This article contains major Power of the Dog spoilers.
Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, now on Netflix, starts with a voice-over. During the opening titles, Peter, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee, explains: “When my father passed, I wanted nothing more than my mother’s happiness, because what kind of man would I be if I did not help my mother? If I did not save her?” Campion doesn’t actually introduce Peter until later, but those words hang over the rest of the film like a premonition, even when they seem to contradict the character’s actions. Peter’s promise only becomes clear in the movie’s final moments, when the audience realizes what he has done.
You might be tempted to call the conclusion of The Power of the Dog a twist; upon first watch, it is thrillingly unexpected. Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch)-the cocky cowboy who torments Peter’s mom, Rose (Kirsten Dunst), the new wife of his brother, George (Jesse Plemons)-suddenly becomes ill and dies. The cause? Making rope with anthrax-infected rawhide that Peter himself cut from the dead body of a felled cow in the mountains beyond the Burbanks’ Montana ranch. Disease enters Phil’s blood system through an open wound on his hand, which he refuses to protect with a glove, a sign of the machismo he stakes his life on. Campion never spells out that Peter is the culprit, but the audience knows it from the way he thumbs the rope with covered hands before sliding it under his bed. In the final moment, he peers out of his window to see his mother and George kiss. He has accomplished what he intended: to eradicate Rose’s bully and restore her happiness.
Watching The Power of the Dog a second time, it’s easy to see where Campion planted seeds for the finale throughout the plot. Still, it’s not a film that encourages you to hunt for clues. Its brilliance is in the fact that it’s all there, just waiting for you to see it. The Power of the Dog is a film about hiding. Phil hides himself, a repressed gay man, under a cloak of dirt and masculine posturing. Peter hides his plan to undo him. It requires you to look deeper.
The film and the Thomas Savage novel on which it’s based take their title from a verse in Psalm 22, which Peter reads from a prayer book in the final moments of the narrative: “Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog.” Campion has him speak these words aloud, a bookend to the voice-over that opens his journey. He’s alone, scanning the pages by himself. Savage’s novel makes it abundantly clear who the “dog” is, regardless of biblical intent. It is Phil, who hounds Rose and drives her to drink. “For she was delivered now-,” he writes of Rose from the perspective of Peter, “thanks to his father’s sacrifice and to the sacrifice he himself had found it possible to make from a knowledge got from his father’s big black books. The dog was dead.” Cumberbatch’s Phil is doglike. He barks at George and nips at Rose’s proverbial heels. Like a pup with a beloved bone, he fiercely covets the items that are important to him: the kerchief and saddle belonging to Bronco Henry, his mentor and the man we are led to believe was his lover.
But, as another great novelist of the American West, Annie Proulx, wrote in an afterword for Savage’s book, the “dog” can also refer to the canine made from shadows that Bronco Henry trained Phil to see in the mountains, an animal Peter immediately recognizes when Phil quizzes him. Most of Phil’s cowboy peers cannot see this creature, which he uses to reaffirm his superiority. But Peter takes him by surprise. His ability to spot what Phil assumed was only available to him disarms Phil and gives Peter the upper hand. That, too, is the dog’s power, and in that moment, Peter holds it.
Campion never tries to obscure what Peter is plotting. It’s all there. Immediately after Peter witnesses his mother at her lowest, Campion inserts a brief shot of him scanning one of his late father’s medical textbooks that he brought to the ranch. The images on the page show body parts covered in a pestilence, the kind of skin ulcers one might get after being exposed to anthrax.
Additionally, the way Peter talks to Phil becomes more pointed in retrospect. He asks if the calves die from wolves. Phil responds that they are occasionally felled by anthrax, otherwise known as black leg. Peter retains that information, just as he retains everything. The conversations between Phil and Peter are sparse in language but dense in ulterior motives. Phil is enacting a sort of mentorship-slash-seduction, doing for Peter what Bronco Henry did for him, imbuing him with both a self-loathing machismo and a romantic affection. Meanwhile, Peter is calculating Phil’s weaknesses. When Rose gives away Phil’s hides, which he keeps out of pride, to Native Americans who stop by the ranch, Peter sees his opportunity. That’s when he gives Phil the infected skin and watches as Phil’s blood mingles with the raw, diseased leather.
If the film’s version of foreshadowing is Peter’s voice-over, the book’s is the focus on Phil’s hands. In the third paragraph, Savage describes how Phil refused gloves. “He ignored blisters, cuts and splinters and scorned those who wore gloves to protect themselves,” Savage writes. “His hands were dry, powerful, lean.” Savage later returns to this imagery, remarking on Phil’s “clever naked hands” and the “baffling pride he took in going gloveless.”
Similarly, Campion’s camera focuses on gestures, fingers, and the way her characters handle objects. In Peter’s first scene, he thumbs the paper flower he has made. Yes, we see Phil working with his bare hands, his employees asking why they are not covered as he castrates a bull, but we also see them gently fondle Bronco Henry’s handkerchief, pulling it from his belt, cradling it, and eventually masturbating with it. Hands also define the final interaction between Phil and Peter in the barn. Phil’s are occupied with the rope that will be his downfall, while Peter rolls a cigarette. He raises it to Phil’s lips, which graze his fingers. The moment is laden with sensuality, and Peter gazes at Phil intently, but it is not the intent the audience might initially think. Peter’s hands are free while Phil’s are trapped-those forceful, weathered paws are seeping in death.
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Esther Zuckerman is a senior entertainment writer at Thrillist. Follow her on Twitter @ezwrites.
Every year for her birthday, Zoey Deutch gets a tattoo from Los Angeles’ renowned, cool-girl-favourite tattoo artist Doctor Woo. The actress, now starring in Hulu’s scammer comedy Not Okay, has tattoos of her dog Maybelle, a scorpion, a moon and stars, 818 to represent her hometown of the Valley, and several other words and phrases. On her ankle, she also has one of her deepest loves: a bowl of matzo ball soup. Done in Doctor Woo’s signature single-needle style, there’s even a split in the matzo ball and carrots in the broth.
She makes a point to show off the tat at the beloved Jewish institution Russ & Daughters on New York City’s Lower East Side, as the staff brings out her go-to order, and fourth-generation co-owner Niki Russ Federman says hello. Plated in the back booth of the cafe-which just reopened for dining for the first time since 2020-are latkes, pickles (old and new), bialis, bagels, gravlox, an egg cream, ample seltzer, and, of course, matzo ball soup. “I feel like I’m in my dream!” Deutch exclaims when she takes a seat.
In between spoonfuls of soup, she says, “Some might consider it sacrilegious to get a Jewish tattoo, but it’s okay. It is what it is. … I just love matzo ball soup, and nothing makes me happier!”
It really does seem like nothing makes her happier as she enjoys the deli spread-calling it “comfort for anybody with a soul”-and relishes in the fact that she’s one of the first guests back to the restaurant. She’s thrilled to be able to make a stop at the Manhattan haunt while promoting her new release written and directed by Quinn Shephard-and not just because she loves a chance to introduce somebody to the delight that is an egg cream. Russ & Daughters is a family tradition; her grandmother lived around the corner from the original deli on Houston Street, and, in addition to the birthday tat, she also can’t go a B-day without receiving a special R&D package.
According to Deutch, it all comes back to her Jewish heritage. That’s she’s so damn funny and has a taste for starring in smart comedies, from Netflix’s hit rom-com Set It Up and Richard Linklater’s ’80s hangout romp Everybody Wants Some!! to indies like Buffaloed and Not Okay. “Comedy is a tragedy plus time, and my people suffered! My people suffered so that I could sit here at Russ & Daughters and talk about their suffering when I eat latkes,” she says.
Deutch really is a comedic force, though. At R&D, she’s a ham, taking the “Be a Mensch” sign off the host stand and modelling it like a purse. In general, her natural combination of wit and dryness, and lifelong appreciation for humour, makes her one of the most underrated comedic stars today. With Not Okay out now, it seems all but certain that the world is about to get more acquainted with the 27-year-old actress/producer. Soon, they’ll all laugh along with her.
In the millennial-slash-Gen-Z satire, Deutch plays Danni Sanders, a 20-something who is so lonely and directionless that she tries to get validation from her followers and hot co-worker (Dylan O’Brien) with an Instagram ruse. From the comfort of her Brooklyn apartment, she milks her Photoshop skills for their worth by making it look like she visited Paris for a coveted writers’ retreat. But when Paris is struck with a terrorist attack, Danni’s lie spirals out of control. She ends up co-opting attention and sympathy for her own gain, greatly manipulating a teenage activist (Mia Isaac) in the process-all to become the influencer of her dreams. From the moment we meet Danni and she tells her boss that she feels like she missed out on 9/11 to her inevitable, unforgiving downfall, Deutch’s performance is a perfect balance of absurdism and cringe comedy. It’s also strikingly human. In all of its messiness and critiques of whiteness and privilege, it may be one of Deutch’s best roles to date-and she was game for it all.
Shephard said Deutch was who she had in mind for Danni. Once the star came on board, Shephard was willing to push the film where it needed to go. The director had heard countless suggestions in meetings with different distributors that Danni should be “softer,” “more likable and digestible,” or given a “tragic backstory.” Deutch felt differently. “When she came to me after reading the script, she was immediately like, ‘Hey, I think this is great, and also we can go harder on Danni,’ and I really agreed,” Shephard recalls. It was like “getting a green light to do what [she] had always wanted to do with the film.”
What Shephard admired about Duetch’s body of work was her fearlessness in portraying “women that might be polarizing, that might be unlikeable.” And it’s true: In the past few years, Deutch has played a hustling debt collector in Buffaloed, a teen who extorts pedophiles in Flower, and now a tone-deaf wannabe influencer. But it’s also what makes Deutch all the more interesting as an actress and producer since her choices make space for complicated women on-screen, allowing her comedic chops to shine in a more nuanced way.
“Paying these quote-unquote ‘unlikable female characters’ is a result of just not being interested in playing the one-dimensional female character,” Deutch says. After she did a studio comedy where she “played the girlfriend,” she decided “to not be interested or really care about the word ‘unlikable’ in [her] work, or care about the word ‘relatable.'” And while she enjoys taking on these characters-particularly scammers who make the stakes feel high and like she’s in on a secret with them-she’s largely tired of audiences and the industry accepting movies with unlikable men as nothing more than great movies, and the double standard that comes with similarly complex women.
Hopefully, then, roles like Danni can increasingly dismantle that. Her window into Danni was the character’s loneliness and inability to do anything right, and Deutch says she never once judged her. “I have a different relationship to [Danni] now than I did when I was shooting, but that being said, I really reject any comment about her being a sociopath, or her being a horrible, disgusting monster,” she says. “She’s a misguided, privileged person who makes a mistake and doesn’t know how to fix it.”
Deutch, on the other hand, can’t help but joke about how concerned she is with being “likable.” (“All I do is focus on if I’m likable-I’m an actress!”) At the very least, she sounds like a blast to work with. One of Shephard’s favourite memories from set was when they were shooting in an AC-less car on the hottest day of the year, and Deutch was yelling “Not Okay grassroots campaign! Follow @notokaymovie on Instagram!” out the window in between takes. Deutch blames a heat wave for making them “laugh like crazy” and feel a little delirious that day, but it also might just be because she’s freaking funny.
While she kids that it’s all because of Jewish generational trauma that some would consider her amusing, it also seems to be ingrained in who she is-naturally a bit sarcastic, and having grown up with parents who appreciate good humour. (Her father is Pretty in Pink director Howard Deutch, and her mother is actress/director Lea Thompson.) She says, “Both my parents were the funniest people I know, but I definitely think comedy was how I got attention from my dad. If I made him laugh, I really got his attention. That’s probably where the desire to make people laugh has come from.”
While she calls her parents “useless” in imparting their comedy wisdom onto her, she cites Molly Shannon as one of her utmost icons, as well as Amy Poehler (“a god”), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who she’s “in deep, deep love with”), Kathryn Hahn (who she had fun working with on Flower), and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. To this day, a handful of iconic comedies remain her favourite films.
“When people ask me what my favourite movie is, I very seriously answer Anchorman,” she says. “I’m not a cinephile yet. I hope one day I’ll get my shit together and watch the classics, but for now, it’s Anchorman and Zoolander on repeat. I know every single line to those movies.”
It seems as though Deutch could gush about her love for Ron Burgundy for hours, even as it’s time to finish her Russ & Daughters bagel and head to a day full of press for Not Okay. Despite rejecting being called funny, she has to cram in a few more laughs on her way out-taking final sips of her seltzer and saying her “insides are bubbly” and that it’s a “total catastrophe” she’s not the face of Spindrift. She also can’t help but detail every part of what’s left of her deli spread, explaining the difference between old and new pickles, Gaspe Nova versus gravlax, insisting that there’s no egg in an egg cream, and, obviously, reiterating her love for matzo ball soup. Cozied up in a Russ & Daughters booth or on-screen playing an untraditional role, it’s inevitable that she’ll get a laugh out of you.
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Sadie Bell is the entertainment associate editor at Thrillist. She’s on Twitter and Instagram.