[8.3/10] I spent most of *The Power of the Dog* thinking the movie was nigh-plotless and not really minding. It’s not as though there was no story to speak of. People married. They adjusted to the new arrangement, as did their children and siblings. Friction and addiction ensued.

But it didn’t seem like a film driven by story. Instead, it was centered on the relationships between the characters: Phil, the gruff but jealous rancher; George, his simple but sweet brother; Rose, the caring but troubled woman George marries, and Peter, her effete yet scrupulous son. More than the ongoing lurch of the plot, the movie is built on the tangled, conflicting relationships of these four individuals.

That would have been enough on its own. Phil loves his brother but is emotionally estranged from him. He resents Rose for “stealing” George from him and psychologically attacks and undermines her at every opportunity. He's initially cruel to the effeminate Peter, compensating for his own insecurities over his sexuality, but eventually takes a shine to the boy after projecting the ghost of his lost love upon him. Phil is not the protagonist of the piece, but he is the main character, and there’s more than enough complexity and nuance in his psychology and his dynamics with the other characters to sustain the film.

George is a reserved character, but a unique one. Socially awkward, naive to the point of obliviousness, and a step slow to boot, there’s a gentle soul beneath his fumbling demeanor. His care for Rose and Peter speaks to a compassion Phil lacks. His tearful confession to his wife of how wonderful it feels not to be alone is sweet in his feelings for her and an indictment on his relationship with the brother he lacks the strength to stand up to.

Rose is, like so many others of her gender and station, the plaything of other forces who have the funds and position to give them an agency she almost entirely lacks. She is, arguably, the film’s most sympathetic character, who feels uncomfortable when plucked from her humble circumstances, and turns to substances amid both the weight of her feeling out of place and her brother-in-law’s tireless efforts to mentally destroy her.

Peter is the protagonist, the characters whose words we first hear in the film, and the one whose actions ultimately have the biggest impact on the story. But he is an unassuming, diffident, retiring figure. Lithe and unmanly, he is demeaned by the rough-and-tumble ranchers he finds himself surrounded with. He loves his mother dearly, in ways that verge on the concerning in a film with plenty of questionable family subtext. And in Phil, he finds both mentor and dupe, someone who attempts to show him how to be a man in this world despite the sense of difference, while learning, in grave terms, how well Peter’s able to protect himself and those he cares about in the final tally.

All of that would be enough on its own. There’s a different version of *The Power of the Dog* -- one that’s a pure kitchen sink drama about this unusual blended family in the 1920s Montana, and the intricate dynamics that emerge from so many worlds colliding and so many long-held attachments threatened from without -- which would still have been excellent.
The acting would remain a strength. Benedict Cumberbatch takes on arguably his most challenging role, that of a comprehensible monster. He straddles the line in his performance between pure menace and contemptibleness, to something pitiable and even sympathetic. Jesse Plemmons has the unshowiest character, but finds layers within his taciturn demeanor. Kirsten Dunst expertly communicates the sense of alienation for Rose in her new surroundings, and the quiet desperation she experiences which makes her turn to drink. And Kodi Smit-McPhee cuts the image of unlikely vengeance, an anti-villain whose shrinking presence masks an unsuspecting effectiveness in his chosen tasks.

So would the film’s impeccable craft. *The Power of the Dog* is awash in scenic beauty, with sweeping shots of the New Zealand frontier doubling for the fields and canyons of old Montana. The visuals within walls are just as striking, with sharp compositions and stagings that sell the thorny relationship dynamics amid the main quartet. The score perfectly suits the Western atmosphere, with dulcet guitar strings and other acoustic accompaniment setting the tone, as discordant notes emerge when situations go sideways.

Most importantly, writer-director Jane Campion and her editor, Peter Sciberras, aren’t afraid to let scenes breathe. There’s a recurring sense of dread in the film, as a judicious approach to cuts crafts a certain tension whenever two characters share the frame. At times, the film proceeds at a languid pace, but that makes room for the acting to truly thrive, and for the unspoken affections and strains between the different characters to grow and contort as a scene, and the movie, progress.

All of these elements would allow *The Power of the Dog* to succeed whatever direction its narrative took. At heart, the film is a character study, as interested in delving into what’s in the hearts and minds of its four leads as it is in advancing any central story. But there is a ghost in the machine, a central conflict that affects all of their lives when you step back and gaze at the bigger picture, which comes into focus in the film’s final act.

There is something of a feint when Phil takes Peter under his wing. It’s easy to believe that the two men have formed an unlikely bond, born of shared differences from the accepted sexuality of the era, lovers and mentors who faded away, and father figures who chose to leave in multiple ways. Their scenes are compelling, as ones which not only offer a softer side of the film’s most significant figure and antagonist, but which suggest he’s luring the boy away from his mother. There’s something both heartening and tragic about the suggestion, something to give Peter strength that comes at a terrible price.

And yet, Peter already had a hidden strength, or at least the strongest of convictions which Phil could never shake, in which this bond appears to be a mere cover. It is an opportunity for Peter to eliminate the man who was cruel to him in their first interaction, who is, if not the source, than certainly an accelerant for his mother’s unhappiness. Ironically, in the shadow of Phil’s performatively toxic masculinity, it’s Peter who defends his family, using methods of trust and attention to detail that allow him to get the upper hand on the man who so underestimates him. It is righteous yet terrifying, the birth of a killer made by a combination of brilliance and homegrown horrors.

The plot emerges almost as stealthily as Peter’s scheme does, only revealing itself once the time is way, but snapping into place in hindsight. That is the greatest strength of *The Power of the Dog*, a film that stands on its own with the strength of its craft and characters, only to tell a surprising yet sound story that emerges, slowly but surely, in the spaces between them.