Jane Campion is ready for her first male… | Little White Lies

Jane Cam­pi­on is ready for her first male protagonist

18 Aug 2021

Words by Lydia Rostant

Two men wearing cowboy hats conversing by candlelight in a dimly lit room.
Two men wearing cowboy hats conversing by candlelight in a dimly lit room.
Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch is the per­fect fit for the director’s upcom­ing neo-west­ern, The Pow­er of the Dog.

Jane Campion’s cre­ative out­put over the past three decades has been spo­radic yet seis­mic in influ­ence. Her long-await­ed eighth fea­ture, The Pow­er of the Dog, which pre­mieres at the 59th New York Film Fes­ti­val next month, marks a hand­ful of firsts for the direc­tor – chief among them being that it cen­tres around a male pro­tag­o­nist. To under­stand the sig­nif­i­cance of this, one need only con­sid­er the themes that tie togeth­er Campion’s rich and var­ied filmography.

The New Zealand direc­tor is pri­mar­i­ly known for her depic­tions of the female expe­ri­ence. While her films cov­er a vari­ety of top­ics – from insid­i­ous Antipodean crime syn­di­cates in Top of the Lake to nat­ur­al dis­as­ter in The Water Diary and fam­i­ly feuds in Sweet­ie – it is Campion’s abil­i­ty to address the oft-neglect­ed or over-sim­pli­fied com­plex­i­ty of female sub­jec­tiv­i­ty that most read­i­ly defines her work.

In her 2003 psy­cho­sex­u­al thriller In the Cut, Meg Ryan’s Fran­nie is equal­ly at risk from her own desire as she is the ser­i­al killer she is pur­su­ing. The dis­rup­tion of con­ven­tion­al roman­tic life by the lethal under­cur­rent of female desire is a theme Cam­pi­on returns to over and over again. We see it in The Piano as Hol­ly Hunter’s mute pro­tag­o­nist becomes qui­et­ly rad­i­calised in her long­ing for Har­vey Keitel’s George, and in the chron­ic grief of Abbie Cornish’s Fan­ny Brawne in Bright Star. Cru­cial­ly, each of these films cen­tres female subjectivity.

Campion’s women are not reac­tive sur­faces, they say things like I am scared of what I want,” and this is not the sound of my voice; it is the sound of my mind”. They are fal­li­ble, wise, fun­ny, joy­ful. Yet Cam­pi­on is fas­ci­nat­ed by men, too. Her han­dling of male actors and the male body is typ­i­fied by her use of Kei­t­el. Known for his gruff machis­mo and hard-boiled loqua­cious­ness, his turn as an almost illit­er­ate Scot­tish fron­tiers­man in The Piano is as sub­ver­sive as the besot­ted, slight­ly trashy cult depro­gram­mer he plays in 1999’s Holy Smoke.

Campion’s male char­ac­ters reg­is­ter some­where between depraved lunatics and fanat­i­cal lovers (recog­nise that invert­ed stereo­type from any­where?). She invites us to con­sid­er the men in her films in the same way women have been por­trayed through­out his­to­ry – as arche­types, strug­gling to escape their dimin­ished roles.

The Pow­er of the Dog stars Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch and is set in the wilds of Mon­tana (though it was filmed in New Zealand). Based on the 1967 nov­el of the same name by Thomas Sav­age, the sto­ry is osten­si­bly con­cerned with male jeal­ousy, homoso­cial bonds, desire and the lone­li­ness of the Amer­i­can West. It fol­lows two broth­ers, the tac­i­turn Phil (Cum­ber­batch) and the dot­ing George (Jesse Ple­mons), who over­see a ranch and its workers.

In Savage’s knot­ty psy­chodra­ma, Phil’s latent vicious­ness ris­es to the sur­face as George takes a young wife (played in the film by Kirsten Dun­st). He sub­se­quent­ly embarks on a cam­paign of bul­ly­ing and intim­i­da­tion, with fatal con­se­quences. Giv­en that Phil’s intro­duc­tion in the nov­el reads Phil always did the cas­trat­ing”, The Pow­er of the Dog will show a dif­fer­ent side to Cumberbatch’s typ­i­cal­ly dash­ing and vir­tu­ous screen persona.

This was pre­vi­ous­ly the case with Mark Ruf­fa­lo, who Cam­pi­on cast as the dan­ger­ous­ly charm­ing and volatile Detec­tive Mol­loy in In the Cut. Here is a man with a kind face, an offi­cial badge, a charm­ing smile… and yet the over­all impres­sion cre­at­ed is one of intense wari­ness and unease. Ruffalo’s depic­tion of a shady, lust­ful cop stands in stark con­trast to the humour­less agents of jus­tice he has played in Zodi­ac, Spot­light and Dark Waters.

Campion’s male char­ac­ters fol­low a pat­tern: like Mol­loy in In the Cut, the true nature of David Wenham’s mer­cu­r­ial Detec­tive Park­er in Top of the Lake is revealed in chill­ing flash­es; in The Piano, Sam Neill’s char­ac­ter projects a calm author­i­ty that belies his capac­i­ty for mind­less vio­lence. These men are bru­tal and volatile, yes, but they are also unde­ni­ably charm­ing – appeal­ing, even.

In this respect, Cum­ber­batch is the per­fect lead­ing man for Cam­pi­on – dash­ing and clean-cut but with a hint of some­thing more sin­is­ter lurk­ing beneath the sur­face. Cam­pi­on is a film­mak­er with an uncan­ny abil­i­ty to cut to the heart of human­i­ty, expos­ing our inner fal­li­bil­i­ty. It will be inter­est­ing to see whether she can bring the same lev­el of com­plex­i­ty and emo­tion­al depth to her first male protagonist.

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