VIFF Centre to bring Jane Campion's award-winning The Power of the Dog to the big screen
The Piano director turns the classic western on its head in a dark and superbly crafted film
Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons star as dissimilar brothers in The Power of the Dog.
VIFF has announced it’s presenting The Power of the Dog—a film that’s widely acclaimed as Jane Campion’s strongest movie since The Piano, the 1993 film that earned her the Cannes Palme d’Or.
The Power of the Dog plays the big screen at Vancity Theatre from November 17 to December 2.
The film earned the celebrated New Zealand director the Silver Lion at this year’s Venice Film Festival, for a story that turns the the western, and all its machismo, on its head. Campion wrote the screenplay based on a 1967 novel of the same name by Thomas Savage.
The Power of the Dog is a star turn for Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil, the boorish, bullying, but self-loathing cowboy who heads the Burbanks’ Montana cattle ranch. Equally strong is Jesse Plemons as his more polite, mild-mannered brother George (Jesse Plemons) and Kirsten Dunst as George’s new wife Rose. When she moves onto the family farm with her sensitive son (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Phil is determined to make their life hell.
Superbly crafted and shot across starkly beautiful mountain vistas and cattle ranges, it features a brooding score by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
The film is one of the leading contenders for the Oscars this awards season. It’s a work that ranks with contemporary western classics like There Will Be Blood, The Revenant, and Brokeback Mountain.
Post sponsored by VIFF