The Power of the Dog (2021) may not seem like a typical Jane Campion film. Campion is a feminist filmmaker whose films and television shows center on strong women who refuse, resist, and rework the dominant patriarchal order. Such feminist protagonists include Alexia Keogh’s and Kerry Fox’s Janet in An Angel at My Table (1990), Nicole Kidman’s Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady (1996), Kate Winslet’s Ruth in Holy Smoke! (1999), Meg Ryan’s Frannie Avery in In the Cut (2003), Elisabeth Moss’s Robin Griffin in Top of the Lake (2013), and perhaps most famously, Holly Hunter’s Ada McGrath in The Piano (1993).
The Power of the Dog features three male actors and one female actor. Knowing this is a Campion film—her first in 12 years—it makes sense for audiences to assume that the lone female lead, Kirsten Dunst’s Rose Gordon, would become the narrative focus. However, such narrative expectations are thwarted in Campion’s latest masterpiece.