It's really quite something the groupthink that's overtaken what we could call the 'critical' community but is seemingly morphing into the echo chamber of the PR dept's of various streamers. I have yet to see a single 'critic' have the gall to call out the various & most obvious(and offensive) tropes in the heavily lauded
The Power of the Dog. Yes, many critics are correct in the most basic way that Campion's film is very well done & engaging (I just have to chuckle at the love affair & ejaculation over Greenwood's scores that have started to become exceedingly cloying & distracting & seemingly do nothing more than announce 'hey, here's Jonny Greenwood's odd noodling.') I really love Radiohead but his scores are more about his own indulgences than the sound scape for the film itself. I can't count how many times the score just felt completely out of step w/ what was onscreen...
However, the real issue here I find so oddly unfortunate is the handling of the gay characters. I can just imagine poor Vito Russo spinning in his grave as the lack of any serious engagement w/ these obvious decades old tropes trotted out again, and again... and yet, again! If someone were to do an updated version of
The Celluloid Closet you could pull tons of segments from this film!! It's not much more than an updated (male version) of
The Children's Hour some 60 years later. Have we really made no progress in 60 years? (If one is not familiar the story is about 2 women, very close, rumored to be Lesbians & their lives ruined, one committs suicide. Because, of course, homosexuality is a crime punishable by death!)I'm flabbergasted by how many LGBT filmmakers & critics are heaping praise all over this film w/ nary a critical eye. Let me spell it out in the most obvious terms... CAUTION- SPOILERS AHEAD:
In Russo's brilliant book & subsequent doc, he makes the case gay characters are treated & have evolved in these 3 basic ways by Hollywood: A. started out purely a joke. B. moved on to usually becoming victims, or... C. they're the sociopathic, psychopathic killer or Vicious Queen that needs to be put down or usually killed... Guess what?
Power of the Dog is hitting very clearly on 2 of these 3 age old tropes. One is obviously the Vicious Queen (Oh, I'm sorry, did I get that wrong David Ehrlich, AO Scott, insert obsequious critic here ____. Ah, not a Vicious Queen, oh ok, instead rather an example of '
Toxic Masculinity....' but still over compensating for being... a Vicious Queen- wink, wink!) And, literally a victim by the end of the film, dealt w/ by the little sociopathic/psychopath who in some scenes is about as subtle a -serial-killer-in-the- making as a young Jeffery Dahmer pulling the wings off of flies. And, of course, both characters are very clearly gay. OF COURSE, THEY ARE! I thought we were going to see this evolution of their relationship evolve in a unique and insightful way but NOOOOO! WHY OF COURSE ONE OF THE GAY CHARACTERS HAS TO DIE!!! OF COURSE, HE DOES! And, even better.... he gets killed by the other gay character. "Hey, make damn sure those Homos & Faggots kill each other. We simply can't have them live out the rest of their lives like our normal hetero characters, of course not..."
Please, somebody, anybody? How in the world is this not an age old Hollywood trope? Please could some of you so called 'critics' take a look at
The Celluloid Closet again and maybe reconfigure here? Moreover, it's been utterly shocking to see a notably successful & openly Lesbian filmmaker conduct a Q& A w/ Miss Campion at Netflix's screening facility & have seemingly no problem whatsoever with the denouement of the film. In another case, a notable film critic, openly gay & married w/ husband doing a youtube show & podcast reviewing the film w/ a female colleague & neither seems to have any issue whatever w/ the final character arcs of the only two gay characters in the film. One simply can't emphasize enough what is so troubling about this film. It would be one thing if Phil Burbank (Cumberbatch) just died at the hands of a cunning rival, in quite spectacular reversal of fortune. But, he dies at the hands of the other gay character in the film, whom it's implied in subtext may have killed his own father. Hence, a young serial killer in the making, who not only happens to be gay, but effeminitely so, 'flaming' as some would say 'back in the day'. His masculunity mocked throughout the film. Not only silence from indivuals but not a single objection from GLAAD? Nor the folks who bring us Outfest (of which the aforementioned critic is a programmer.) Is it really the Power of Netflix that subsumes all else? Has the groundbreaking & revolutionary work of Vito Russo been all for naught? These are very troubling questions & frankly very suprising given how 'woke' the liberal bastion of Hollywood has supposedly become.
