Director Jane Campion is back with the Netflix film “Power of The Dog” after a 12-year hiatus from feature-length filmmaking (she did make two “Top Of The Lake” series during this time). The western thriller has an impressive cast consisting of Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie, and Jesse Plemons.
The film’s music is going to be extremely impressive. An official listing on the Toronto International Film Festival website confirms that Radiohead guitarist and composer Jonny Greenwood (“There Will Be Blood,” “Phantom Thread“) has provided the score for “Power of The Dog.”
We previously mentioned that Greenwood would also be composing on British monarchy drama “Spencer“ starring Kristen Stewart from director Pablo Larraín.
The news was picked up by Film Music Reporter earlier in the month and a Q&A with Greenwood from February at The Orchestra Now.
Here is the film’s synopsis:
Severe, pale-eyed, handsome, Phil Burbank is brutally beguiling. All of Phil’s romance, power, and fragility is trapped in the past and in the land: He can castrate a bull calf with two swift slashes of his knife; he swims naked in the river, smearing his body with mud. He is a cowboy as raw as his hides.
The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. On their way to market at the Red Mill restaurant, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil behaves so cruelly he drives them both to tears, reveling in their hurt and rousing his fellow cowhands to laughter – all except his brother George, who comforts Rose then returns to marry her.
As Phil swings between fury and cunning, his taunting of Rose takes an eerie form – he hovers at the edges of her vision, whistling a tune she can no longer play. His mockery of her son is more overt, amplified by the cheering of Phil’s cowhand disciples. Then Phil appears to take the boy under his wing. Is this latest gesture a softening that leaves Phil exposed, or a plot-twisting further into menace?
After making the rounds in the festival circuit at Toronto, New York, and Venice, the pic will hit select theaters on November 17 and Netflix on December 1. First making its debut in Venice.