Readers Write In #444: “The Power of the Dog”: Some spoilery musings on the movie and the book

By Aparna Namboodiripad, who comments here as tonks

I was profoundly moved by “The power of the dog”, on Netflix, especially having watched it without any expectations just before it got all the Oscar nominations. The direction and acting are superlative, and after a slow start, the climax is brilliant, and unexpected. 

The story is set in Utah in 1924 and revolves around Phil, an extremely macho rancher who hates “sissies”, women, and Red Indians. Though college educated, talented and intelligent, and a rich ranch owner, he very strangely prefers to be unkempt, unwashed and crude. The story is about the emotional drama that unfolds when his brother whom he lives with marries and brings home a wife, a former widow with a son, who has some effeminate qualities. 

Spoilers ahead :

The reason books are always better than the movie for me, are that in books you can get into the head of the characters. So when I learnt that this movie is based on a book of the same name by the under rated Thomas Savage, whom I had never previously heard of, I read the book  and it completed my experience of watching the movie. Being my favorite sort of book, where importance is given to character development,  it helped me understand the characters better.

It was published in 1967 by Little, Brown after Thomas Savage’s editor at Random House asked for changes that the writer refused to make. 

Having to come to face with the unavoidable fact of his homosexual attraction for Bronco Henry when he was a teenager, in an era and setting where this was considered abnormal,  Phil reacted to this by repressing the fact, and  going all out to the other extreme by being as hyper masculine as he could be : by never grooming himself, by indulging in macho pursuits, and crushing out any weakness. He “loathed the world, before it had a chance to loathe him first” as the book puts it. 

From the movie, I was not quite sure why Phil suddenly decides to befriend Peter. From the book I understood it was because he thought it would isolate Rose further, and thus push her into further depression and drinking, which would end her marriage. But was this only the excuse Phil made to himself, or did watching Peter’s spark of courage while walking in his effeminate way in front of the ranch boys despite their cat calls, trigger the beginning of an attraction in his mind, but deeply repressed as his homosexuality is, he couldn’t admit it to himself at first? The book shows how later he admits to himself the beginning of love for Peter, whatever his initial motives were for befriending him. 

Thomas Savage has admitted to draw on characters from his real life for his books, and one can see echoes of “The power of the dog ” in Savage’s life. When his mother remarried after a divorce,  young Thomas too had a stepfather who was a lot like George.  And an uncle called Ed on whom Phil’s character seems to be based. Ed was lean, with a craggy profile, a sharp nose and thick black hair he cut less than four times a year. He despised towns, had an insulting laugh, and never said a kind word about other men. He tried to destroy Savage’s mother by wooing her little daughter away from her. When Savage’s mother played on the piano, he would counter with boisterous tunes on his banjo. He died of anthrax contracted from a splinter jammed into his palm while fencing a haystack. So this then is the “dog” in the story (seen first as an imagery on the mountains, hot in pursuit of its prey), from whom the “darling” mother has to be rescued, as the biblical reference puts it.

Benedict Cumberbatch does justice to his part, and one could see why he was chosen for the role, as there were echoes of his Sherlock Holmes character in Phil’s superhuman mental faculties,  the misanthropy, the carelessness to social etiquette, the sarcasm, and extraordinary ear for music.  

The paradox of repressed homosexuality in rugged, masculine cowboys leading hyper macho lives reminded me of Brokeback mountain.  That was another instance where the movie inspired me to read Annie Proulx’s  story on which it is based, and I was not too surprised to see that she is a fan of Savage’s writing, and has written a comprehensive afterword to his novel.