Your Weekly Dose (12/6/21)
This week’s prescriptions take us to the wild west, the forests of Denmark, and the farthest reaches of space. As always, thanks for subscribing and sharing.
FILM
The Power of the Dog
Legendary filmmaker Jane Campion’s first film in twelve years launched on Netflix on Friday. I watched it over the weekend and deeply regret that I didn’t first see it on the big screen during its limited theatrical run a couple of weeks ago. If it’s still playing in a theater near you, and you feel comfortable going, do it. The cinematography is stunning and echoes the great Westerns of filmmakers like John Ford. But Campion doesn’t overindulge in these vistas either, because she’s got four talented stars to get to, two of which, Benedict Cumberbatch and Kirsten Dunst, turn in their best performances in years. The film is also loaded with a wealth of themes including gender, sexuality, identity, desire, strength, weakness, and the myth of the wild west.
The Power of the Dog tells the story of the Burbank brothers, Phil (Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), sons of a wealthy Montana ranching family. Their parents have retired to the city, and Phil, inspired by his likely-more-than-mentor, Bronco Henry, leans into the ranch life with gusto. George less so, especially when he falls for the widow Rose (Dunst), whom he quickly marries. Phil is convinced that Rose is only into George for his money, and he makes his distrust and dislike of her aggressively public. When Rose’s quiet and bookish son Pete (Kodi Smit-McPhee) visits the ranch on summer break from boarding school, the familial imbalance is thrown even further out of whack.
Phil is one of the most complex, dynamic characters we’ve seen on film this year, and Cumberbatch’s performance will surely be one of the year’s best. He’s a former honor student at Yale, who now relishes ranching, refuses to bathe, plays the banjo, castrates bulls without wearing gloves, and despises anyone that tries to get too close to him. It’s no wonder Rose descends into alcoholism shortly after she moves into the Burbank home. But as the film progresses and cracks begin to form in Phil’s facade, Campion reminds us that it’s the quiet ones to which you really must pay attention.
The Power of the Dog is streaming on Netflix.
TV
Elves
One of the things I’m most thankful for in this era of proliferating streaming platforms is the access it gives us to European cinema and television. Much of it is bold storytelling and, in some cases, just flat-out weird. While it’s not the weirdest series out there, the new Danish holiday “horror” series, Elves, is just weird enough and good enough to land on this week’s PCRx, especially if you’re a Europhile like me.
Elves follows a family of four as they take a Christmas vacation to a small wooded island in the furthest reaches of the Danish archipelago. Everything seems cheerful enough until they take a shortcut to their cabin and pass by a section of the forest ominously surrounded by a tall, electrified fence. Distracted by the fence, father Mads (Peder Thomas Pedersen) accidentally hits something as it darts across the road. With no sight or sound of the animal, they carry on. As the family settles into their cabin and begin holiday preparations, they make a visit to the local market and encounter less than hospitable residents, who essentially warn them to mind their own business. But daughter Josefine (Sonja Steen) can’t leave well enough alone and begins a search for the animal that her father hit, unleashing an ancient terror on the island.
Elves plays with the quirkier, darker side of Christmas legends, diving into the more monstrous origins of the lovable creatures that sit on many of our shelves this time of year. In this era of crass commercialism and misplaced devotion, it’s helpful to remember how menacing some of those legends can actually be…Krampus anyone? Also at work in this series are themes of environmentalism and the lengths that communities and individuals would go to to “defend” nature. There’s some mild cultish activity as well, but nothing tied to any specific tradition or religion from which these myths would have emerged. Elves won’t be for everyone, but if you like thrills with your holiday fare, it’s entertaining enough, and with only six 22-minute episodes, it really plays more like a film.
All episodes of Elves are currently streaming on Netflix.
Bewilderment
Richard Powers’ novel, The Overstory, is one of my favorite books of the last decade. His latest novel, Bewilderment, might be my favorite novel this year. While he looked to the ground and what runs beneath it in The Overstory, here, he turns his eyes to the stars and weaves a story as vast as the cosmos and as intimate as a parent’s love for a child.
In Bewilderment, Theo is a widowed astrophysicist tasked with exploring the possibility of life on other planets. His deceased wife, Alyssa, was a fierce and much-loved animal rights activist. Their son Robin struggles at school, is the victim of bullying, and is prone to violent outbursts, but is also inquisitive, smart, and deeply empathetic. When Robin fractures a friends’ face in a fit of anger, Theo, unwilling to medicate his child, turns to experimental neurofeedback therapy sessions. During these sessions, Dr. Currier (one of Alyssa’s friends) trains Robin’s brain to access new neural pathways corresponding to emotional states, in this case, those from sessions that his deceased mother participated in years before. Within a few weeks, Theo witnesses Robin transform into a calm, patient, disciplined, and even more radically empathetic child, with increasing interest in and knowledge of the issues about which his mother cared most deeply.
Bewilderment is a breathtaking work of fiction that reminds us of the unknowability of one another, while boldly insisting that empathy, that never-ending journey of trying to share in the feelings and experiences of the other, might just be the salvation of our species and, by extension, the countless other species with whom we share this planet. The novel is set in the not-too-distant future in an America that ours resembles more and more on a daily basis and on a planet that is only slightly more sick of (and from) us than ours. Powers’ novel also serves up a healthy and helpful dose of humility, and it made me think of this Pete Holmes bit:
But I think Holmes might agree with me on this, life tends to make a little more sense after reading Powers’ books. You simply must read Bewilderment this holiday season. It’s available wherever books are sold, but consider purchasing it from an independent bookseller like Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN.