7859576678145995618.png
The relationship between two brothers working a large ranch in Montana is thrown into conflict when one secretly marries a local widow.
'In this article I argue that Jane Campion’s film The Power of the Dog (2021), can be read through Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy (1967); and that Campion’s films more generally can be viewed insightfully in a Nietzschean frame. Campion’s films are often concerned with ancient mythic themes and forces that continue to find expression in later times and places. I argue that Campion is also a feminist filmmaker who questions Hollywood narrative cinema from a subject position of difference, from within its genres but re-writing and re-valuing the values of its ‘plots’ (Gillett, Sue. 2004. Views From Beyond the Mirror: The Films of Jane Campion. The Moving Image 7. Australia: Australian Teachers of Media, Australian Film Institute and Deakin University). Campion explores abiding psycho-social phenomena and needs – here, masculinity, men’s relations with ‘mother’ – by drawing on mythological figures in service to the present in original ways and as a female director. I draw on Hélène Deutsch’s (1969. A Psychoanalytic Study of The Myth of Dionysus and Apollo: Two Variants of the Son-Mother Relationship. The Freud Anniversary Lecture Series, The New York Psychoanalytic Institute. New York: International Universities Press Inc.) analysis and discussion of Apollonian and Dionysian mythologies in support of this argument.' (Publication abstract)
'The Power of the Dog premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2021. In a short time, however, much has already been written about writer-director Jane Campion’s latest feature film, one of the most awarded releases of 2021 and the nexus of a range of heated, high-profile debates. These debates revolved around the place of the Western in contemporary cinema, with actor Sam Elliot infamously challenging Campion’s right to direct a film in the genre its representation of queerness, with, for example, The Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber bemoaning its ‘queer problem and, coincident with the start of Oscar voting, Campion’s careless stumble into personifying white feminism’s glaring blind spot regarding race—when she framed the difficulty of her perennial competition with men for major directing awards against Serena and Venus Williams’ comparatively easy (in Campion’s view) challenges in professional tennis. While the intensity and diversity of these conversations no doubt speak to the strength of The Power of the Dog’s immediate impact, this article is motivated by the desire to comment on issues raised by the film that have yet to attract the wandering eye of mainstream film journalism to any sustained degree. And, in anticipation of longer-term discussions in the sphere of film scholarship, it approaches The Power of the Dog as an opportunity to revisit provocative questions about national cinema, genre and masculinity that Jane Campion’s cinema has evoked since the inception of her career.' (Introduction)
'On the set of The Power of the Dog, Benedict Cumberbatch gave himself nicotine poisoning. It turns out, unsurprisingly really, that relentlessly smoking filterless hand-rolled cigarettes during his portrayal of gristly cattle rancher Phil Burbank made him feel very, very sick.' (Introduction)
'After eighteen months of wayward blockbusters and couch-ready, pandemical streaming entertainment, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog arrives like a stiff shot of pure cinema. Adapted from Thomas Savage’s 1967 book of the same name, Campion’s film offers no quick thrills, no easy answers, no simple heroes, and no mercy for its inhabitants. It’s a rare beast in an industry increasingly split between shoestring-budget genre films and $200 million franchise toppers; a quintessential adult drama.' (Introduction)
'The Oscars 2022 nominees won't be announced until February 8, but at time of writing, two films are topping experts' Best Picture predictions — and one of them is The Power of the Dog: a Montana-set western starring Benedict Cumberbatch as a rancher with a cruel streak, streaming now on Netflix.' (Introduction)
'It’s been over a decade since the release of Jane Campion’s last film. 2009’s Bright Star is a swooning portrait of the immortal romance between the poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his lover, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). It was about as Campion as a film can get — based on a romantic (in this case, literally Romantic) literary source, set in a lush environment that verges on frightening in its wild overgrowth, fascinated by the turbulence of interpersonal psychosexual dynamics, and redolent with explorations of Campion’s most signature concern: the persistence of women in a world organized against them. If Campion had intended it to be her final feature, and many suspected as much, as her hiatus from the big screen stretched from three into five, seven, and then 10-plus years, it would have been a fitting swan song. The most accomplished literary filmmaker on the world stage, plucking out an elegy to the most elegiac poet in the English canon.' (Introduction)
'The film director and her director of photography, Ari Wegner, discuss their Oscar nominations, filming through the pandemic – and what it’s like for a woman to make a western'
'Jane Campion’s western takes the big two prizes at Sunday’s showpiece event while Denis Villeneuve’s Dune scores five'
