The Power of the Dog

  • Introduction

    Leila Weefur is an artist, writer, and independent curator based in Oakland. Weefur is an educator at Stanford University, a founding member of the curatorial film collective The Black Aesthetic, and the guest curator of Landscapes of Myth: Westerns After “The Searchers.”

featuring

Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee,

In Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, Wyoming’s bounty of mountains plays the role of accomplice and offers a fiery display of the landscape’s feminine vengeance against toxic masculinity and homophobia. Campion’s staging of a wealthy rancher’s large home utilizes verticality as a driving narrative force—dog-shaped mountains in the distance, old cavernous trees, and a beautifully aged walnut wood mansion—allowing characters to escape, hide, peer around, and bury sinister intentions. From the raw cowhide to the stark reverberance of footsteps and banjo plucks, everything is working in concert to uncover the simmering shame and resentment seated within the deep histories of this family ranch.

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Jane Campion
Based On
  • the novel by Thomas Savage
Cinematographer
  • Ari Wegner
Print Info
  • Color
  • DCP
  • 126 mins
Source
  • Netflix

Event Accessibility

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at bampfa@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 642-1412 (during open hours) with as much advance notice as possible. More information on accessibility services.