I am not a particular fan of director Jane Campion. I have seen the majority of her films and they are often murky, jumbled and dreary populated by unappealing characters conducting themselves in ways no one in real life ever would. Her most notorious film is The Piano. It is indisputably her best, but to say that it is supremely flawed would be a massive understatement.
When critics and Oscar voters began inventing superlatives in regard to her latest endeavor, The Power of the Dog, I somehow had forgotten her hit-and-miss history. I usually love Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst, and the story sounded like it might be interesting, so I looked forward to viewing it. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentleman, because this is a real stinker.
Where to begin? The film has some nice cinematography featuring bleak landscapes. Then again, everything in this picture is bleak, so I guess that is no surprise. I will say that I did not particularly buy the setting as Montana.
The story can basically be summed up as miserable people being miserable...the end. The film runs slightly over 2 hours, but easily feels like 4 hours. Largely because so very little actually happens and what does is relentlessly unpleasant. Seriously, we have just pushed through two years of COVID - does anyone really want to trudge through this experience? Not every film needs to be upbeat and some brutal films are compelling. However, this is none of those. It is literally like mainlining an IV of pure depression. Those on anti-depressants - beware!
The action - and I use that term very loosely here - centers on two brothers who run a Montana ranch. The steely macho Cumberbatch and the civilized plain Jesse Plemmons. Plemmons, Cumberbatch and their rowdy crew stop at a local hotel/restaurant run by widow Kirsten Dunst and her young son Kodi Smit-McPhee. To the apparent delight of the crew, Cumberbatch is grossly rude and terrorizes and mocks the two of them reducing them to blubbering messes.
In one of the film's many ridiculous developments, Plemmons returns later to apologize and an offer of marriage for Dunst. In a further peak of absurdity, Dunst accepts, even though it means moving herself and her overly sensitive son into closer contact with the brutish Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch naturally wastes no time launching a campaign of abuse, mental torment and increasingly demonic manipulation against the "intruders".
I literally have no idea what anyone sees in this film. It cannot even remotely be described as entertaining. Watching it is an absolute chore. The characters are either hateful beyond compare or so passive as to be mere wisps. And will someone please explain to me why the whole canard of the macho bully being a closeted gay guy taking out his frustrations on the world is still considered edgy. There are tons of closeted gay men who do not act this way, but literature and film seem to think this is the norm. This is also nothing new. It is a cliche and listening to critics and fans of this film act as though it is some shocking twist rather than a cliche one could see coming from 15 minutes in just makes them seem idiots.
I usually enjoy Dunst, but this film does her no favors. She plays a simpering passive victim from start to finish. She has no backbone and is incapable of standing up for herself or her son. Instead of facing down Cumberbatch or packing up and leaving, she becomes a walking whipping post who melts into drink and despair. She never makes us understand why she accepts the out of the blue proposal or why she would think living in close proximity to Cumberbatch would ever work. Hers is less a character than a plot contrivance.
Smit-McPhee plays the son with the weirdness quotient dialed up to 50 and enough over the top tics to make Norman Bates appear normal. Plemmons is utterly colorless. He is as stiff as a board and seems completely clueless as to what is actually happening or how to be proactive in any sense.
And finally, the elephant in the prairie - Cumberbatch. God is he awful here. Let us start with something good. He strips naked and shows everything - so congrats for that. Otherwise, he is miscast in the extreme. His American accent is off-key enough to prove distracting. The role seems meant for a rough-and-tumble old school man-of-the-earth cowboy type. Cumberbatch, looking pale, gangly and aristocratic here, does not even come close to cutting the mustard, no matter how much over the top swaggering he trowels on. Reviewers seem to have doubled down that the reason everyone puts up with the character's brutish, bullying behavior is because of his "charisma" and "beguiling" nature. Was he? I beg to differ. I found nothing charismatic or beguiling about this character. He treats most people like garbage - at one point he even beats a horse for no discernible reason other than his frustration at being in the closet. He manipulates and torments pretty much everyone in his orbit.
I hear this film often described as a "slow burn". When applied to Oscar dramas, I have concluded that this is code for "endless slog". This is a dreary, dull, pretentious, and woefully unpleasant waste of time that ostensibly should only appeal to those who like watching someone pull the wings of flies for fun.
When critics and Oscar voters began inventing superlatives in regard to her latest endeavor, The Power of the Dog, I somehow had forgotten her hit-and-miss history. I usually love Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst, and the story sounded like it might be interesting, so I looked forward to viewing it. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentleman, because this is a real stinker.
Where to begin? The film has some nice cinematography featuring bleak landscapes. Then again, everything in this picture is bleak, so I guess that is no surprise. I will say that I did not particularly buy the setting as Montana.
The story can basically be summed up as miserable people being miserable...the end. The film runs slightly over 2 hours, but easily feels like 4 hours. Largely because so very little actually happens and what does is relentlessly unpleasant. Seriously, we have just pushed through two years of COVID - does anyone really want to trudge through this experience? Not every film needs to be upbeat and some brutal films are compelling. However, this is none of those. It is literally like mainlining an IV of pure depression. Those on anti-depressants - beware!
The action - and I use that term very loosely here - centers on two brothers who run a Montana ranch. The steely macho Cumberbatch and the civilized plain Jesse Plemmons. Plemmons, Cumberbatch and their rowdy crew stop at a local hotel/restaurant run by widow Kirsten Dunst and her young son Kodi Smit-McPhee. To the apparent delight of the crew, Cumberbatch is grossly rude and terrorizes and mocks the two of them reducing them to blubbering messes.
In one of the film's many ridiculous developments, Plemmons returns later to apologize and an offer of marriage for Dunst. In a further peak of absurdity, Dunst accepts, even though it means moving herself and her overly sensitive son into closer contact with the brutish Cumberbatch. Cumberbatch naturally wastes no time launching a campaign of abuse, mental torment and increasingly demonic manipulation against the "intruders".
I literally have no idea what anyone sees in this film. It cannot even remotely be described as entertaining. Watching it is an absolute chore. The characters are either hateful beyond compare or so passive as to be mere wisps. And will someone please explain to me why the whole canard of the macho bully being a closeted gay guy taking out his frustrations on the world is still considered edgy. There are tons of closeted gay men who do not act this way, but literature and film seem to think this is the norm. This is also nothing new. It is a cliche and listening to critics and fans of this film act as though it is some shocking twist rather than a cliche one could see coming from 15 minutes in just makes them seem idiots.
I usually enjoy Dunst, but this film does her no favors. She plays a simpering passive victim from start to finish. She has no backbone and is incapable of standing up for herself or her son. Instead of facing down Cumberbatch or packing up and leaving, she becomes a walking whipping post who melts into drink and despair. She never makes us understand why she accepts the out of the blue proposal or why she would think living in close proximity to Cumberbatch would ever work. Hers is less a character than a plot contrivance.
Smit-McPhee plays the son with the weirdness quotient dialed up to 50 and enough over the top tics to make Norman Bates appear normal. Plemmons is utterly colorless. He is as stiff as a board and seems completely clueless as to what is actually happening or how to be proactive in any sense.
And finally, the elephant in the prairie - Cumberbatch. God is he awful here. Let us start with something good. He strips naked and shows everything - so congrats for that. Otherwise, he is miscast in the extreme. His American accent is off-key enough to prove distracting. The role seems meant for a rough-and-tumble old school man-of-the-earth cowboy type. Cumberbatch, looking pale, gangly and aristocratic here, does not even come close to cutting the mustard, no matter how much over the top swaggering he trowels on. Reviewers seem to have doubled down that the reason everyone puts up with the character's brutish, bullying behavior is because of his "charisma" and "beguiling" nature. Was he? I beg to differ. I found nothing charismatic or beguiling about this character. He treats most people like garbage - at one point he even beats a horse for no discernible reason other than his frustration at being in the closet. He manipulates and torments pretty much everyone in his orbit.
I hear this film often described as a "slow burn". When applied to Oscar dramas, I have concluded that this is code for "endless slog". This is a dreary, dull, pretentious, and woefully unpleasant waste of time that ostensibly should only appeal to those who like watching someone pull the wings of flies for fun.