THE POWER OF THE DOG***** - BFI London Film Festival - Day 6

Jane Campion returns to the Festival with her breathtaking and slippery adaptation of Thomas Savage's novel.  The film is set in Montana in the 1920s and cinematographer  Ari Wegner (TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG) creates landscapes so stunning that I really hope she wins awards for this work. I also implore you to try and see this film on the largest screen you can find when Netflix puts it out on limited release rather than waiting to watch it at home.

The movie stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a cattle rancher called Phil Burbank.  When we meet him he's a nasty homophobic misogynistic bully who strides around unwashed and intimidating all and sundry. But as the movie enters its second hour we learn that Phil has many layers and our understanding of him deepens and softens. 

The target of Phil's bullying behaviour are his soft-hearted and plain-talking brother George's new wife Rose (played by real life couple Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst). When we meet Rose she is a timid lonely widow, running a small rooming house alongside her teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Both Rose and Peter are mocked by Phil, but his brother George genuinely falls for her and takes her to live in a dark brooding grand house.  Rose is intimidated by Phil most of all, but also by George's fancy friends and parents. Dunst breaks our heart with her portrait of a woman brought to ruin by intimidation.

It's absolutely key that we believe in her ruin because that becomes the motivating point of the plot - both her reactions to and the motives of Phil and her son Peter and the relationship they form when he come home from school. What I love about the film is that even as we reach the final fifteen minutes it could go one of many ways depending on our interpretation of each character's feelings and character. I can honestly say that I was genuinely surprised by the outcome, but that when I saw it, I felt it was authentic and had been properly established in prior scenes. In other words, Jane Campion is playing fair with us.

Overall, THE POWER OF THE DOG is just a stunning film - beautifully written, scored, acted, filmed - the pacing perfection and the unfolding mystery gripping. 

THE POWER OF THE DOG is rated R and has a running time of 125 minutes. The film played Venice, Toronto and London 2021. It will be released on Netflix on December 1st.

London Film Fest 2012 Day 4 - GINGER & ROSA

2009 was a great year for British literature, with Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and A.S.Byatt's The Children's Book duking it out for the Booker. The latter book was deeply concerned with how the sexual liberation of the Edwardian bohemians impacted their children. One of the key themes of the novel is to contrast the earnest liberal politics of the Bohemians with the lack of regard for their actual children. They want to make the world a better place, regardless of whether their children are fed and cared for, or hurt by their affairs. Byatt makes the point that artists and intellectuals can be both admirable for their work but a nightmare to live with. Strict principles can often be a convenient fig leaf for selfishness.

Sally Potter's new film, GINGER & ROSA makes much the same point, drawing on a much smaller canvas, but with greater intensity. It's about how a father's radical conception of personal freedom damages his doting teenage daughter. Roland sees Ginger's tears but cannot stop the actions that cause the pain, equating personal sexual freedom, and setting aside bourgeois morality, with his opposition to armed conflict. It's a pompous but not indefensible position, but the the same could be said for so much that happens around the girl. Her gay godfathers genuinely care for her, but their tales of radicalism fuel her wallowing deaths possibility of a nuclear holocaust. Similarly, their friend Bella praises Ginger's activism but denies whipping her up. It's no wonder the poor girl is sad and confused, desperately trying to please and not complain.

Alice Englert and Elle Fanning,
Rosa & Ginger respectively.

And what of Ginger's best friend Rosa? Although the focus of the film is not on her, she's an equally tragic figure. Where Ginger suffers from a surfeit of concerned but misguided adults, Rosa has a distracted mother and an absentee father. No wonder she latches onto Roland as an impressive father figure - a composite man to take care of her and shepherd her into adulthood.

GINGER & ROSA seems to me to be a perfect film - tightly scripted, beautifully acted and photographed, evoking in minute detail the spirit and design of early 60s London, but also hinting at wider themes of revolt and parenting. I love that in place of the Swinging Sixties cliché we get a drab, grimy post-war world and an uneasy conflict between radicalism and 50s suburbia. Particular praise has to go to Elle Fanning (Ginger) who carries so much of the emotional burden of the film, but also Christine Hendricks in a smaller but equally intense role as her mother. Alessandro Nivola as Roland, her father, brings just the right balance of sleaze and headstrong idealism. But ultimately, the triumph of this picture is Sally Potter's, in bringing a new perspective to 60s London, and doing so with such formal control and intensity. If there is any justice, this film, and particularly Fanning and Hendricks' performances, will be recognised come awards season.

GINGER & ROSA played Toronto and London 2012. It opens in the UK on October 19th. The running time is 89 minutes.