Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons star in the Netflix western drama.
Mark your calendars: Oscar-winning filmmaker Jane Campion’s acclaimed western drama The Power of the Dog — which has received multiple nominations for the fifth annual C&I Movie Awards — will receive limited theatrical release starting Nov. 17 before it premieres Dec. 1 on Netflix.
Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie, Frances Conroy, Keith Carradine, Peter Carroll, and C&I reader favorite Adam Beach star in the film, which is based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, and has been generating high-decibel Oscar buzz since it premiered in September at the prestigious Venice Film Festival.
What’s it all about? According to Netflix:
“Severe, pale-eyed, and handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil’s romance, power and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides.
“The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, reveling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter – all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her.
“As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form – he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil’s cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot twisting further into menace?”
Here is the official Netflix trailer for The Power of the Dog.
