O Poder do Cão

Na primeira metade de Poder do Cão inicia-se um jogo psicológico muito interessante e envolvente entre as personagens principais, onde esperamos e desejamos que as suas frustrações fervam silenciosamente e que expludam à superfície com toda a força no final. Mas isso não acontece e a segunda parte manda tudo por àgua abaixo dum modo tão previsível e desanimador que nos arrependemos da esperança inicial. De qualquer forma, Benedict Cumberbatch convenceu-me pela primeira vez de que é um excelente ator - se há alguma razão para assistir a este filme, é o seu desempenho. Além da música, também ela impressionante. (25/12/2021)

Um lento drama íntimo num ambiente fresco de outono, onde os sentimentos mal são comentados e apenas fervem entre os personagens, apoiados por música dramática, quase como de thriller às vezes. Jane Campion senta-se de novo ao piano e desta vez ultrapassa qualquer cliché narrativo que vem à mente do espetador enquanto o vê. E com um estudo psicológico cuidadoso dos personagens, guia o filme para uma forma de arte que faz mais perguntas do que responde. Interessante, distinto, de festival. Mas não me comoveu. Cumberbatch é brilhante. (09/12/2021)

A film where the protagonists look at each other in different acting positions and almost all the time, where the music supports the overall tension and a kind of invisible suspense, with the camera taking rolling panoramas of Montana. A lot could happen, but in the end nothing really does. A poorly made film by a director who obviously wanted to replicate the fragility and poetry of Pian, but incorporating it into a gritty western doesn't work. I don’t get the Oscar, I believe it put to sleep more than one viewer. And it almost put me to sleep. (19/04/2022)

Kodi Smit-Mcphee is going to have a hard time from the LGBT community. The Power of the Dog is a really weird family drama set in Montana in 1925, where it seems a key scene is missing, but wait! That’s on purpose. The characters suddenly change their demeanor thanks to something that happens off-camera. Campion simply hints at it and leaves the viewer to do the thinking. So the picture plays through without any sort of catharsis. It all stands on the shoulders of an excellent Cumberbatch who makes the very most of playing the rancher, really enjoying it. (28/10/2021)

Humble, beautifully filmed, full of dramatic scenery and subliminal tension, which is, however, quite forcefully injected by Johnny Greenwood's sometimes shallow underscore. Campion's script is unfocused and the plot, divided into fragments, doesn't create coherent dramatic tension, and in the end it kind of depends on the power of chance, and I therefore struggled with the point rather than lived it. The strongest motif is not the son's love for his mother or the misalignment of the two reclusive characters, but rather the relationship between the two brothers, which quietly fades from the plot after about half an hour, much like Jesse Plemons outplaying the rest of the cast. The result is a diet broth of There Will Be Blood and In Fabric. An elegant piece that barks but doesn't bite. (08/12/2021)