A LOOK AT THE AMERICAN WEST: 'The Power of the Dog'

Here's one of two posts today featuring Benedict Cumberbatch

‘The Power of the Dog’ | Anatomy of a Scene

By nytimes.com

By Mekado Murphy

Jan. 21, 2022

In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

---

"A cowboy’s tough veneer is cracked in this sequence from “The Power of the Dog,” Jane Campion’s period look at the American West.

"The film (on Netflix) features Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank, a man who spends a lot of time on the family ranch he runs with his brother (Jesse Plemons), making life unpleasant for many of those around him, namely his brother’s new wife, Rose (Kirsten Dunst), and her son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

But in this scene, which comes late in the movie, Phil has been warming up to Peter, and invites the younger man to watch him work on the weaving of a rope. The sequence has elements of a seduction, though the intentions of each character may be more complex than what they seem in the moment.

In her narration, Campion said she loved the scene because “it’s the culmination of their relationship and so many different parts of the film that have been seeded right from the very beginning coming together.”

The dialogue here is spare. It’s more about glances, close-ups of rope work and the methodical way the two characters feel each other out. An eerie and heightened score by Jonny Greenwood add to the tension of the moment.

"Hello. I’m Jane Campion. I’m the screenwriter and director of ‘The Power of the Dog.’ This is the scene I call the love scene. It’s a scene that happens in the barn at night with Phil, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, and Peter, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee. It’s really a scene I love very much, because it’s a culmination of their relationship.

And so many different parts of the film that really have been seeded right from the very beginning coming together, like the completion of the rope with all its freighted meanings, the change of the relationship between Peter and Phil towards intimacy, and then the surprising power shift from Phil to Peter as Peter boldly holds out the cigarette to Phil’s lips, then to his own, and the laying out of the murder scene. The aim for me in directing the scene was to find a way to really build tension as Peter watches Phil finishing the rope. And this is something Phil has actually asked him to do. Will you watch me finish the rope? It’s a kind of vulnerability that, actually, Phil shows towards him. Here, we’re seeing the moment where the actual murder scene has been hinted at, when Phil’s wound pinks the water. And it’s also a scene where I added a lot, a lot of details during the filming of it and later. But this shot here was the one that made me really excited, like, just doing this move of focus pulls between Peter, the rope, Phil’s hands played in it at his crotch. And pulling back to Peter as he’s watching it. And then, he goes over to Bronco Henry’s saddle and begins to fiddle with that, which is actually a way of Peter subversively flirting with Phil, because anybody touching Bronco’s saddle, especially Peter, is probably eroticizing for Phil. . .

Phil and Peter are really sensing each other out here. Phil’s not really sure, I don’t think, whether Peter is aware of the atmosphere, because Peter’s really hard to read. And he starts a story about Bronco Henry and himself when they got caught out in a storm to illustrate how their friendship actually was not only the most important friendship in his life, but the one that saved his life. And he talks about lying body to body in a body roll together. And you know, meanwhile, fingering the rope and all the other erotic objects in this scene. And Peter asks— “Naked?” Which is the really important moment for me and especially the way these great actors work with the lines and with what’s happening. Here, we just see the rope that Peter has made being inserted into the main rope. And so it becomes a rope that they both made together. And initially, the scene didn’t have dialogue in it. In fact, it wasn’t even in the book. But Benedict really resisted the idea of the dialogue . . ."

Read the “Power of the Dog” review.

Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more.