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Review | Venice 2021: The Power of the Dog movie review – Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst in Jane Campion’s powerful tale of sexuality and sibling rivalry

  • Benedict Cumberbatch plays a brutish rancher whose brother falls for a widow, played by Kirsten Dunst, in this absorbing drama
  • The film, set in the American West but shot in New Zealand, has stunning landscapes, while the plot has undertones of hidden sexuality

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Benedict Cumberbatch in a still from The Power of the Dog, directed by Jane Campion. Photo: Kirsty Griffin/Netflix
James Mottram

4/5 stars

Two brothers and the woman that comes between them – that’s the core of Jane Campion’s absorbing, attritional drama The Power of the Dog, unveiled in competition at this year’s Venice International Film Festival. The film will start streaming on Netflix on December 1.

Her first feature since 2009’s John Keats biopic Bright Star, this take on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage feels right at the opposite end of the scale to that sensual, slow-burn exploration of the English Romantic poet.

Set in Montana in the American West in 1925, the film stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil, a brutish rancher who, in the very first scene, is calling his more business-minded sibling George (Jesse Plemons) “fatso”.

The insults and the ire only get worse when George meets and falls for Rose (Kirsten Dunst), who, with her sensitive, artistic boy Pete (Kodi Smit-McPhee) runs a small mill. Her husband took his own life years earlier.

The “suicide widow and her half-cooked son”, as Phil cruelly dubs them, soon move to George and Phil’s ranch. “You’re a cheap schemer,” the embittered Phil tells Rose, barely able to contain his hatred.

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