You can’t help but marvel at the details of a craft. Perhaps it’s the amount of intricacy and thought that goes into a craft like a paper flower. Perhaps it’s the attention and precision that goes into something utilitarian like a handmade length of rope.

Or perhaps it’s the careful construction and subtle commentary that goes into adapting a vast western…and using people of the past to make a pointed comment about people of the present

THE POWER OF THE DOG revolves around Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) – a cattle rancher in 1920’s Montana. Phil and his brother George (Jesse Plemons) head up a team of cowboys that ride into a small town with their team and their heard of cows. At the local inn, the cowboys meet Rose and her son Peter (Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee).

George is immediately smitten, but Phil feels nothing for disdain for the widow and her effeminate son. Both mother and son find themselves at the blunt end of Phil’s manners – and especially brutal place to be given his high education and quick wit.

But all is not as it seems, and as Peter spends more and more time studying Phil, he learns a lot about why the gruff and grizzled cowboy is the way he is.

What THE POWER OF THE DOG underlines first and foremost is the fear that the weak possess about making space. Whether it’s space for another race, or space for another sex, or even space for a different sort of person that the community holds up as “ideal” – the weakest amongst us can only ever see the cost. Making space for “them” means less space for “me”.

That’s the first and clearest takeaway from the time we spend with Phil. He cannot abide accommodating anyone he sees as lesser (namely George, Rose, or Peter in that order), because to him that means that an alpha male like himself suddenly would have less space for himself. It’s a clear parallel to our society and the fear that fuels so much prejudice.

That, however, is not the only reason why Phil acts the way he acts, and further reasons are best kept to the viewing experience. I can say that it is a narrative choice that handled poorly could have tanked the whole film. In the hands of a master like Jane Campion though, the detail is given the utmost care, tenderness, and love. Campion’s care and patience allow every character detail and plot point to wrap around our hearts and minds like ivy – and by the time the vines have overgrown and taken over, it’s too late.

THE POWER OF THE DOG is visually stunning, grand, and epic in the classical sense. It is a masterclass in pacing and story structure and offers the grandest rewards for the patient viewer. Campion uses the story as a treatise on masculinity in all its facets and leaves us to reconsider our preconceptions of just what sort of man is capable of what.