Benedict Cumberbatch in The Power of the Dog. Photo / AP
Benedict Cumberbatch's Bafta winner and Oscar favourite is entrancing critics and confounding audiences. Who's right?
If awards season is tantamount to a Presidential election race, The Power of the Dog just emerged from a tough primary as the film to beat. Throughout the Baftas ceremony on Sunday, it looked shaky: having won none of the predicted craft awards (including for cinematography and score), and none of the acting awards (with Benedict Cumberbatch losing to Will Smith for King Richard), there was a point in the night when we were three trophies shy of the finish, and this nominal front-runner was still empty-handed. All came good when Best Director and Best Film were eventually announced, with sighs of relief from the rows of Netflix "suits".
Other sighs were more exasperated. It's long been clear that Jane Campion's film is a divisive beast – one of those critics' darlings and awards-season staples that hasn't found universal favour with the viewing public. Some find it off-puttingly slow and taxing, others say the ending is too confusing.
Reports of the dream therapy Benedict Cumberbatch used to guide his subconscious while making the film have also sounded alarm bells for naysayers, as have Campion's stated declaration that she set out to dismantle Western archetypes.
Nonetheless, it feels as though the arguments for The Power of the Dog's eventual Oscar glory – not just as a chance to remedy Campion's neglect in the past, but to recognise it on individual merit as an unusual, disquieting and powerfully wrought piece of storytelling – are gathering force. And, in fact, some of the criticism has been so dopey, off-base and objectionable that, if anything, it has probably given the film's chances at the Academy awards a boost.
On the popular podcast WTF with Marc Maron, Sam Elliott – he of the gravelly voice, handlebar moustache and cowboy hat, with his iconic part in The Big Lebowski – referred to the film as "a piece of s—", and particularly took umbrage at its reappropriation of the western as a zone of intriguing sexual ambiguity, which feels like the whole reason Campion got the film made.
"What the f— does this woman from down there" – he meant New Zealand – "know about the American West?", Elliott demanded. He seemed unaccountably furious at how much time the film's extras spend labouring shirtless in the Montana heat-haze, and at the two pairs of chaps sported by Benedict Cumberbatch's Phil – the sadistic rancher whose close relationship with his old mentor, Bronco Henry, the story subjects to a lot more than an eyebrow-raise.
It was all very reminiscent of the homophobic flak Brokeback Mountain weathered 17 years ago. But Campion, who was repeatedly asked about Elliott's interview when walking the red carpet for the Directors Guild of America Awards on March 12, knew exactly how to bat it away. "I think it's really unfortunate and sad for him," she riposted, "because he's hit the trifecta of misogyny and xenophobia and homophobia. I don't like that. I think he was being a little bit of a b-i-t-c-h. Plus he's not a cowboy, he's an actor."
Even before Elliott's rant, a kind of pre-emptive backlash had been brewing against the movie, for a pile of reasons Campion, over her career, has become well familiar with. Not to caricature them, but the same contingent who've never stayed awake through her films, and shrugged at The Piano, find the pacing a chore, the psychological ambiguities leaden and laboured. It's fair to argue that her film isn't an instant triumph so much as an interesting grower, which tempted me right away to read Thomas Savage's terrific novel, and then to go back for another look: it gained layers.
True, the roles for Jesse Plemons (as Phil's quietly fatigued brother) and Kirsten Dunst, as the new sister-in-law Phil can't abide, slightly stall out in the third act, especially in Plemons' case. But in leaving that couple to one side, the film sidesteps into its most thematically intriguing territory when Phil and Peter strike up an allegiance.
The dénouement is a creeping knife-twist you don't necessarily see coming, and thereby supplies good reasons why Smit-McPhee is much more likely to win Best Supporting Actor than Plemons (though both are losing ground, after last night, to Troy Kotsur for CODA). Cumberbatch's stinking bully may start out as king of this domain, but as soon as you realise there's a game of thrones going on, the dynamics grip more in retrospect.
As for the "confusing" ending: all the clues are seeded for how Phil's new protégé Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) – the fey momma's boy pilloried and called "Miss Nancy" in the early going – sets about remedying the status quo and triumphing over Phil. Campion doesn't triple-underline these twists. Her film has slippery confidence, whispering its solutions rather than belting them out.
Chances are robust that this strange, insinuating picture – a kind of outdoor chamber piece, anti-epic in its bones – will actually stand the test of time. The critical backup got it off to a flying start – it stands with a 94% fresh review score on Rotten Tomatoes. But even the backlash hasn't been as damning as all that. A 79% fresh audience score actually suggests quite decent word-of-mouth for a film of such stealthy gambits and stately pacing.
There has long been a huge gulf between the films Netflix makes to win Oscars (Roma, Mank, The Irishman) and the films it makes to lure audiences (Red Notice, Bird Box, Extraction). The former tend to be long and taxing, while the latter are pure mind-candy. But Netflix's viewing figures show The Power of the Dog is pulling in audiences very nicely, rather than only appealing, as dissenters tend to grumble, to a rarefied crowd of critics and awards voters. Anyone browsing the service who stumbles across The Power of the Dog, nestling as something of an anomaly amid the reams of Adam Sandler movies, can only be more intrigued by the spice that Elliott's bigoted remarks have added to the conversation.
Unwittingly, what he has done is made himself Phil to the film's Peter – the sneering homophobe stuck in the past, demanding adherence to certain dogmatic rules about genre and masculinity. In the process, he's been schooled, superseded, and left in the dust. As Campion put it – not unkindly – "The West is a mythic space. And there's a lot of room on the range."
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