#Jane Campion’s Stunning Neo-Western Has A Career-Best Performance From Benedict Cumberbatch [TIFF 2021]

Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his brother George (Jesse Plemons) are wealthy cattle ranchers. We get the sense that they don’t need to be doing this anymore; that they don’t have to play cowboy and ride out into the dust. But they do, and it’s probably because of Phil, a Yale-educated scholar who has fully embraced the cowboy lifestyle. Indeed, Phil is so engaged in the idiosyncrasies of cowboy life that he seems completely out of time – as if he were straight out of the 1800s instead of the 1920s. When he’s not cutting the testicles off bulls or rolling cigarettes, Phil uses his massive intellect to put everyone around him in their place, and in his eyes, their place is beneath him. He is cruel, cutting, and downright scary. He bellows in rage at a group of cheerful folk gathered in celebration, and they scurry away in silent terror like chastised children being sent to their rooms.

Where Phil is cold, George is kind, albeit in an awkward, clumsy way. He doesn’t have Phil’s smarts or his gift for gab. There are times where he’s downright monosyllabic, unable to string more than two or three words together. But he comes off as far more sympathetic, primarily because he always looks pained by Phil’s cruelty. One evening, Phil, George, and the rough-and-tumble cowboys who work for them dine at an establishment owned by widow Rose (Kirsten Dunst). Her son Peter, owner of the voice we hear at the start of the film, works at the restaurant, too. He’s a shy, awkward young man; rail-thin, ghostly pale, eyes wide. Occasionally, he talks with a lisp. He is slight where other boys his age are sturdy. Phil immediately picks up on these traits and sees them as weaknesses. And when Phil spots weakness, he pounces. He humiliates the boy so harshly that it leaves Rose in tears. George, the good brother, comforts her – and before you know it, the two have fallen into a clumsy love affair and are quickly married.

While George does seem to love Rose, he’s not the best at showing it. He remains willfully oblivious to her needs, and her discomforts. When he insists that she play the piano for a dinner party, Rose pleads again and again that she’d rather not. He ignores her and brings in a brand new piano for her to play. He takes Rose back to live with him in the huge ranch house he shares with Phil and two servants (Genevieve Lemon, and an oddly underused Thomasin McKenzie). Rose is an immediate outsider, and while the servants eventually come around to her, Phil remains nasty. When Rose tries to make nice he scoffs and calls her a “cheap schemer.” He’s convinced that she just married George for the family’s money. Or is he? Does Phil really dislike Rose for that reason, or is he just resistant to any outsider coming into his life? Whatever the reason, he makes Rose’s life a living hell. And George seems completely oblivious to this, too, leaving Rose in the house with Phil for days on end while he goes off on business. Rose grows so disheartened that she descends into alcoholism, stashing bottles of booze all over the house and spending days on end passed out in her room.