The Power of the Dog Review

Campion's western is a study of a man assembled from things he cannot say, and it withholds so patiently that a first viewing feels colder than the film actually is. Phil Burbank is cruel to his brother's new wife for reasons the script only ever lets you infer, and Benedict Cumberbatch plays him with a physical menace and a buried tenderness you have to read off the way he handles a rope or a saddle. Kirsten Dunst gives the quietest alcoholic descent in recent memory, all of it in the hands and the piano practice.

Kodi Smit-McPhee is the film, though: Peter is presented as prey for ninety minutes and is doing something else entirely the whole time. Ari Wegner shoots New Zealand as Montana in wide, hostile compositions where the hills genuinely resolve into the shape of the title. Jonny Greenwood's score scrapes at the nerves. The plot mechanics only lock into place in retrospect, which is either the pleasure or the frustration depending on your patience, and the coldness is real. It rewards a second viewing more than almost anything else this year.