The Power of the Dog

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.