How Many Oscars Does ‘The Power of the Dog’ Actually Deserve to Win?

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE

Yes.

Jane Campion has a long history of getting the best out of world-class composers like Michael Nyman and Mark Bradshaw, and she does so again in her dagger-like frontier drama by encouraging Radiohead multi-instrumentalist (and virtuosic film composer) Jonny Greenwood to create his own musical syntax of menace — seductive but threatening.

The work that resulted from that free rein falls somewhere between “Phantom Thread” and “There Will Be Blood,” combining repressed French horns, a mechanically detuned piano that plays along with Kirsten Dunst’s performance in broken time, and a cello masquerading as a banjo in order to sew together a Western soundscape that’s constricting tighter in the middle while fraying along the edges. And then, in the transcendent “Psalm 22,” that tension resolves into a new and delightfully violent lightness that lingers under the skin long after the movie is over. This is an inventive and grippingly atonal score from start to finish, and it’s impossible to think of Campion’s film without hearing Greenwood’s strings pluck away inside your head. Even in such a competitive field, this score stands far above the fray.

BEST FILM EDITING

Yes.

“The Power of the Dog” marks editor Peter Sciberras’ first collaboration with Jane Campion, and there was certainly a measure of risk in the director’s choice to hire someone new on a film that would have to be cut like a knife. Well, not new so much as unfamiliar (Sciberras had edited several David Michôd films, including “The Rover” and “War Machine”). But Campion has always had a sixth sense for like-minded artists, and her faith in Sciberras pays off in the very first moments of the film they made together, as our introduction to the Burbank cattle ranch immediately establishes the patient but plotting rhythm that will come to define a sneaky sneaky neo-Western that’s always operating on two different tracks. 

“The Power of the Dog” is a movie in which the dead cast long shadows while the living are often bullied out of sight (or retreat into the margins with ulterior motives), and the genius of Sciberras’ editing is in the balance he strikes between them — in the subtle but sure-handed sense that this story is tracking all of its characters with Hitchcockian cheek. The entire cat-and-mouse plot depends on the flawless execution of its final moments, and no editing feat in this Oscar field was more impressive than how Sciberras shaped the big reveal at the end of Campion’s film into something both abrupt and screamingly obvious at the same time. It’s a textbook example of why Best Editing and Best Picture naturally tend to go hand-in-hand, and “The Power of the Dog” deserves to win them both.

BEST SOUND

No.

There’s little hope of a spring-trap Western like “The Power of the Dog” taking the Oscar for Best Sound over an ear-pounding behemoth like “Dune” or a spectacular musical like “West Side Story,” and this may be the rare year in which volume is actually a valuable metric when it comes to picking a winner in this category. But it wasn’t awards momentum alone that earned Campion’s team their nomination. Richard Flynn, Robert Mackenzie, and Tara Webb did a phenomenal job of making this movie sound as brittle and sinewy as it looks. Each creaky footstep across the floorboards of the Burbank ranch groans with death, just as every fold that Peter makes in his paper flowers crinkles with the delicate precision of an artist (and/or a sociopath). And then, of course, there are those dueling instruments, which Rose and Phil play at each other in a completely wordless argument that manages to reverberate with all the nuance and fury of an Edward Albee drama; the fragility in Rose’s piano and the growing hostility that Phil feeds through his banjo convey more about these characters in two minutes than most movies are able to express about their characters in two hours. 

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

A toss-up.

I don’t envy Oscar voters for having to decide between this year’s nominees for Best Production Design, which are uniformly excellent and yet so different from one another (comparing the Brutalist concrete fortresses of Arrakis to the fire escapes of Manhattan’s Upper West Side is the kind of thing that reminds you how arbitrary it can be to rank artistic achievements). Strain for commonalities, however, and you might find that “Dune,” “Nightmare Alley,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” “West Side Story,” and “The Power of the Dog” are bound together by a shared interest in stagnation — they tell stories about people dying for control over a ruin, even if the act of doing so ultimately ruins themselves. 

The Burbank’s cattle business might be profitable for the time being, but Phil’s vituperative attachment to the past (and the kind of men who embodied it) imprisons everyone who lives there. That tortured past is best expressed through the crumbling ranch house that Phil shares with his brother’s growing family, and “The Power of the Dog” draws so much of its bite from the haunted emptiness that production designer Grant Major built into that set, which grows out of the terrain like a tumor. Set decorator Amber Richards suffuses a deathly pall into every corner without spilling things into serial killer territory, as peeling walls and taxidermied buck heads make Peter’s red paper flowers seem less like rays of light than artifacts from an alien world. “The Power of the Dog” is the story of a tomb being converted into a livable home, and so much of that story is told by the space in which it takes place. Does it deserve to win the Oscar in this category over the other nominees? Quite possibly, but it’s hard to compete with films whose production design was the story they were telling. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Yes.

It’s rare for a cinematographer to have the kind of breakout year that up-and-coming actors sometimes experience when they’re suddenly everywhere at once, but — thanks to pandemic-related quirks in the release schedule of one movie, and the production schedule of another — 2022 saw Australian DP Ari Wegner (“Lady Macbeth,” “In Fabric”) graduate from under-the-radar mega-talent to bonafide superstar in the span of just a few short months. First came “Zola,” in which Wegner’s febrile camerawork allowed us to watch reality and cyberspace smear together before our eyes. And then there was “The Power of the Dog,” in which Wegner shoots the South Island of New Zealand as if it were a lucid dream that Montana once had. 

Campion brought Wegner aboard after vibing with the young cinematographer on a commercial shoot a few years earlier, and — due to some COVID-related mishegoss — the two of them wound up spending an entire year doing prep together for “The Power of the Dog.” Needless to say, they made the most of that time, and Wegner’s lensing is suffused into the soul of every scene. 

Earthy browns swirl together with heavenly blues, making the Burbank’s turf feel primitive and mythical all at once, as if it were simultaneously both a working cattle ranch as well as the gods’ stage for an elemental showdown between men and their natures. Wegner’s 360-degree use of the film’s primary location only enhances the sense that the mountains around it form a natural arena, which in turn frees her camera to seek out the story’s many hidden softnesses (the dirtied pastels of Rose’s silk wardrobe, the hidden glade where Phil soaks in his forbidden self). Epic as “The Power of the Dog” can look, Wegner also affords it the intimacy of a secret, her handheld camera practically dancing with the shadows on Phil’s face as he struggles to keep certain parts of himself in the dark. Even in a stacked category, Ari Wegner deserves to take home Best Cinematography this year (thereby becoming the first woman to ever win the award).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Yes and yes.

With all due respect to Troy Kotsur (who’s enjoying some richly deserved tailwinds after taking home the SAG Award) and Ciarán Hinds (one of the greatest living character actors, doing his thing in “Belfast” despite rather thin material), the question isn’t “should ‘The Power of the Dog’ win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor?” so much as “which Best Supporting Actor Oscar should ‘The Power of the Dog’ win?” 

Kodi Smit-McPhee has been the natural frontrunner, as his deceptively wilting performance as the object of Phil Burbank’s torment and desire is so crucial to the story that some have argued Peter should be considered a lead role. Smit-McPhee deserves every ounce of the acclaim he’s earned so far; the young Australian actor uncannily channels the way that Thomas Savage first wrote his character, giving palpable weight to lines of descriptive prose like “no one could close a door more quietly than he.” The success of the movie hinges on Peter seeming helpless one second but capable of anything the next, and Smit-McPhee executes that balancing act with killer aplomb. 

Jesse Plemons’ similarly subtle turn as Peter’s kind-hearted stepfather George Burbank is even more recessive, as the character lacks the resolve to push back against his bully of a brother, and sinks into the margins of the story as the relationship between Phil and Peter comes to the fore. But Plemons is no less dialed-in than his fellow nominee, and his tenderly recessive performance is the beating heart of the callused film that grows around him. The simple gesture of George slinging a napkin over his arm to help his future wife serve dinner at her restaurant is worth an Oscar unto itself.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Yes.

Kirsten Dunst has now received eight Oscar nominations over the course of her remarkable career, and her wilting performance as widowed proprietress Rose Gordon in “The Power of the Dog” — an indelible sketch of hope as it sours into ruin — makes it easy to appreciate why. She’s so… wait, what’s that? You’re telling me that Kirsten Dunst had never been nominated for an Academy Award before? The same Kirsten Dunst who starred in “The Virgin Suicides,” “Dick,” “Crazy/Beautiful,” “Marie Antoinette,” “Spider-Man 2,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and “Melancholia?” I’m supposed to just live in a world where the octopus from “My Octopus Teacher” has more Oscars than the Kiki from the English-language dub of “Kiki’s Delivery Service!?” How embarrassing. What a shonda. Apologies to Aunjanue Ellis (who breathes life into a biopic in which someone else is always sucking the air out of the room), Ariana Debose (whose performance alone justified the decision to remake “West Side Story”), and Jessie Buckley (who has yet again cemented her status as one of the 21st century’s most promising talents), but the time has come for Dunst to check in. 

BEST ACTOR

Yes.

Benedict Cumberbatch has always been drawn to prickly characters, but his terrifying (and terrified) performance as cattle-rancher Phil Burbank is a career-best because of the way it knots his default sarcasm into a lasso of constricted menace. To describe Phil as a poster boy for toxic masculinity would fail to capture the essence of a man whose testosterone has grown thick enough to clog the blood in his veins. This is a guy who makes John Wayne look like Paul Lynde, or would at least desperately want to if he were born 30 years later and didn’t think that television made you soft. He hates everything he can’t control, and only bathes in secret — preferring to let the grime from the cow testicals he cuts off all day long collect under his fingernails like a warning not to get too close. “I stink. And I like it,” Phil barks, eager for any chance to imply that his bite is so much worse.

Cumberbatch embodies Phil as a man who would sooner die than admit what scares him. Phil believes with a zealot’s conviction that strength comes from conquering one’s own nature, just as he believes that running a successful ranch demands snuffing out anyone else’s chance to make a living on the same land (least of all the indigenous people from whom that land was stolen). At one point he punches a horse in the face. But the real beauty of Cumberbatch’s performance is tucked inside the linings of its forbidden softness, and the way he makes Phil vulnerable to the fatal flaw of all pathologically cynical people, which is that they assume everyone else must be broken in the same way. Will Smith is all but guaranteed to win Best Actor, and that man is long overdue his Oscar statue, but none of the nominated performances cut deeper than the one Cumberbatch gives here.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

No.

Campion is the rare screenwriter who’s able to respect the authorship of her source material while still making it completely her own (even during faithfully transcribed scenes, of which “The Power of the Dog” has several), and her genius in that regard has never been sharper than it is here, in a film that unfolds with bracing authority despite being defined by its lack of a dominant point-of-view. There’s no question that her latest script is worthy of winning a trophy that has previously been awarded to the likes of “Argo,” “The Imitation Game,” and “Jojo Rabbit.” 

Then again, the movies of 2021 gave us a bumper crop of Best Adapted Screenplay nominees, including Maggie Gyllenhaal’s astonishingly bold twist on “The Lost Daughter” and Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Takamasa Oe’s transformational extrapolation of “Drive My Car,” which mined a sprawling masterpiece out of a second-tier Haruki Murakami short story. Even the script for “Dune,” a movie this critic disliked, is admittedly impressive for how well it wrestled Frank Herbert’s convoluted epic into something that might fit on a multiplex screen (if not an iPhone). With Campion all but assured to win her second Best Director prize, this award would do more for Gyllenhaal or the “Drive My Car” duo, and so for that reason I’m keeping my fingers crossed for either of them.

BEST DIRECTOR

Yes.

Jane Campion kept busy enough in the 12 years since her last feature-length film, but “The Power of the Dog” left the distinct impression that she spent every minute of that time sitting in a dark room and sharpening the same knife. How thrilling it was to see the “In the Cut” auteur return with a poison-tipped dagger of a Western drama wrapped in rawhide and old rope; a brilliant, murderous fable about masculine strength that’s so diamond-toothed its victims are already half dead by the time they see the first drop of their own blood.

The shiv-like stealthiness of Campion’s approach may stem from the novel on which “The Power of the Dog” is based, but it perfectly suits a filmmaker who’s long been fascinated by how weakness can be force’s most effective sheath. From “Sweetie,” and “An Angel at My Table” to “Bright Star” and “Top of the Lake,” nearly all of Campion’s work is pitched along the nebulous border that runs between desire and self-denial, genius and insanity. The Wellington-born filmmaker is drawn to characters — artists, but not always — who make beautiful homes for themselves in the middle, even if the rest of the world simply assumes they must be lost. To that end, perhaps the most basic of her latest film’s razor-fanged pleasures is how it proves that no one is better at finding these people, or at recognizing how their supposed defects often provide the perfect disguise for their unique potential. “The Power of the Dog” doesn’t just deserve to win Best Director, it perfectly illustrates why Jane Campion has been one of our best directors for so long.

BEST PICTURE

Yes.

For all of the film’s biblical grandeur, “The Power of the Dog” never insists upon itself. There isn’t a moment in the movie that lacks vision, but the whole thing exudes a tremblingly quiet strength. Just as Savage’s plainspoken novel found the author flexing the invisible muscles he developed over a lifetime of fighting his own desire, Campion’s equally poignant film leverages repressed passion into an unexpected show of strength. “The Power of the Dog” sticks its teeth into you so fast and furtively that you may not feel the sting on your skin until after the credits roll, but the delayed bite of the film’s ending doesn’t stop it from leaving behind a well-earned scar. It isn’t often that the Academy gives itself a chance to award Best Picture of the Year to the best picture of the year — after the parade of self-owns leading up to the telecast, this is one thing the show will hopefully get right.

FINAL TALLY: “The Power of the Dog” should win (at least) eight Academy Awards.