Scene Steal­ers: Piano prac­tice stand-off in The Pow­er of the Dog

Ine­bri­at­ed from her Best Direc­tor win at the Crit­ics Choice Awards, Jane Cam­pi­on took the stage to accept her award and pro­ceed­ed to make a tact­less, myopic and tone-deaf remark about Venus and Ser­e­na Williams. ​“Ser­e­na and Venus, you are such mar­vels. How­ev­er, you do not play against the guys like I have to”, Cam­pi­on said, effec­tive­ly doing a vic­to­ry lap around two leg­endary black women who have had to face the unholy tri­fec­ta of racism, sex­ism and clas­sism in one of the whitest sports in the world.

It was a pro­found – and not to men­tion unwar­rant­ed – dis­ap­point­ment, espe­cial­ly as it came a mere 24 hours after her icon­ic jab at Sam Elliott’s crit­i­cal remarks on Marc Maron’s WTF pod­cast: ​“There’s all these allu­sions to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty through­out the fuck­ing movie […] what the fuck does this woman from New Zealand know about the Amer­i­can west?”, to which she respond­ed by call­ing him ​“a bit of a b‑i-t-c‑h” and affirm­ing that the west is ​“a myth­ic space [with] a lot of room on the range”.

It’s true, there is plen­ty of room on the rаnge of the myth­ic west, and cer­tain­ly for Campion’s expert­ly craft­ed The Pow­er of the Dog, the 1925-set psy­cho­sex­u­al slow burn­er that has scored twelve nom­i­na­tions. Adapt­ed from Thomas Savage’s nov­el of the same name, the film charts a bat­tle of wits between aggres­sive­ly soli­tary ranch­er Phil (Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch) and a younger adver­sary, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), in a pre­ci­sion-tooled inves­ti­ga­tion of machis­mo and the male psy­che that breaks the con­for­mi­ties of genre.

My favourite scene comes from a key moment in this deeply com­plex and nuanced char­ac­ter study that is laced with off-kil­ter ten­sion, mys­tery and dread. Phil’s broth­er George (Jesse Ple­mons), who has recent­ly mar­ried Peter’s moth­er Rose (Kirsten Dun­st, deliv­er­ing her best per­for­mance since Melan­cho­lia), wants to make a good impres­sion on the vis­it­ing Mon­tana gov­er­nor. Know­ing that his wife dab­bles in play­ing piano, he acquires a baby grand shipped to the man­sion so she can pro­vide enter­tain­ment for the forth­com­ing din­ner party.

Rose’s reper­toire, how­ev­er, con­sists of rinky dinky tunes, and not the Beethoven or Chopin that the guests are prob­a­bly expect­ing to hear. One after­noon, she clos­es all the doors in the house to prac­tise play­ing Strauss’ jaun­ty ​‘Radet­zky March’. As she stum­bles to remem­ber the right keys, the cam­era slow­ly and method­i­cal­ly moves in on her, reveal­ing Phil stealth­ily going up the stairs to his bed­room, elud­ing her gaze.

It’s abun­dant­ly clear that Phil hates Rose, call­ing her a ​“cheap schemer” on her first night in his home. In a vio­lent yet non­ver­bal form of psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ment, he begins to mock her with his vir­tu­osic ban­jo play­ing, the faint sound of his ban­jo cor­rect­ing her awk­ward piano play­ing. Uncer­tain­ty starts to creep in for Rose. She paus­es, com­pos­es her­self and tries again. The ban­jo returns more promi­nent­ly this time, with strings being plucked with overt hos­til­i­ty and impa­tience. When the ban­jo caus­es her to stop play­ing, the cam­era stops mov­ing, and as his play­ing becomes more assured and effort­less, any con­fi­dence that Rose had left is effec­tive­ly drained out, leav­ing her bro­ken and humiliated.

Every tech­ni­cal depart­ment fires on all cylin­ders to bring this scene to life with metic­u­lous detail, show­ing how the fear Phil inspires in Rose seeps through­out the cav­ernous house. We move from a dis­tant sound of the ban­jo to a low-angle close­up shot of Phil as he’s aggres­sive­ly pluck­ing the strings. The sound design here is impec­ca­ble, and the cam­er­a­work is sub­lime. Even when not on screen, Phil’s spurs are ring­ing up and down stairs and hall­ways, sig­nalling his omnipresent gaze, his judge­ment ter­ror­is­ing and break­ing Rose even when he’s nowhere to be seen.

The sound of the wind com­ing through the doors, the rope braid­ing, the comb, the whistling – all work to cre­ate a con­sis­tent atmos­phere of dread and unease where every­thing is work­ing on your nerves.