Movie Review: 'The Power of the Dog' is an Enthralling and Powerful Film

“Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs” Psalm 22:20, said by Jesus while on the cross.

In Psalm 22:20, Jesus is speaking to God the Father. Jesus is on the cross and while he’s in dire pain, he can sense God, he can feel God and if God can take pity upon him in this moment, Jesus wants everyone to know and understand that God will be there for them in their moment of torment, in their time of need, and their time of dying. It’s a powerful, evocative and noble moment in the life of Jesus Christ. At least, that's how I read it.

I’m struggling to understand how this relates to Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, which actually misquotes Jesus who spoke of dogs in plurality, not a singular dog. It’s not that the movie is terribly unclear about how it uses this biblical entry but rather, my own desire for a clean and simple interpretation of what is being sought here. Who, in the context of the movie, The Power of the Dog, is Jesus? Who is God the Father? To whom is Jesus exclaiming about God’s benevolence?

The ensemble cast features Benedict Cumberbatch as bullying cattle rancher, Phil Burbank. Jesse Plemons plays Phil’s younger, more sedate, and kind brother, George. Kirsten Dunst is Rose, the owner of an Inn where the brothers stay while driving their herd of cattle, she’s also George’s love interest. Peter, played by Kodi Smit McPhee, is Rose’s son, a medical student who lacks the typical masculinity of a 1920’s Montana man.

Phil is jealous of Rose for stealing away the attention of his brother who, though Phil bullies him by calling him fat and belittling his moves toward a more modern life, he still seeks the attention of. It’s unspoken but one can infer that Phil and George, as boys, may have shared a secret related to a long since dead ranch hand named Bronco Hank. Where Phil is eager to talk about Hank and to relive the adventures that he and George had with Hank, George is not interested. He reacts to talk of Hank like a man trying to forget a past trauma.

The plot kicks into gear when George begins to court Rose and the two marry without telling Phil. Soon, Rose is on the ranch and busying herself about the homestead while Phil treats her with contempt and works to undermine her confidence. A pivotal moment comes when George, in all his failing pride, invites the Governor of Montana, played by Keith Carradine, to dinner at the ranch. The night is a disaster, Phil refuses to take part, refuses to get cleaned up for dinner, and poor Rose has a breakdown when called upon to play the piano to entertain the guests.

This leads to Rose taking to drinking to cope with her anxiety over Phil and the isolation she feels on the Montana ranch. Her anxiety only seems to increase when Peter comes to stay on the ranch and becomes a target of Phil. Rather than bully the young med student however, Phil takes to him. He begins to be kind toward Peter and Peter seems to admire Phil. Where things go from there you will need to see for yourself. I don’t want to spoil anything about The Power of the Dog, even as I am trying very hard to work through the heart of the metaphor at play.

In this scenario who is playing what role? Who is our Jesus stand-in? Who are the persecutors? And, who is God the Father? The person suffering the torments who finally feels God has spoken to them could be Rose. That would make Phil her persecutor and perhaps her husband, George, is God the Father, the one rescuing her from torment through his love for her. Her son Peter then could be an avenging angel depending on how you see the ending of The Power of the Dog playing out.

But, that is a far too literal reading of The Power of the Dog. I prefer to think that director Jane Campion is smarter than to go for what is obvious. I believe that rather than adhering to a strictly literal interpretation of the title, The Power of the Dog, what Jane Campion is more interested in is subverting expectations. From the outside you might assume that this is a movie about a small family unit being tormented from within by a bully in their family, Phil.

Instead, though Phil does inflict himself upon Rose in a number of scenes, they do not like or trust one another, the real story is about Phil’s deep seated insecurities. Phil may be a bully but he is a bully for a reason, self-preservation. Getting people to fear him through masculine displays of aggression or mental and emotional abuse, are Phil’s way to cope with what I am guessing is childhood sexual abuse that has left him deeply wounded and unaware or uncaring for the norms of society.

Outwardly, Phil is the picture of masculinity and the unearned confidence and entitlement that accompanied that masculinity in the early 1900’s setting of The Power of the Dog. All around Phil are assaults on that masculine mask that Phil wears. First, his brother George refuses to play along with Phil’s old school ideas of cattle rustlin, then George meets a woman and begins embracing more of modern culture, even buying a car, all things that Phil sees as an attack on his way of life and the memory of his beloved late friend, Bronco Hank.

Thus, perhaps the real metaphor at play here isn’t faith but rather, what happens when you begin to lose faith. In this case, Phil becomes mean and nasty as he begins to lose faith in himself and his place in the world. He begins to lose faith in the memory of Hank and whether or not that relationship was as rose colored as he remembered it. Imagine if, while on the cross, Jesus lost faith in God the Father, he would feel the absence of God and the immeasurable pain of that absence and the torment being inflicted upon him would be tenfold what it is when he believed he had God on his side.

In this reading, “Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs” is not Jesus exclaiming to God as God is reaching down to take him to heaven, a thankful and cathartic ode to the end of his suffering. Instead, this was Jesus giving up hope, giving up faith, giving into the doubts about his place in the world and in God's kingdom and simply begging for his life. In the case of The Power of the Dog, Phil becomes the Jesus stand-in but instead of having his faith restored, he's destroyed by doubt.

One of the exciting things about the bible and much biblical text is how it can be interpreted. I know many religious people hate that idea but for me, as a non-believer, I find it fascinating to parse the text and come up with meanings. In the case of The Power of the Dog(s), I interpreted it positively as Jesus accepting fate and feeling God the Father standing with him and the catharsis of that feeling, the righteous feeling of dying for a cause. For Jane Campion however, this biblical reference is about a loss of faith, a sorrowful cry at the absence of God and the unmoored, desperate feeling that leaves in its wake.

It's not God who Phil has lost faith in, it's himself. He's lost his sense of identity, he's been abandoned by the confidence that has been his default feeling for most of his life. His masculinity is threatened by the presence of Peter and the possibilities that Peter represents. He's threatened by the encroachment of the modern world as it displaces the life he's always known. The dogs are internal, biting away at his sense of self, threatening to reveal his secrets, the things about himself that he's kept hidden are about to betray him.

This is all to say that The Power of the Dog is a very, very good movie. The Power of the Dog will receive a limited theatrical release on November 17th followed by a debut on Netflix on December 1st, 2021.