Some may question the ending of this art house Western ( set in the wrong country, and it shows ) but I do not. The repressed homosexual who was once in a possible sexual relationship with a man who has died must be killed off. It happens so often in mainstream or high profiled art house films this death of the homosexual that some brave critic of note should write about it, but they don't. But back to the film in question; it is a bleak tale of mother love worthy of Norman Bates in ' Psycho ' and the whole cast acts equally bleakly, and in my opinion pretentiously. Cumberbatch is an anguished man who takes it out on everyone, and no doubt in grief for his dead could have been lover. Dunst plays a widow who falls in love with his spruced up brother and somehow she descends into alcoholism, and she does it very well being the best actor in the dreary scenario. She has a son who is truly nasty, but no one seems to notice his methodical cruelty. He cuts up animals and hugs a rabbit before killing it. Quite a boy!! But as he loves his mother he will do anything to save her. From himself ? Cumberbatch tries to get his act together, and has male physique magazines stashed away ,and we certainly cannot tolerate that, and inevitably there is an exit door for him. The scenery which acts better than the humans is a Montana set in 1925 and we all know it is filmed in New Zealand. To sum up I felt numb with depression watching it and longed for Rory Calhoun to rush in and yell at them all for faking Western mythology. But sadly he is dead. To sum up I think most of the actors were miscast ( except Dunst ) and I did not like the tease of male nudity in such a basically heteronormative film. Naked cowboys splashing in water did not make up for the inevitable killing off and a return to so-called normality. The film has been acclaimed heavily as a masterpiece. Perhaps I have looked at it through the wrong end of the telescope.
Review of The Power of the Dog
