Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil's romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides. The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, revelling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter - all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her. As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form - he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil's cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?

Production Budget Analysis

The production budget for The Power of the Dog (2021) has not been publicly disclosed.

CAST: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Thomasin McKenzie, Geneviève Lemon DIRECTOR: Jane Campion CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ari Wegner MUSIC: Jonny Greenwood PRODUCTION: See-Saw Films, Max Films, Brightstar, New Zealand Film Commission, Cross City Films, BBC Film, Bad Girl Creek

Box Office Performance

Theatrical box office data is not publicly available for The Power of the Dog (2021). This may indicate a limited release, direct-to-streaming, or a release predating modern box office tracking.

Profitability Assessment

Insufficient publicly available data to assess profitability.

INDUSTRY IMPACT

PRODUCTION NOTES

▸ Development

In May 2019 it was announced that Campion was to write and direct the film with Benedict Cumberbatch and Elisabeth Moss cast to star. Paul Dano entered negotiations to join the film in September. He was confirmed to star the next month, with Kirsten Dunst cast to replace Moss. But by November, Dano also dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with The Batman. Jesse Plemons, who had been offered the role before Dano, was cast to replace him. In February 2020, Thomasin McKenzie, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Frances Conroy, Keith Carradine, Peter Carroll, and Adam Beach were confirmed to be cast in the film.

Campion had Cumberbatch in mind for the role of Phil Burbank.

▸ Filming & Locations

Filming began in New Zealand in January 2020 in the Maniototo in Central Otago, and also took place in the coastal Otago city of Dunedin and the town of Oamaru. Production was halted in March by the COVID-19 pandemic. All the film's interior scenes were shot on sound stages in Auckland during the final weeks of filming. Principal photography concluded in July.

[Filming] Filming began in New Zealand in January 2020 in the Maniototo in Central Otago, and also took place in the coastal Otago city of Dunedin and the town of Oamaru. Production was halted in March by the COVID-19 pandemic. All the film's interior scenes were shot on sound stages in Auckland during the final weeks of filming. Principal photography concluded in July.

▸ Music & Score

Campion recruited Jonny Greenwood to compose the film score. Greenwood wanted to avoid the "sweeping strings" typical of Westerns, opting instead to use atonal brass sounds to emphasize the "alien, forbidding" quality of the landscape. As a result of the pandemic and the accompanying restrictions, Greenwood was unable to work with an orchestra and recorded many of the cello parts himself, layering them to achieve an orchestral texture.

AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Summary: Won 1 Oscar. 287 wins & 316 nominations total

Awards Won: ★ Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Film ★ Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama ★ Dorian Award for Film of the Year

Nominations: ○ David di Donatello for Best International Film (67th David di Donatello Awards) ○ Academy Award for Best Picture (94th Academy Awards)

Additional Recognition: The Power of the Dog is the first film directed by a woman to receive more than ten Academy Award nominations, and Campion is the first woman to receive more than one Academy Award nomination for Best Director, her first being for The Piano. The film is the first since Becket (1964) to win only one award from 12 nominations.

CRITICAL RECEPTION

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 94% based on 351 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Brought to life by a stellar ensemble led by Benedict Cumberbatch, The Power of the Dog reaffirms writer-director Jane Campion as one of her generation's finest filmmakers." Metacritic assigned a weighted average score of 89 out of 100 based on 58 critics.

Reviewing the film for The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney wrote: "This is an exquisitely crafted film, its unhurried rhythms continually shifting as plangent notes of melancholy, solitude, torment, jealousy and resentment surface. Campion is in full control of her material, digging deep into the turbulent inner life of each of her characters with unerring subtlety." Conversely, Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote: "All of this should build, slowly and inexorably, in force and emotion. But for a film that's actually, at heart, rather tidy and old-fashioned in its triangular gamesmanship, The Power of the Dog needed to get to a more bruising catharsis. In its crucial last act, the film becomes too oblique."

Metacritic reported that The Power of the Dog appeared on over 118 film critics' top-ten lists for 2021, the most for any film that year. It ranked first on 31 lists and second on 23 lists.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama cited it as among his favorite films of 2021.

On 6 April 2023, it ranked 15th on The Hollywood Reporters list of the "50 Best Films of the 21st Century (So Far)" and was called a "brilliantly uncomfortable chamber piece about corrosive masculinity fed by sexual repression" and a "psychodrama whose epic scope is echoed in its majestic landscapes". The March 2022 issue of New York magazine included the film as one of "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars".