It was always a little tough to buy the legitimacy of Jane Campion’s dark slow-burn drama The Power of the Dog as the best picture frontrunner. A difficult film about festering familial resentment and the destructive wounds of forced masculinity, it was a world away from what we’re used to seeing the notoriously risk-averse Academy rewarding, or even nominating in the first place.
There’s a distinct, unsettling chill that we haven’t experienced in a winner since 2007’s No Country for Old Men (Campion herself has likened the effect of the two endings), every Oscar since going to something that can be broadly, warmly defined as “the film we need right now”, laughs, tears or both guaranteed by the credits. But during a season that’s been mostly more conventional than last year’s, the film has remained out front despite the lack of a “worthy” narrative (star Benedict Cumberbatch’s late-in-the-day attempt to claim his character represents “anyone who hasn’t been seen or heard or understood” is … a stretch). It seemed too good to be true – it was far and away the most compelling film of 2021 – and the recent surge for the inauthentic saccharine of string-pulling remake Coda (winning both PGA and WGA awards over the last weekend) suggests that maybe it is, heart winning over any other part of the body yet again.
