The Power of the Dog: Saddle Horny

If you listen to the first two lines of The Power of the Dog, you will know exactly where this movie is going, so do yourself a favour: listen and save yourself from two (mostly) tedious hours.

I say “mostly” because, thanks to cinematographer Ari Wegner, The Power of the Dog is gorgeous to look at: sweeping vistas of the Montana hills (really New Zealand hills), herds of cattle flowing like rivers.

Clearly, writer and director Jane Campion is intent on telling an epic story, but the scale of her imagery only highlights the barrenness of her narrative.

Set in 1925, The Power of the Dog is about two wealthy rancher brothers, George (Jesse Plemons) and Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). When George marries a widow named Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and brings her to the ranch, her willowy, nearly grown-up son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), starts visiting when he’s on breaks from his first year of medical studies.

The Power of the Dog deconstructs masculinity, represented by the iconic figure of the cowboy, using the lens of homosexual desire.

Exploring the dynamics of the couple/non-couple Phil and Peter, the story offers some welcome reversals of popular ideas about maleness. (Campion based her screenplay on Thomas Savage’s novel.) Phil is so butch that, when George suggests he might bathe before the governor and his wife come to dinner, Phil refuses and instructs George to tell the governor that “I stink and I like it.” But, almost from the moment we meet Phil, the fragility of his performance of masculinity is obvious: thanks to Cumberbatch, we see the terror in Phil’s eyes when George starts courting Rose; he fears losing his only (tenuous) source of intimacy. And, hopefully, we hold onto that understanding, although we don’t excuse his actions, as he humiliates Rose and terrifies a mare by striking her head with a jacket and calling her a “flat-faced bitch.”

On the flip side, when we see Peter strolling through a camp of “faggot”-jeering cowboys with unexpected sangfroid, we know this sissy is a force to be reckoned with.

But these ideas, which are central to The Power of the Dog, aren’t developed with enough subtlety or nuance to sustain the film.

It’s probably worth noting that I’m a 69-year-old gay man. I’ve spent decades observing the performance of masculinity because, sometimes, it felt like my life depended on it. Maybe that’s partly why the thematic exploration in this movie seems so obvious to me, while it remains intriguing to many others. Another way of saying this: from my perspective, it doesn’t look like Campion is coming at her subject from a place of deep understanding.

The presentation of homosexual desire is ridiculous — and largely about saddles. When Phil overhears George making love to Rose, he heads out to the barn to visit the saddle of his hero and mentor Bronco Henry. Phil caresses the seat like he’s reaching into Bronco’s pants — and grabs the saddle horn.

Fans — and professional critics — are calling this movie subtle.

I longed to be watching with a roomful of irreverent gay men — because some of the lines are howlers. Phil whistles. Peter follows him, trotting obediently into the barn — and Phil introduces him to The Saddle. “Get on it,” he says. “Sit on it, Pete. Get yourself used to it.” I’m direct but even I have never used lines like this on a first date.

The eroticism in The Power of the Dog doesn’t feel iconic to me, it feels operatic — and, in its inflation, false. Aroused by visions of young cowboys bathing in a stream, Phil finds a private glade and draws Bronco’s bandana languorously over his face and naked chest. Wagner might have been able to make this work but, in The Power of the Dog, it feels overblown — and as simplistic as Rose’s sudden turn towards alcoholism.

I’m sure the intent here was to tell the story with pictures. But they’re not always worth a thousand words. That’s why The Power of the Dog is vast — and, too often, empty.