In the beginning of The Power of the Dog, the character Peter (Kodi Smit-Mcphee) narrates his intention (in life) is for nothing more than his mother’s happiness. As he says, “What kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother…to save her?”
I question if there is an antagonist in this film. Is it the time period or the culture that Phil can never be his desired self? Is that what makes him the dog in relation to Rose and Peter? In my film analysis of The Power of the Dog, I am interested in exploring how diegetic sounds and the motif of the window frame show an eerie portrayal of toxic masculinity.
Based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel, The Power of the Dog is directed and written for the screen by film director Jane Campion. The title derives from the Biblical verse
Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog. Psalms 22:20
The story takes place in 1920s rural Montana on a ranch estate owned by brothers Phil and George Burbank. Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a boastful, cunning man that speaks in anachronisms against the mythic backdrop of the West. He proudly does the dirty work of a cattle rancher, a far contrast from studying Classics at Yale. Phil learned cowhand skills from his mentor Bronco Henry who exist only as a void in the film. Phil is not opened about his sexuality but it’s implied that his relationship with his mentor was more than platonic. George (Jesse Plemons) takes care of the business of their family’s estate. He is a solemn, quieter, and softer antithesis to Phil. On one of the cattle runs, George and Peter stay at an inn run by Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst). Their stay disrupts the atmosphere including taunting Rose’s son Peter. George comforts Rose from his brother’s bullying and start seeing each other. They quickly elope. Rose and Phil do not get along living in the same house. Phil continues to subtly provoke Rose’s drinking. Her son Peter arrives on the estate having come back from medical college. He is taken under Phil’s mentorship learning cowhand skills. After Rose gave away cowhides without Phil’s permission, Peter steps in to give Phil cowhide (from a diseased cow) that infects him with Anthrax and dies.
Sound is a pivotal element to Campion’s storytelling. But I’m not talking about Jonny Greenwood’s score, an encroaching sonic tone that adds to the film’s visual landscape. Each character has their own sound that represents them at their worse, and at their best. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, each character has a sound, a skill, or quirk that reveals more of their psyche than words.
Still of the character Rose Gordon in The Power of the Dog
Sounds are a plot device that heighten the interpersonal tension between Rose and Phil. Phil despises Rose: he believes she only married his brother for their family fortune. In the film sequence where Rose is practicing piano in preparation for a dinner performance, Phil whistles and plays the banjo to upset her. As she is practicing, Phil comes in through the back door. Rose doesn’t hear him. As the scene unravels, the creaking of the door being opened is heard, and interrupts Rose’s playing. As she continues, Phil starts whistling from his bedroom. Phil is intending for a musical face-off from Rose, which cannot be clearer than him kicking his door open. When the mood shifts, so does the camera POV. When Phil comes into the house, Rose is seen from a high angle perspective while Phil is shown from a low angle: the power dynamic between the two. As Rose keeps repeating the same notes, trying to perfect, Phil mimics the same notes through his banjo playing.
Peter’s tic of pricking his comb is an example in the film of how sound acts as an extension of a character. The first time that he meets Phil at his mother’s Inn, Phill mocks and destroys one of his paper flowers. Peter uses these similar creations to leave on his father’s grave. When Phil is in private with his mother, he brings out his comb, pricking its teeth while holding back tears. Later in the film, when Peter visits his mother (while she is inebriated), he pricks his comb again. The state of his mother using alcohol to numb herself from Phil’s psychological and verbal taunting makes his nerves at unease.
Still of the character Phil Burbank
The window frame captures the romanticism of the antiquities of the old American West including what makes the ideal man. I feel that key moments in the plot that Campion wants the viewer to remember are shown through the window frame. When Phil, George, and their cowhand workers are at the inn’s restaurant, it’s through a square frame of the kitchen door glass window that Rose sees Phil burning her son’s paper flowers, an act that causes Rose to breakdown in tears. George feels responsible, which prompts him to return to the inn and apologize.
After Phil writes his mother about George’s growing relationship with Rose, a changing mountain-scape is shown through a window that visualizes the changes between him and his brother in George’s growing relationship with Rose.
Still of the character Phil
Later in the film, Rose has become a fickle, feeble, and meek alcoholic. Phil catches Rose drinking in the alley from his bedroom window. He whistles the tune that she could not play on the piano for the governor of Montana and his wife. His trick works. Rose is more frightened and drinks more.
As a painting freezes a moment in time, the window frame marks the keystones of Campion’s visual storytelling in the film. When Native Americans ask for Phil’s cowhides (which will ultimately be trashed) but are turned down by the elder housekeeper, this scene is shown through a window. A moment all too familiar in history books, archives, and legacy projects about violent periods where early American settlers pillaged Native American lands and communities.
In one of his last scenes, Phil who is gravely ill at this point in the film, is seen through a narrow window frame leaving with George to the hospital. He is trying to find Peter to give him the rope that they made together. This is the last time that everyone on the Burbank estate and we, the viewers see Phil alive. Through subversive film directing by Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog is less about the ascension to take over but the overthrow of power.
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