“The Power of the Dog” Jane Campion and a new Western movie unique to the 2020s

Campion focuses on “sexual dynamics” and the theme of liberation

This movie is a story about a man set in the West, and while it may seem like a completely different story from the director's masterpiece, `` The Piano ,'' the structure is actually similar. The Piano revolves around the main character Ada (Holly Hunter), her husband (Sam Neill), her lover (Harvey Keitel), and her daughter (Anna Paquin). It was a human relationship.

Ada marries a man from Scotland who lives in New Zealand, but eventually becomes romantically involved with a Maori man who lives nearby. The daughter then feels like an outcast and acts like a betrayal of her mother. Two men, a woman, and their daughter. The thrilling tug-of-war between these four people is the axis of the movie, and at the center of the axis is the intense sexual passion between a man and a woman.

When this film was released, film critic Nagaharu Yodogawa said that it was a rare work that depicted sexual desire from a woman's perspective, and this perspective was groundbreaking at the time. It is in this vivid expression of eroticism that the qualities of director Campion are revealed.

This movie also depicts the tug of war between the hearts of four men and women. Phil, who had previously had overwhelming power, becomes jealous of Rose's relationship with his brother and pursues her, but on the other hand, a strange relationship develops with her son Peter, which causes the relationship to fall apart. . It has something in common with ``The Piano'' in that erotic and romantic passion is at the core of the relationship.

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In ``The Piano,'' the main character, who had been repressed until then and had refused to speak, is liberated mentally and overcomes past trauma through a physical relationship with a lover who has primitive sex appeal. Sex is depicted as a means of liberating humans, and their secret love affair is depicted in a very sensual way.

Although such physical encounters do not appear in "The Power of the Dog," the scene where Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the main character, bathes naked is strangely vivid, and the feel of his white skin gives off the impression of a macho cowboy. It exudes a delicate atmosphere that is hard to believe. The scene in which Peter watches him bathe becomes a foreshadowing of their later relationship. In the second half, Phil and Peter grow closer. Phil, who once met the cowboy he admired, Bronco Henry, when he was Peter's age, tries to guide him by identifying his former self with the current Peter. The scene where the two smoke a cigarette together while sharing their feelings for Bronco in an old barn has a hint of secret eroticism (the love affair between the protagonist and his lover in The Piano also takes place in an old barn). was developing).

The director said, ``I felt an emotion that moved me about something, and I was overflowing with energy. I didn't think about what it was, and I decided to just follow the direction of my emotions.'' As he answered in an interview with ``The Guardian,'' director Campion's essence is to create a production that is driven by the power of instinct and sensation. He is a director who is skilled at portraying sensuality, so when he finds a subject that does well with that, he can demonstrate his true potential.

What's profound about this movie is that it doesn't portray the main character, Phil, who was full of machismo, as a villain. If we follow the story alone, peace will come to the ranch as Phil, who was oppressing his brother and his wife, collapses. This is because they are finally "freed" from Phil, a past-oriented person who forces them to oppress them.

However, it is very ironic, but isn't it true that the person who was "liberated" in the truest sense was Phil himself, who was supposed to be oppressing them? A man obsessed with the myth of masculinity, through time with a young man, reveals his weaknesses and regains the sexual passion he had thought he had lost. However, it borders on death, and the story ends as a cruel love story. The director's ability is demonstrated in the delicate depiction of this area.

The theme of the liberation of oppressed people within a community has been depicted in Campion's past works. ``The Piano'' is a story about a woman who finds her identity in a small community in New Zealand, and in her early masterpiece ` `Angel at My Table' ' (1990), the mentally ill protagonist is a writer... It depicts the process of liberating oneself by becoming one. The theme of `` Portrait of a Lady '' (1996) is an unhappy marriage, in which a woman who can no longer endure the oppression of her egoistic husband discovers her true identity through her relationship with her sick cousin. The director probably likes themes of human ``sexual dynamics'' and liberation.