The Power of the Dog

The title of Jane Campion's latest film -- The Power of the Dog -- is taken from Psalm 22, Verse 20 -- "Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog." This is not revealed until the final minutes of this methodical and riveting story of repression and cruelty in the Montana wilderness of the 1920s. The principal characters are a widow, Rose, (Kirsten Dunst) and her bookish teenage son, Pete, (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who join the household of a wealthy rancher named George (Jesse Plemmons) and his toxic, cowpuncher brother Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), who seems at first to be incapable of civil exchange and kind regard. It is Phil's brutishness that sets in motion this deceptively understated psychodrama, based on the novel by Thomas Savage. The four players are altered by their proximity to one another, some more drastically than others, and Campion, who directs feature films infrequently, conceals motive, relying on inference and nuance to separate the "darlings" from the "dogs."