Review: It's No Bark And No Bite For "The Power Of The Dog"

Who knew a repressed gay rancher would make for such a dull protagonist?

May 1, 2022

It is always hard to know what defines a good movie. It is never for one person to do so, although, for that task, many get paid (and sometimes without merit). In this arena, movies are “good," “bad,” or some combination of descriptors more attuned to egotism than the actual merit, or lack thereof, of the film. In reality, it is simple. A visual person will get enraptured by the aesthetic, an intellectual one taken with the subtext, a philosophical one ensnared by thematics, and an emotional one grasped by sentiment. All are valid because we are all valid in being ourselves; the only “wrong” interpretation is dishonesty.

As such, we debate the power of a film based on how we interpret it, whether we are that visual, intellectual, philosophical, or emotional individual. Everyone’s base perception will fuel the others: the core always comes first. For a visualizer, what theories concocted, concepts created, and emotions experienced all stem from what they see, and so on. The question, thus, can never be if a drama failed to do what we wanted but to do what all movies must: find a way to tie itself together so everyone can access it.

It is difficult to do so when you cannot comprehend the lives of the people you depict. Long has the debate raged over straight storytellers creating gay stories. Is it appropriate for someone not of a certain world to depict what they do not understand? Is it skill and intent that matters most, or empathy and earnestness?

The Power of the Dog is the story of a repressed homosexual rancher whose brother marries a local innkeeper and brings her and her son to live with them. As age-old conflicts give way to new resentments, everyone gets forced to navigate their lives, to whatever renewals or tragedies they may lead.

It displays an understanding of how to make a film mean something but exposes itself as knowing how to manipulate one thing into seeming like the rest. It crosses the nuance it's desperate to convince us of and a sledgehammer approach to its thematics. For every passing comment about Peter fearing his mother’s alcoholism, a reminder of his father’s suicidal descent into addiction, there is forced symbolism. Peter’s paper roses, dismissed and burned by Phil, share the same name as Peter's mother, the very woman who Phil slowly destroys with his cruelty.

Despite the torture he experiences in his moments of resentment, Phil is a man tormented by an anonymous burden. We see him relate to Peter in a way that feels more than platonic and self-satisfy to the memory of Bronco Henry in a grassy field, but the displays of his sexuality are nothing more than a means to make us aware of it.

Sexuality is a reality that comes differently to everyone. It could be moments you only understand in retrospect, when you reflect on your young years changing in the locker rooms before gym and realizing why your gaze always lingered. It could be thinking yourself to be like everyone around you, that what you feel when you kiss someone the world tells you to kiss is normal, but the first time you embrace someone you aren’t supposed to have, you discover what feeling truly means. It could be knowing all along, without confusion or doubt, but praying for the day you wake up and everything is different and you are finally just like everybody else.

In these different courses is an overarching tragedy, but the specifics of each deserve separate recognition, and, although it hints at it, that is something The Power of the Dog does not wholly understand.

The world that restricts Phil cannot be of his own making, because that would imply his struggle is entirely self-imposed, which the film never does. It presents him as a tragic figure, weighed down by feelings he cannot control and bound by conventions that say he should be the opposite of who he is. Yet, the person responsible for Peter’s harassment and the insistence on traditional masculinity is Phil himself; the means through which he could theoretically be open are invisible because he has rendered them so. In this irony is tragedy, but his need for secrecy runs deeper than the limitations he accidentally imposes.

We often create our environments more than we believe. The thoughts and feelings that conflict us we insist on condemning externally, hoping that someone will validate our loathing so reconciling them is easier. If we bark at the moon enough times and with enough volume, what was once ineffective will become reality. With his earnestness and authority comes fact for the people he interacts with, and there is more tragedy in that than there is in the movie’s indecision.

It does understand how to create smaller moments that reflect his torture: a soft touch on the face of a younger man that slowly turns into a firm grip the more the desires boil within; passing instance of admiration, stealing a glance at naked men bathing in a stream and wrestling, maintaining the steely veneer to mask the true intentions; the pain of listening to the intimacy shared between man and woman, knowing you can never have that again for yourself and in the way that is truest to you.

But the torture Phil experiences is more than just reflections. The Power of the Dog fails partly because it is self-aware about not understanding the emotional aspects of a movie and thus substitutes it for technical aspects to convince us it possesses meaning it does not have. All the gorgeous scenery in the world cannot mask a barren story, and a series of screeching string compositions that border on comical rather than tonal, will not either. The movie never makes a decision about whether the tragedy is that Phil’s suffering is self-inflicted or if the world has banished him to it. He is a man of greater power in his self-contained world; if that influence would crumble in the face of his sexuality, we must see it. If the film wants it to be cyclical, where the world has made his reality but his behavior has ironically made it an institution in his life, we must see it.

The Power of the Dog’s failings are here, in that indecisiveness, inability, and fraudulence. It finds something in its quiet moments of resentment, where the mention of a brother’s superiority sparks deep-seated envy. It finds something in a woman rushing into a better life before realizing the consequences of adjusting to a world foreign to her. It finds something in a young man watching his mother descend into the same addiction and turmoil that killed his father and resolving to stop it.

It always settles for showing the “what” but never answering any questions it asks. Its answers are in that scenery or in that music, never its thematics. It is that common film that believes a gloomy outlook equates to depth, and the darker the film becomes the more substance it possesses. It wants to dim itself thematically to brighten its technical aspects as compensation for not grasping its own ambitions. It never understands that whether subdued or pronounced, every interaction is an opportunity to raise the stakes. The result of these interactions is the payoff. Silence can say more than words, and The Power of the Dog builds much of itself on it, but there is a difference between saying something quietly and believing that just because your world has hushed that it has a purpose.

In this quiet darkness, the movie fakes meaning, but we know better than to believe that simply because you’ve plunged your characters into the abyss your story is worth our investment. Everyone is sad or mad about everything, wallowing in despair, desperate to escape their grim circumstances, or tightly bound by the external.

It is not enough that Rose feels a loss of control and growing anguish: she must be an alcoholic. It is not enough that Phil feels cheated by desires he cannot change, shoving the world away as he silently laments his lost love: he must be horrible to every person with whom he comes into contact. Just like an emo diary entry, it even has the character who is not what they seem, death after a flicker of renewal, and the only resolving conclusion being one where the ends have to justify the means.

In these angles, it finds the story it knows best how to handle: a drama where intent gets masked by playing a man’s struggles against him, where all the converging conflicts play out in a relationship that has dual investments of similarly mysterious intentions. It is the only time the film understands that the technical is not the mother of thematics, but a supplementary piece to interplay, the only means through which all it wishes to say about Phil is clear. He re-establishes a doomed relationship through the gesture of taking Peter under his wing, and in these times the homoeroticism is just clear as it is casual. His intent is obvious, the degree to which it dictates him unclear, and within that duality it finds its footing. If it had chosen a specific idea of how he became this man, and structured that journey in a linear fashion, we would have gotten the necessary payoff.

As it is, we get teased with understanding but lashed by ineptitude. Phil’s needling of Rose is palpable when he undermines her efforts on the piano by displaying his mastery of the same song on the banjo. It borders on ludicrous during the melodrama of her being unable to play at the dinner party and he whistles the song to her in reply. Every time it thinks itself subdued, it dives into histrionics, despite its belief that it contrasts loud technical elements with hushed thematics.

The Power of the Dog wants to have it both ways, and in that sense, it believes it has greatness it does not possess. It is a tale of mismatched deliveries but transparent intentions. Movies can choose either overtness or subtlety. Regardless, they must make the small decisions that justify the approach. An overt film does not have to layer its story with subtext or create a web of character developments, narrative progressions, or thematic resolutions. It can simply exist as what it wants and go crazy with its premise. The Power of the Dog chooses wisely in taking the subdued approach, at least conceptually. Quieter films must rely on slow burns; everything is locked in a series of vaults for which the film holds the keys. We speculate the contents of each and await the film to open them. As each vault opens, we piece together who we see and the truth of their story.

A measured approach is wise for someone of Phil's burdens and bindings: as he dismantles Rose and becomes just as much a victim to Peter as a liberator to himself, the slow insights work. We understand the brother's resentments. We understand Phil when he finds solitude on a bright, grassy field and masturbates with his dead lover’s handkerchief.

But with all the understanding must come knowledge, and vice-versa. We cannot know things we do not grasp or grasp things without the subsequent development revealing itself. We cannot open the vault, only observe and contextualize its contents. We can speculate, but movies need the conviction to have meaning. If a film depends on the interpretations of its audience, hoping they pick up on small details, like the significance of the sound of a thumb running over a comb, to elicit sympathy or understanding, it will fail.

The Power of the Dog funnels its lack of subtlety into everything we applaud for being obvious because if it accents a quiet story it is somehow masterful. The reality is disheartening: such is the way of people with nothing to say but the skill to make it seem otherwise. It is a shame: when it finds itself, it thrives. Unfortunately, much like Phil, it finds itself in all the wrong moments and at the wrong times, creating a story that, if nothing else, fakes substance well. In the end, its greatest offering is support for those who believe the tragedy of repressed sexuality is not for a straight person to tell. The knowledge is there, but rarely the understanding. The Power of the Dog has no bite, bark, or power. Literally or metaphorically, it does not live up to its title.