’t interested in. Regardless, I’m going to keep scrounging around to see what I can find. It looked like DarkImbecile recommended Blacklight in another thread so I’m going to check it out on their recommendation and wait to read their post until after I see it. I’m headed to the theater right now and my hopes could not be higher!

[DarkImbecile]

It continues to be surprising how divisive Power of the Dog has turned out to be; the reactions of people I respect here and elsewhere are about evenly split, whereas I would have thought after my first viewing it would have received a much more unified response (as opposed to something like Spencer, which is almost designed to alienate large segments of an audience that would otherwise be automatic for royal family drama and/or Kristen Stewart).

[jindianajonz]

I saw this film last night and had a few observations, even if my thoughts haven't fully coalesced. Overall, I agree with those who say the blandly pristine photography wasn't enough to make up for the languid pacing. Maybe it was me, but I had a very tough time getting invested in these characters or even see where the narrative was going until well into the second or third chapter. So while I enjoy a chance to slow down and absorb during a Hou or Kiarostami film, this one left me impatiently tapping me foot while I waited for it to catch up.

Spoiler

That said, I ultimately found the characters of Phil and Peter fascinating even if I didn't enjoy the path to get there. My partner saw their relationship as one of grooming, but I see it as passing on a set of survival skills that is completely indifferent of sexuality. In fact, I'm not convinced that Peter is actually gay. While we had an abundance of foreshadowing of Phil's true nature in the flower scene mentioned earlier in the thread and the way he gazes on the bathing ranchers, no such shot exists for Peter. We could expect to see signs of it when he finds Phil's hand-me-down gay porn stash, but instead of greeting them with prurience I saw the wheels turning in his head as he began to understand Phil and how he could use this information against him.

Which leads me to see three ironies in this story- first, Phil lets his guard down for a kindred spirit who is not actually as kindred as he believed, but also- if the value in Bronco Henry's teachings are the skills to survive in a society intolerant of anything less than aggressively masculine- then Peter, with his effeminate ways, could still have benefited from them even if he's not actually homosexual. But by the end of the film, for better or worse, Peter doesn't seem to have any interest in changing the way he appears to others. And in this regard, he may be even truer to himself than the aggressively candid Phil who had constructed his shield of brusqueness around himself.

As for the founding conflict that precipitates the drama of this film, I see Phil's distaste for Rose founded on the idea that she has not taught her son the skills Phil thinks he needs to survive and thrive in this world. It's interesting that he never actively chastises or abuses her, and aside from the single dig during the dinner party that she's supposed to be an excellent piano player I'm having a tough time recalling a scene where they actually engaged with eachother. Instead, her collapse into alcoholism is fueled by her own perceived inadequacies, which Phil is only happy to highlight whenever he can, but upstaging her conversation with guests or skill at a musical instrument, or even keeping a rowdy crowd in order when dining at her restaurant early on. I almost see this as him attempting to show her the ropes the way he later does for Peter- like a cat who leaves a kill on his owners doorstep- only Rose is not catching on and lets it beat her down instead. Which is interesting to me because it establishes parallels for both Peter and Rose as the recipients of Phil's "teachings" while the film also pairs Rose and Phil as "parents" for Peter and (by being female and gay respectively) as individuals whose expressiveness society actively tries to stifle.

[swo17]

](*,)

It continues to be surprising how divisive Power of the Dog has turned out to be; the reactions of people I respect here and elsewhere are about evenly split, whereas I would have thought after my first viewing it would have received a much more unified response (as opposed to something like Spencer, which is almost designed to alienate large segments of an audience that would otherwise be automatic for royal family drama and/or Kristen Stewart).

I think it's entertaining and well done, but zedz isn't wrong about the creakiness of the plot, especially when this is such a pivotal part of how the film explores its themes, and that's always going to put a film at a disadvantage. The aims are worthy but it feels like it cheats a little to get there, which is a harder thing to overlook in terms of favoring the craft behind it than other offenses a film might commit. Take this for whatever, but I recently watched Dear Evan Hansen with my daughter who is obsessed with it and felt very similarly (but hey, the songs are pretty good, and also Kaitlyn Dever!)

[Matt]

I haven’t rewatched the film, but a clip shown during last night’s Critics’ Choice Awards made me laugh out loud: A close-up of Cumberbatch deeply fingering the center of a paper flower, saying something like “I wonder what pretty little lady made these.” Cut to Kodi Smit-McPhee sweetly saying, “Actually, I made them.”

I’m usually very attuned to queer coding, but somehow this cut flew right past me on first viewing.

What I love about the movie is that it’s a rather camp erotic thriller in masculinity-in-crisis Western drag, and it had me fooled up until the final scenes.

[senseabove]

What am I, chopped liver

[hearthesilence]

I haven’t rewatched the film, but a clip shown during last night’s Critics’ Choice Awards made me laugh out loud: A close-up of Cumberbatch deeply fingering the center of a paper flower, saying something like “I wonder what pretty little lady made these.” Cut to Kodi Smit-McPhee sweetly saying, “Actually, I made them.”

I’m usually very attuned to queer coding, but somehow this cut flew right past me on first viewing.

What I love about the movie is that it’s a rather camp erotic thriller in masculinity-in-crisis Western drag, and it had me fooled up until the final scenes.

senseabove singled this moment out in one of this thread's earliest posts (it's hidden as a spoiler though). It seems like a lot of people missed the campy hilariousness of the flower-fingering.

EDIT: beat me to it!

What am I, chopped liver

[Matt]

Sorry! I’m clearly neither an attentive viewer nor thread-reader.

[swo17]

Nov 8 on all formats

[G Sheb]

A bit late to the party. Watched this last night and though the movie had its moments, at the end it's really about a psychopath (i.e Peter) and a murder, which I felt took away from the nuance of the characters. It's hard to justify Peter's actions as anything besides psychopathy; we are told he's bullied, traumatized, trying to protect his mother but, at the end of the day, he methodically and maliciously feasted on Phil's weakness and trust in him with no apparent ambiguity, confusion or guilt. It goes right to the last scene in which he watches his mother and her husband with a smile on his face. It's important to point out that the story of Peter radically differs from the book, as in the book, Phil actually had a direct hand in the suicide of Peter's father. In the movie, it's difficult to see how Peter's actions can be remotely 'justified'. Phil eventually was just an 'obstacle' that needed to be removed.
I also think the film itself goes out of its way to highlight Peter's psychopathic traits. There's a lengthy scene in which he brings a rabbit to the house, sees the excitement of his mom playing/cuddling with it, then ends up killing it and dissecting to the horror of both his mother and the servants.

I felt the movie was interesting as a 'dance' between the 4 major characters. They all had their motives, defenses, weaknesses and clashed at different times between each other. Perhaps it's not surprising that only the psychopath could execute the critical blow.

[G Sheb]

Had more thoughts on the film.
IMO the movie suffers with issues of character development for the two major characters.

The character of Phil is almost entirely collapsed on his sexual orientation. We're supposed to believe he's an abusive POS because he's a repressed gay man. Uhmm, OK. Suddenly all the nuances of human beings are erased when we're dealing with a gay man. The frequent mentions of 'Bronco Henry' become almost comical; it's hard to tell if there was a deliberate camp factor in the movie or not. Bronco Henry is the best rider he ever known! He's the only one who can see the dog in the mountains! He wraps a scarf with his initials around his neck while bathing then masturbates with it. He cleans BH's saddle 50 times a day, especially after hears his brother having sex. He saved his life by lying on top of him and NAKED as Peter remarked! LOL. To be fair, I swear that the last one was probably meant to be comical as even Phil laughs at the suggestion. By the end of the movie, Phil is almost a caricature of a gay man that it's almost hard to understand why he needs to go at all. One would think that a closeted gay man wouldn't be so nonchalant about having the name of his past lover on his tongue every 10 minutes.

Which brings me to the next problem with characters, Peter. Probably the most disturbing and evil thing in the movie is not how Phil behaves, but how Peter kills him. Are we supposed to be impressed by a psychopath? It's illuminating that the actor himself is on record for saying that he played it with psychopathic tendencies and even had a 'secret' with Kirsten Dunst that it was actually Peter who kills his father. Psychopaths can be fascinating as characters but the problem is that they steal our memory and attention entirely because we are so disturbed in how they behave. IMO the script failed to properly motivate Peter's actions and that's in large part because Phil was shown much more empathically in the film than in the book. The murder in the book is cathartic as it is clear that Phil was the dog. Here, we're not really sure. I thought Peter is the one we should all be worried about. At no point is there any hint of guilt, remorse or questioning of what he was about to do.

It's actually a bit disconcerting that the straight couple Rose/George ends up being shown as actual, nuanced, complex characters. Kirsten Dunst as always put in a stellar performance. These nuances get lost when we're dealing with gay characters.