Interview: Jane Campion on The Power of the Dog and the Myth of the American West

As far back as her early short work, among them Peel and A Girl’s Own Story, Jane Campion has made art out playing with subtext and motifs. And The Power of the Dog, which centers on a family power struggle that plays out on the high plains of early-20th century Montana, is certainly rife with the latter, from paper flowers to a rope fashioned out of rawhide. Like the angel wings, piano keys, and severed finger from The Piano, every single one vibrantly points to a silent force bubbling up from below the surface.

The Power of the Dog is an adaptation of Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, which was a major influence on Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” and was optioned several times by major Hollywood players, including Paul Newman, but never made for one reason or another. With tense ferocity, Campion latches on to the novel’s themes of repressed homosexuality, the myth of the American cowboy, and rugged individualism, flitting back and forth between the ever-shifting power dynamics with diamond-hard precision.

Nearly three decades after The Piano won the Palme d’Or and three Academy Awards, Campion became the first woman in Oscar history to receive two best director nominations. On the morning that the nominations were announced, I had the chance to speak with Campion about the latest notch in her increasingly notch-heavy belt, her vision of the American West, her approach to adapting Savage’s novel, and more.

Congratulations on your nominations. You are now the first woman with two best director nominations to your name.

I know. I know. It’s amazing. Someone told me that today, and I didn’t know that. I’m proud to be part of breaking that ceiling. I wish there wasn’t that ceiling to break. I really felt a tear. And, actually, I was full of gratitude to the Academy for recognizing so many of my colleagues and people who worked on this film and for the film itself, because it’s a complicated, deep film, and I’m really grateful that people have embraced that aspect of it and enjoyed its depth and complexity, as well as the fact that it’s got a potboiler quality to it.

And the Academy recognized your excellent screenplay as well.

I’m really thrilled about that because writing means a lot to me. It’s something that I’ve done all my career, and looking on this one, when I was doing all the writing for Top of the Lake, I really felt that I’d learned something. I did it faster and a better job than normal.

So with screenwriting, practice really does make perfect?

Yeah. It does make a difference to keep writing, to do it a lot. Those muscles really improved with work. It was also fun to work with a book that I believed in so much, and I really trusted Thomas Savage’s vision of the world, because I knew he’d lived it—that he had lived on that ranch and knew a man like Phil and had some of the experiences that Peter had with the bullying. So I felt like I could really trust it. And my job was to not just faithfully do it, but to translate it for film, because obviously a lot of stuff happens in people’s heads and there’s a lot of backstory in it that wasn’t going to work in a tighter version—a two-hour version for the film. So, yeah, there were decisions to make, but I was working on the back of something I totally trusted. So you’re standing up on the ladder knowing it’s not going to break on you.

Right. And this is nearly 29 years since your last nominations for The Piano.

It feels like longer. It’s interesting. This is the year of the awards. I haven’t really won that many awards since The Piano. Even though I’ve kept making things. I mean, I’ve gotten into the festivals and been appreciated, but nothing like this. This is the storm, and it’s really gratifying to be out in the desert with it, to have a comeback like this.

I’d imagine. Whereas this film examines power dynamics and taking advantage of trust and sexuality, The Piano analyzes star-crossed lovers, budding romance, and sex.

Yes, but if I may say more, it’s really about looking at things from a distinctly female point of view, and in a way that really hadn’t happened before. And a particular woman that had felt that her voice was so uninteresting in a way that she didn’t even want to speak.

There’s this mythical image of the American cowboy that’s so often romanticized. What was the impetus for you wanting to adapt The Power of the Dog and what were the main elements you wanted to capture on screen?

Well, it’s a great book, and I love Savage’s amazing portrait of masculinity. It’s really subversive. And that’s what I found moving and interesting, because he really peeled the onion of masculinity, in a way, and with the story of Phil. And what we saw underneath was vulnerability, yearning, fear—not all the trappings of the average dominating man. And I really love the story for that quality. And also, his work with detail, which I love so much, like the tennis shoes and the dog and the hill and the comb and the rope—all these objects and things [that inform the] story. His ways of “telling” [with] the paper flowers is just so up my alley. It just felt like a little piece of heaven for me. And that’s also against the amazing landscape of Montana, especially back in 1925 when there was so much more emptiness in the landscape.

There are so many beautiful motifs, like you were saying. And the Montana landscapes were duplicated by the Otago, New Zealand countryside.

New Zealand really is a chameleon when it comes to landscape. You can find a piece of New Zealand that could be almost anywhere, including, obviously, Switzerland.

There tends to be minimal lighting during the scenes of both intimidation and bonding between Phil and Rose and Phil and Peter. It’s all so ominously foreshadowing.

It was always dreamed up like that would happen. I guess you’re talking about the scenes in the barn. Actually, those are the more heavily lit scenes because even though when you’re not using a lot of light, it’s quite a lot of work to keep out the light and have it exactly as you want so that you can just see the face or have the feeling that it’s lit by lantern light or candles.

There are long, drawn out periods between the characters that do a great job of building tension. So, as a director, especially one who’s made a film like The Piano with a mute character, do you think that scenes without traditional dialogue are just as important in “telling” the story as scenes with traditional dialogue?

Definitely. Yes, definitely. After The Piano, I was really dying to do a project with a lot of dialogue, and I didn’t really realize until I started to get into it how difficult it was going to be making or filming scenes where the other person doesn’t say anything. So you cut into one person speaking and you cut into the next person, and they’re not talking, working on a different sign language, which you can’t understand anyway. So that was a challenge. It became so special because Holly Hunter is so expressive. Her eyes are incredible. And when I look back on the work that she has there and what I see in her, I mean, I’m just never sick of it. It’s just so interesting. So I really think there’s no rule. Dialogue scenes can be interesting, depending on the dialogue and depending on the intent of the scene—like when you want tension, it’s probably better to remove dialogue.

I definitely agree.

Yeah. There’s a tip.

Thank you. Screenwriting tips from Jane Campion are sacred. And I think the film’s title is a warning, really.

I think so, too. Yeah.

We’ve witnessed so many historical figures and current politicians give in to their animalistic urges, almost shedding their humanity, much like Benedict’s Phil.

Yeah. So, very beautifully put. I guess that’s what the title is pointing to, yeah. It’s very open. You’re not really going to quite say exactly what it is. And even if you go back to the Psalm that it came from, the Psalm is very difficult to interpret.

Yeah. It’s very open-ended. And Benedict wrestles with those animalistic urges in such a nuanced way. Speaking of difficult to interpret, your script is full of nuance, which the cast tackled with such grace. How did you settle on the four leads?

As a director, it brings me deep pleasure to see that their work has been recognized. I chose them because I think they’re all amazing actors, so it was a real joy to share the project with them. I feel like I just made friends with them. Everybody has to come to directing a different way, but for me, it’s as complex and various as friendship.

Kodi Smit-McPhee goes toe to toe with Benedict in the scenes they share. What were your conversations like with him surrounding his character and the dynamic there?

What I’m remembering now is we had three weeks of rehearsal, and the first week was really only with Kodi and Benedict. And it was really fun to see the two of them bond and discover each other as actors and as humans. I could see the actual film happening. Kodi and Benedict didn’t know each other, and Benedict comes to the rehearsal as already a big actor with a lot of experience, and Kodi comes in as a pretty young person. And in the end, I could hear them chuckling away and having fun, and I was thinking, “Oh, look. They’re making friends. They really do like each other.” And that helped me when I came to understand that, actually, Phil and Peter really did make friends, in a way. That’s one of the painful aspects of what Peter does, given that they actually cared about each other. What was happening in the rehearsal room was what was going to be happening in the film. They are friends right here, now. They’re very different in every which way in life. But they’re enjoying each other.

Bronco Henry, the elusive character, became something of a Twitter sensation.

That was so fun.

Will we ever get a Bronco Henry spinoff?

I don’t think I’ll be doing a spinoff, but I think it’s something that sounds really goofy that maybe people that love the Bronco Henry idea could do. We already started the competition for ideas about what Bronco Henry might look like, and we had some great winners.

Speaking of spinoffs and sequels, it’s foreshadowing that you expressed your desire to avoid superhero films at AFI Fest because this is often when studios start knocking. Have you ever been asked to direct one. Have you had to turn down any studios yet?

I feel like I marvel at what Marvel and the big franchise films do. I just don’t understand how they do it. I don’t think I would do a very good job for that reason. I can’t see myself doing that, and nobody’s ever asked me. So I think we must have an unspoken understanding. I look at Benedict as an actor. He’s able to do it. He’s able to work both in straight drama and also in the Marvel universe. I’m pretty impressed he can do that.

Right. But I think it might be easier as an actor than it is as director because you’re running the show.

I think a lot of those directors get a little bit stuck in that world.

True. The director’s version of typecasting.

Maybe they don’t. Taika Waititi’s managed to do both, yeah. Jojo Rabbit and Thor: Ragnarok. He’s a phenomenon. He’s a New Zealander, so I have to mention him.