Dog Daze

We're at that time of year when talk is circulating about the movies most likely to be in the coming Oscar race. Usually, the list is dominated by things you can't see yet -- film festival darlings awaiting a wide release. But in the age of COVID (and the age of streaming), some of these movies are accessible now. One, now on Netflix is The Power of the Dog.

Directed by the critically acclaimed Jane Campion (and adapted by Campion from a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage), The Power of the Dog is a Western set in 1925 Montana. Domineering Phil Burbank and his softer brother George have a thriving cattle business. When George falls in love with the widowed Rose, Phil hates everything he sees -- from the way George is emerging from Phil's shadow, to Rose's "obvious" gold-digging motivations, to Rose's effeminate son Peter. Phil spews verbal abuse in every direction, driving everyone in his orbit to drastic action.

This is a wildly slow-paced movie, and it doesn't even want to take a stand about who the protagonist is. Between the hand-offs of perspective and the dearth of concrete narrative developments, this is a movie all about tone. Every unspoken word, every lingering camera shot, is an iceberg to be analyzed (with most of it hidden beneath the surface). For some movie fans (and many Academy voters), this will be catnip -- a monument to a director exercising masterful control over every frame of a two-hour experience.

I found it maddening, a movie endlessly see-sawing between superfluous moments and monotonous ones. Once the end credits roll, it's possible to make a pretty concrete statement about who the movie is really "about." And in that long view, that makes much of the time spent on other characters seem utterly unnecessary -- particularly when it's still not enough time to make them all seem like fully rounded characters that the movie is truly interested in exploring. (For a director renowned for her thoughtful explorations of women, the character of Rose is a surprising side piece to this male-dominated tale.)

Mostly, the movie just browbeats you over and over again about what a monster Phil is. It's so heavy-handed that you just know there will have to come some nuance at some point. Combine that with the fact that there's so little plot here, and I at least felt like the mid-movie revelation about his character was obvious well ahead of time.

The same problem infects the movie's conclusion, a "plot twist" that supporters say is so shocking that the movie demands a second viewing to fully contextualize everything you've seen. Again, I didn't find it surprising at all. And I don't say that because I think I'm especially clever; I think so little "happens" in the movie that it's impossible not to take notice of the little that does. The links and the chain that build to this movie's ending are meticulously and sparsely laid; I find the ending inevitable, not surprising (and certainly not ambiguous).

If you were to watch The Power of the Dog, it would be for the acting. Several of these performances are favorites for nominations. In the case of Benedict Cumberbatch as volatile Phil, I think it would at least be deserved. He is the dangerous threat looming over every scene of this movie, whether he's in it or not. It's a physical, transformative, menacing performance. Kodi Smit-McPhee seems a likely a likely Supporting Actor nominee for his role as Peter. It's completely the opposite kind of performance from Cumberbatch, repressed and not showy, very much in sync with the movie's overall vibe that "less is more."

But... this movie was absolutely not for me, and if your tastes run anything like mine, you're not going to like it. I give it a D-. It carried me to the end, just teasing me enough to think it could be more clever than I was expecting. I gave it too much credit.