The Power Of The Dog (Netflix)
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Written & Directed by Jane Campion
Rating: ****
Benedict Cumberbatch, best known for playing Dr Strange in the Marvel franchise, comes up with his strangest most haunting performance in Jane Campion’s film, her first in ten years and her best since The Piano. Here too the piano plays pivotal part, though the one playing it is rapidly relegated to a non-pivotal position in a power-game that is enrapturing in its intensity.
You have probably heard and read reams of praise for this enigmatic shocking film on the burden of homophobic masquerades and the concept of a home, as opposed to a stopover destination.
It all begins and ends in 1925 when Rose Gordon(Kirsten Dunst) moves to her new husband George Burbank(Jesse Plemons)’s affluent ranch where she must take on his uncouth violent brother Phil(Cumberbatch) who rejects his new Bhabhi as a “cheap schemer” out to usurp his innocent sweet brother’s wealth.
The tug ‘o’ war between Phil and Rose is so tilted I expected her to be crushed , killed, if not physically by her boorish brother-in-law then by his murderous hateful looks. As Rose, Kirsten Dunst simply withers before our eyes as Phil reduces her to a nervous alcoholic wreck.
But this is not a film about marital discord and sibling jealousy. Nothing so simple for Campion(whose fan I’ve been ever since I saw The Piano 28 years ago). Jane Campion wraps her tale around a tantalizing erotica, teasing and provoking our senses into examining and re-examining the concepts of toxic masculinity and homophobia.
As in The Piano where Harvey Keitler had gone full frontal, Cumberbatch sheds all his clothes and inhibitions to deliver a performance that would be talked about for generations. There is much that he conveys about his uncouth character without enunciating the requisite abusive words, with just one glance, one twitch of the eye.
So is Cumberbatch’s performance greater than the film? Not quite. The Power Of The Dog is a great GREAT film, filled with piercing silences and unspoken rebukes embedded in relationships that are not just incomplete but also left dangerously dangling at the edge.
I wouldn’t want to insult Campion’s coercive and compelling neo-classic by calling it “edgy”. It is much more that. The storytelling sinks deep into the abyss of the lost human soul in search of a relevance to existence beyond what we see and what we get.So powerful is the central performance that it’s easy to overlook the other actors who confer an inexplicable immediacy to this period drama. Kodi Smit-McPhee as Rose’s ‘soft’ son is specially fluent in a complex role.
The Power Of The Dog is not into easy solutions to the tangled web of human decit. It shows a spectacular regard for the inbuilt complexities in human relationships. It neither tries to mend nor bend broken relationships. It is just content to be there when this happens.