Directed by Jane Campion
Written by Jane Campion
Based on the novel by Thomas Savage
Cinematography by Ari Wenger
Original music by Jonny Greenwood
2021.
Netflix from 1 December 2021
CAST
Benedict Cumberbatch – Phil Burbank
Kirsten Dunst- Rose Gordon
Jesse Plemons – George Burbank
Kodi Smit-McPhee – Peter Gordon
Genevieve Lemon – Mrs Lewis, the housekeeper
Keith Carradine – The Governor
Alison Bruce- The Governor’s wife
Peter Carroll – The Old Man (father)
Frances Conroy – The Old Lady (mother)
We were so excited by the news of this film with its fulsome five star reviews that we put it on our calendar in capital letters for December 1st. I did have minor doubts about it in that I always thought Jean Campion’s award winning The Piano was over-rated.
How wrong can you be? Doubly so. We started it on Wednesday evening. The day of release. We couldn’t get into it at all. We were an hour and a quarter in. Karen said ‘Is it time for the news?’ I looked at my phone. ‘Two minutes to ten.’ ‘Shall we watch the news?’ ‘Yes.’ After the news? ‘Let’s pick it up tomorrow.’
We didn’t “pick it up”. We started again right from the beginning in the afternoon. This time we were glued to the screen, transfixed. First, lose all pre-conceptions of a “Western.” I think that’s what fooled us, we kept seeking some thread of sudden excitement that isn’t there. That “Western” anticipation is exacerbated by the wide landscapes, cattle you can almost smell, the dust and dirt. The mindset is intense, even Gothic creepiness with an intriguing and complex twist ending that gives you such a shock, that you have to mentally rewind it and realize it was signposted in at least half a dozen ways. No plot spoilers, but perhaps the mildest is when Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) rails about Rose’s alcoholism and tells her son, Pete (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who wants to be a surgeon, to look in his medical books: A is for alcoholic personality. Doh. Later we think … and A is for anthrax. That’s not said.
It’s set in Montana in 1925. Cattle country. Not as wild as in the Wild West days, and perhaps not as wild as today with survivalists and anti-vaxxers.
Two brothers share a room, Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his brother George(Jesse Plemons). Phil calls George “Fatso” and tells him he was a chubby nothing too dumb to get through college. They live in a massive American Gothic mansion with a housekeeper, a servant and a dozen cowhands. The mansion is a designed set and is too big and too bizarre to be real in the location. Their rich parents have departed for the town. Off they go on a cattle drive. Phil is trail filthy, George in a shirt and suit. Neither are communicators.
The drive takes them to Beech. They move from the saloon (a soft focus brothel in the background) to the Red Inn restaurant next door, where they have booked dinner for twelve. A widow, Rose (Kirsten Dunst) runs the place with her wispy son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee ).
Peter’s hobby is making paper flowers, and the macho Phil uses them to light a cheroot. Phil bristles with homophobia, calling Peter ‘Miss Nancy.’ He also flies into rage at another table singing and playing the piano. This is an unpleasant cruel, misogynist guy.
George has taken a liking to Rose, and goes back to propose to her. He brings her back to the mansion as his wife. Phil listens to them through the wall, bed squeaking, happy murmuring together.
George buys Rose a piano, sets up dinner with their parents, the Old Man and the Old Lady, and the Governor and his wife. Phil hates Rose who is terrified of him, and sinks into alcoholism. (This is the Prohibition era, but it’s never mentioned).
There is a significant point where Rose tries to play a tune on the new piano and Phil starts playing it upstairs on his banjo, but crushingly better. You hear banjo played like that and you think Deliverance. Keep that thought.
We learn from the Governor that Phil was a Phi Beta Kappa majoring in classics at Yale. However, Phil refuses to wash up and change for dinner, instead sitting in the barn in filthy clothes in a Norman Rockwell cowboy pose. (The Yale classics scholar as cowboy is possibly a reference to another recent Western, Hostiles with Christian Bale as the classics scholar / civil war captain, played byChristian Bale.)
Peter moves to the ranch for the summer. He wants to be a surgeon, and practises on a rabbit.
Phil is obsessed with his mentor, Bronco Henry, lovingly polishing the dead man’s saddle. He has a secret pool where he swims naked. Peter is to discover this, and also Bronco Henry’s stash of nude male magazines hidden away. When you get to the scarf scene (say no more) note the initials. We realize that Phil’s surface homophobia masks the fact that Phil is indeed gay and was himself groomed by Bronco Henry (incidentally, a gratingly daft name). Phil was afraid to come out of the closet and so bullies and baits Peter. Phil decides to get friendly with Peter. Early on the cowhands say that Phil sees something mystic in the mountain overlooking the ranch that they can’t see. But Peter sees it too. The jaws of a dog.
Why is Phil starting to befriend Peter? Is it to get at Rose? Because he wants to groom him? Is Peter gay at all, or just slim and artistic? What’s the rawhide rope that Phil is plaiting for Peter about? (Peter’s dad hanged himself) Every scene turns out to be tied in, important, part of the plot … but only in retrospect. Alright, we’re getting into plot spoiler territory. At the end, we see a bible / prayer book and the quote. I won’t say who reads it out.
Deliver my soul from the sword
Psalm 22, King James Bible
Deliver my darling from the power of the dog.
It is extremely intense with cuts to those almost 3D Montana landscapes. Or what I thought were Montana landscapes. A friend points out that in fact it was filmed entirely in New Zealand. I normally check locations on IMDB, but this time I hadn’t. I had worked out that the huge gothic ranch house was built for the film though. The settlement at “Beech” at the end of the cattle drive, where the saloon and inn are, also look surreal, placed in the middle of nowhere.
A great piece of camera work is early on when it pans from inside the mansion across three windows separated by black space, and we see Phil walking across. The same angle is repeated just before the end.
It benefits from being a four person drama in most ways. Yes, there’s a large cast, but you will be in no doubt who the main four are. They’re all at the top of their game. Cumberbatch proves that you can do the full sub-Olivier Shakespearean actor from horseback. The soundtrack is simple (think Max Richter)and points the sense of uneasiness throughout.
Why didn’t we get it first time? There is the difference between cinema and home. We have a 65″ Ultra HD TV and a powerful M&K surround sound system. We watch in the dark. It’s still not a screen like a cinema though. There isn’t the commitment to a time span and a space that there is in the cinema. You have travelled, parked and paid. You know you are there. You don’t wander out for a cup of tea or for a pee. The main thing is that first time through, my mind kept wandering on the topic of screenwriting and narrative drive. It can be sustained over long series and box sets. It should be so easy to keep it going for a couple of hours. Narrative drive is not essential … both Brontes had it, then Jane Austen didn’t. This doesn’t have it in TV box set style either. You don’t need “page turner” moments when you’re settled in a cinema seat for two hours. You’re more likely to need them in a domestic setting. Even so some gently paced films this year completely held us, The Dig, The Man With A Hat . We watched the former twice, the latter three times. This really did … but only the second time.
Yes, the landscape is a co-star, but you knew that at the start. Great aerial shots.
This was hovering between four and five stars on second viewing. We agreed that it is better watched in the afternoon, than right before you go to bed.
While I think it deserves 5 stars for cinematography, plot intricacy and acting, I will go down to four because it really did fail to grab us first time. Films should. I am sure it would in a proper cinema.
MY RATING
****
CRITICS
Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian *****
Geoffrey McNab – The Independent ****
Peter Viney's Blog 
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