The New Yorker Radio Hour - Jane Campion on “The Power of the Dog”

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” opens like a classic Western: cattle are herded across the sweeping plains of Montana, with imposing mountains in the distance. But the plot of the film, based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, isn’t exactly a Western. It’s a family drama about two brothers who share in the ranching business but couldn’t be more different, and what happens when one of them brings his new wife and her teen-age son to live on the ranch. “The Power of the Dog” is nominated for twelve Academy Awards, the most of any film this year, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. Campion talks with David Remnick about Benedict Cumberbatch’s starring performance; her experience working with Harvey Weinstein, and how #MeToo has changed the film industry; and why she’d really like to direct a comedy. Plus, Caetano Veloso, a living giant of Brazilian music, was recently profiled for The New Yorker by Jonathan Blitzer. The staff writer picks some key tracks from Veloso’s vast catalogue that illuminate his long career. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Jane Campion's film, The Power of the Dog, opens like a classic Western. This cattle being herded across the sweeping plains, imposing mountains in the distance, were on a ranch in Montana. 25 years since our first run together. 1900 and nothing. It's a long time.

Not too damn long. So the plot of the film isn't exactly a Western. It's an intense drama about two brothers, brothers who share the business, but seem to be opposites in almost every way. It chronicles what happens when one of those brothers marries and brings his wife and her teenage son to the family home. Jane Campion is a trueuteur with a highly personal style,

dreamlike, but often. brutal. She's found mainstream success telling very idiosyncratic stories. The Power of the Dog is nominated for 12 Oscars, the most of any film this year, including Best Picture and Best Director. Jane? Yes, hi, David. I spoke with Jane Campion last week. Well, this film is adapted from a novel from 1967 by Thomas Savage. Why did this one hit home to you? You must go through stacks and stacks of novels, all kinds of source material that might make up a film.

And you don't... It's a brilliant novel. I mean, it's a forgotten, unloved, uncherished book. But I think it's just actually quite brilliant. And you also feel the truth in it. You know, like this is almost something between a memoir and a fiction. You know, that the way he writes is so detailed and particular that you know he's lived experience. You know, it's a lived experience, and it feels like something you can totally trust.

One of the things I assume you have to deal with is you're not only adapting from a particular novel, you're also either up against or aware of a whole tradition of Western movies in the history of American filmmaking. Yeah. And how did you view your... film against all those many, many, many, either genre pictures or John Ford pictures or that whole long and complicated tradition? Well, I don't understand the whole of the long complicated tradition, but it is a very

romantic genre that all of us, everybody, me included, have fantasies about. what I felt my allegiance to was Thomas Savage's particular story. You know, here I had someone who really did grow up in the West, who was irritated by the romance of the West and found it to be not showing the best of men sometimes, but the worst of them. So he wrote a very particular tale. It's not trying to say, oh, this is the West,

but it is a counterpoint, I think, and in a subversive one to the dominant, I suppose fairy tale of it, you know. Now, last week, the actor Sam Elliott, who's played a hell of a lot of cowboys in a lot of Hollywood movies, went on a podcast, Mark Marin's podcast. And Marin asked him what he thought about Power of the Dog. And Elliot really slammed the movie.

He asked what a woman, a person from New Zealand, knows about making westerns, why you'd shoot New Zealand, and in general criticized your portrayal of cowboy life. Do you have any response to that? Do you care? I love Sam Elliott. He's a wonderful actor.

And, you know, I understand that from his pointed view of playing classical cowboys and feeling like in some way he and his cohorts own that genre, it must be disturbing. But, you know, I have to point out that there were women in the West as well. They weren't all hores or whatever else. And, you know, there were plenty of women that were watching and had very different points of view about how things were happening. And also that Sam, I don't know how old he is, but I'm sure he wasn't there and around in 1925. And he's sure as hell wasn't living on the ranch that Thomas Savage was living on or in

his skin. And so I think it's, you know, that problem of, um, you know, a certain generation of men having problems except in other people's points of view. Now, your films are not always, but usually centered around female leads. I don't know what the arithmetic is there, but it's more often than not. Here, this is not the case,

although obviously Kristen Dunn has a big role in this. Yes. Was that a particular interest in pursuing a more male-oriented story, or it was just by the bye. It was the kind of casualty of just falling in love with this book. I mean, it wasn't lost on me either. Like, oh my God, here we are, my first male leader, what a guy, you know?

So I thought about it a little bit because, you know, I think being one of the few female directors out there for some time, I did used to feel very strongly that I needed to keep telling stories about women that meant something to me. But I think with the advent of Me Too movement, that, you know, things have really changed and they have, you know, really changed for the better. You know, for a very long time,

there was an extraordinary lack of equality for women in our industry and their systemic abuse, you know, didn't feel like an urgent problem. or even a problem. And that change, I feel. I think it's, I feel it extremely, and I think it's emboldening a lot of women to do whatever they want to do.

And, you know, I think that the kind of fearless urgency that is producing some really interesting work from women that came about because of, you know, their support by both, you know, men and women. And, you know, and that sort of shift, that dynamic shift in the industry, which is a bit like the Berlin Wall coming down. And it's that market. You feel it. Yeah, the statistics are so stark. They tell the story anyway. But to tell it in a human way, this is how I would recount it as someone who lived through it,

you know, who's been in the industry for 40 years, that the inequality was noted, but it wasn't urgent, you know. You had experience with Harvey Weinstein about which the New Yorker and the New York Times did a lot of reporting. Yeah, yes. And you worked with him pretty closely on the piano. Well, I didn't work closely with him on the piano. No, he bought it when it was finished. So did you have much contact with him? Well, I mean, I live in Australia and New Zealand and he lives in New York. I did work on Holy Smoke with him and it was a pretty horrendous experience. How so? Because he didn't like the story, which is really not surprising when you think about it.

You think about what Holy Smoke was about, which is young girl taking on it, a man who, you know, fancies himself as a cult breaker. But has a crush on the girl, and the girl doesn't like him, and, you know, fancies that she's going to teach him a bit of what it feels like to be a woman treated in that way. Anyway, he really hated the film and, you know, maybe, I don't know if it was because the film was actually bad or not, I think probably it's okay. But he wanted me to change it and, you know, he really just screamed down the telephone

at me, almost like a shark attack. A shark attack. And I can just remember saying to him, Harvey, why are you speaking like this? This is so uncivil, you know. You can't talk to people like that. It's horrible. That turned out to be the least of it almost. Well, yeah, I never actually suffered any sexual abuse from Harvey at all.

He wasn't interested in me in that way. But I just didn't know it was so systemic, you know, like it was happening to so many people. Jen, I want to play a clip from the film. Your films often center around characters that have some quality that makes them, let's just say, hard to love. And Phil Burbank is certainly that. And he and some of the other farmhands are sitting down to dinner and they're being served by a young man named Peter, played by Cody Smith-McPhee. And we'll hear Phil making fun of the way Peter is holding a napkins.

Now, gentlemen, look, see, that's what you do with the cloth. It's really just for wine drips. Oh, you got that, boys? Only for the drip. Now get us some food. And the thing is, as the film progresses, you find some empathy in him. He changes somewhat.

Where did you draw from in imagining Phil's character, or is it all there in the novel written out for you? I think it's an alchemy between what was imagined and written by Thomas Savage and who Benedict is as an actor and a man in his interpretation. I think Benedict can really open up in an extraordinarily beautiful way to his emotions that if he wasn't able to do that, would have been a very different portrait. But I think he brings us into the sort of dark, treakily disturbed heart of Phil, you know, which is, yeah, so lonely and vulnerable

and yearning for a full life he can never lead because of who he is. He sounds like, Benedict Cumberbatch sounds like an incredibly intense artist and you have formed over time very intense relationships with various leading actors. You say it intense like it's a scary thing. Well, I gather he is very much in the modern sense a method actor. What was the reality of that?

Benedict is everything. He's very funny and he's very personable and he's very affectionate and warm-hearted. And, you know, like, because he and I agreed and I asked him to stay in character on this set because it's such a long way from who he is and it helped all of us to know that Phil was on set, you know? and so that if he, you know, he would argue with me sort of as Phil, you know,

and about what we were going to do. And he likes, I think, Ben, to have a dialogue that goes on, like he's got a, you know, a monologue in his head that goes on and then it becomes verbal, you know. He verbalises it and he starts to talk about the options, this, that, and he really is thinking of every possible, you know, variation that you could do on any scene. and at a certain point, you know, like, I just, I accompany him in this because it seems like

something that is his process. And then after a while, I go, let's just do it, eh? You know. So even when he's having lunch or talking with you about various parts of the film and the cameras are not rolling, he's in character. He's not the kind of posh Englishman that we kind of know from red carpet interviews. I mean, we didn't have lunch together. But we had many social events together. But yeah, no one said he was film, and it really gave him, you know, that beautiful space to just not have to be the nice actor guy, you know, celebrity that everybody wants a picture taken with.

And he, you know, one of the requests that I had during rehearsal was that he every day said no and never said thank you, you know, for as many things as possible. So he just lost all responsibility. politeness, which yes, that actually was a great freedom, but I enjoyed it. Now, you've had an astonishing career, and you continue to make just amazing work. You've had big hits, you've won big awards, revered by your peers, and you haven't had to make a Marvel movie yet. I wonder if it feels that way to you. What's missing from the picture I just painted of your career? What have been the real obstacles and downsides?

I am, you know, like a loner and also a really sociable person, so I really love working with colleagues and having fun. I mean, you know, my idea about life is like, you know, the best thing you can possibly do is laugh, you know, and I just love laughing. I love people that make me laugh. So the big hole is comedy. I would really, really, you know,

It would be really fun to be a comic or a comedian or make films that make everybody laugh and be able to sit there in the cinema and just hear people really have some belly laughs, you know. I mean, I'd love to just be there while, Ebb and all that lot, do their stuff, or the bridesmaids crew. You know, I'd do anything just to be on those sets, you know. Because, as I say, you know, I think that there's nothing more wonderful than laughing. Jane Campion, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks, David.

Jane Campion is the director and screenwriter of The Power of the Dog. It's been nominated for 12 Academy Awards, and that ceremony, of course, takes place on March 27th. And next week we'll present one of the most important rituals in cinema. We'll give out the coveted awards known as the Brodies, recognizing the most visionary films of the year, according to the New Yorker's Richard Brody. I hope you'll join us.

There's more to come on the New Yorker Radio Hour today, so stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Staff writer Jonathan Blitzer recently profiled Caetano Veloso, the great Brazilian musician.

Although, as John writes, the phrase, great musician, doesn't really cut it. Veloso is a Brazilian national treasure. He's one of its finest songwriters. He was also a political prisoner and then in exile. He's a voice of the 60s,

who at the age of 79 is as active in making new music as he ever was. Here's Jonathan Blitzer. The first time I became aware of Catana Veloso, I was in my early 20s. I was living in New York, and I wandered into a movie theater somewhere uptown for an evening showing of a film by the great Spanish director, Pedro Almodovar, and the movie was called Talk to Her, Ableg Connella.

And I went into the movie, not knowing specifically what to expect, beyond the fact that this is a director I loved, and I just kind of wanted to bliss out and watch this movie. There is a scene right next to a pool in this villa somewhere in Spain. And there's a group of people who have assembled to listen to musicians sing. That's Kaitana Veloso. He appears in this scene. And he's sitting on a chair in front of a microphone, kind of gazing out into the distance.

and is singing this song, it's called Cuckurucucupaloma. This is a Mexican folk song from the 1950s. He has this liquid melodic tenor that also just drifts so effortlessly into falsetto. And I can't remember how I began to piece together, you know, who this man was, why I needed to hear more of him. But it became an obsession. John, I had the honor of attending your wedding to our colleague Alexandra Schwartz, in fact,

and you guys walk down the aisle to one of Caitano Veloso's songs. We chose Orasao Tempo, a prayer to time. It's an older song, but there's a more recent version we especially liked. And a lot of people at that wedding came up to us afterwards

and said, like, who is that? Tempo, tempo, tempo, tempo, composer of distin. Pop music stars usually don't sustain a career for forever and ever. I mean, they have a moment in time, and if they're lucky, and if they strike some chord, they're there, and then things fade. But Catano Veloso is hardly a new artist. He's released about 50 albums. He's composed music for several singers and music.

musicians over the years, including his sister. What was it like being with him? And why has he been able to sustain that popularity and creative fervor for so long? I mean, he is constantly reinventing himself and his music to a degree that is honestly voracious. A friend of his, David Byrne, was telling me that that's the thing he actually admires most about Caitano and is intimidated by even. The fact that every album is new, every composition goes in a new direction.

He is just, you know, kind of constantly hungering after new musical sounds and experiences. And to hang out with him, you kind of even get a little glimmer of a sense of it because you're just seeing what he's reading, what he's listening to. It's in every direction. It's classical music. It's pop music. It's hip-hop. It's, I mean, everything.

Nothing is too low or too high for him. He just kind of consumes it all. and then somehow weaves together this concoction that is just his. Now, you've been tasked with choosing just four songs from Kaitana's enormous body of work. What do you have for us? Torture. How did it was? What do you have for us first here? Well, I was moving chronologically, and I thought I would start with a song called Khorasau vagabundo, or Wandering Heart.

And it's one of the first songs he ever wrote. He wrote it when he was 21 years old. It's written in this kind of Basanova style. He released it and immediately said that, okay, this is an end of a chapter for me. I'm already going to be moving in a different direction after this song. But this is a song he's always loved. His collaborators have always loved.

It's just a song that persists through time as a classic. Eventually, Caitano develops what's known as tropicalia music, Trump, a kind of movement. What is that? That movement is, you know, about bringing in international rock forms and fusing them with traditional Brazilian music, sambas and kind of old classics. And at that time, there were street protests in Brazil in the middle of a military dictatorship in which leftists protested the rise of the electric guitar in Brazilian music. I mean, this was, you know, hard-fought territory. And Caitano kind of blew right through it and started incorporating rock sounds from, you know, English neo-rock, as he called it, an American, you know,

Hendrick stuff and the Beatles and kind of fusing it all together. It was a total sensation. And it lasted a few years. And it basically landed Keitano in prison. Now, I think I can pronounce your next selection. It's called nine out of ten. Tell us about that song. So this is a song that Keitano wrote while he was living in exile in London. So he spent two years in political exile from the dictatorship. And I've always loved this song because there is a moment in his time in London when he's really struggling with depression. Here he is in exile.

His life has been upended. And this song in particular to me, it captures this battle that he's fighting, where he really chooses life. There's a line where he says, you know, I'm walking down the road. I'm hearing reggae music. I'm alive, alive, alive. He keeps repeating it. Then he drifts into Portuguese and says,

He says there's the sound of music rumbling in my belly. Walk down for the bellar road to the sound of raggy. I'm alive. The age of gold, yes, the age of the age of old. The age of old. The age of music's fast. Hear them talk as I walk as I hear them talk. I hear they say, expect the final blast.

Walk down, photo bellar road to. I just feel like it's a very I'm alive. I'm alive. I'm a live, much vivo, vivo, feel the sound of music backing

and my belly, belly, belly, belly, belly. I just feel like it's a very personal song, and I know that he's always been particularly proud of this album. It's from an album called Tranza, which he started in England, and then ended up finishing in Brazil after returning a few years later. Now, you return as I understand it, at the suggestion of his hero and sometime collaborator,

Joao Gilberto, the great pioneer of Basanova. Yeah, I mean, he, you know, Catano once said to me, I didn't believe in God, but I believe in Jualo Jouberto. And he received a call one day in the early 1970s while he's living in London from Jualualoioberto. And Jouberto says to him, Caitano, you have to come home. Now is the time.

And of course, this is not a man who's particularly well known for his practical acumen or his political understanding of what's going on in Brazil at the time, Gioberto. And so Catano understandably says, how do you know it's safe?

And he and his wife at the time then set out to try to figure out whether or not they can return and, you know, will they immediately be imprisoned again, what will happen? They kind of can't get any firm answers. They decide to roll the dice.

And then when they touch down, it all happens exactly as Giberto says it would. He's welcomed, no problems at the airport, he's able to kind of ease back into his old life. Now, what is the next song, your third song? The third song is a beautiful one called Terra. And this is a song that Catano wrote

10 years after his time in prison. So it came out in the late 1970s. The lyrics referred to a specific moment when he was in prison, when his then-wife comes to him with a magazine that had photographs taken by astronauts of the Earth from outer space. And it was this incredibly poignant experience for him

because here he was wasting away in this tiny jail cell, and he's seeing some of the first photographs of the earth from space. When I was in a cell of a cage, was that I saw by the first time, the photographs, John, help us out with the lyrics here. He's describing sitting in a jail cell when he sees these photographs of Earth taken from outer space. And he points out that Earth isn't naked because she's wearing the clouds around her.

Your fourth song, your final and favorite track maybe, what is it and is it in the same mode as Terra? Well, I picked it in part because it sounds completely different. It sounds like it's from an entirely different artist, which is the sensation you get listening to Cayetano. This song is called the 13th of May, which is the day that slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888. Kaitano is from Bahia,

which was a kind of major hub of the Brazilian slave trade. And it's also, not unrelatedly, the home of Samba, which is an Afro-Brazilian musical form, which is kind of at the core of a lot of Brazilian popular music and definitely the core of Caitano's music. And so this is a song about the day that slavery was abolished, and it's set specifically in the town where Caitano grew up, Santo Amaro. And this is on an album from 2000.

This is on an album from 2000 called Nights of the North. And the entire album is dedicated to Afro-Brazilian percussion from Brazil's northeast. Day 13 of May, in Santo Amaro, in Santa Maro, on the praza of the market. The pretos celebras, Now, John, you write that Kaitano originally wanted to make movies, but he ended up making music because of the political persecution he experienced long ago. He is now 79. Has he expressed any regrets about the creative voice?

life he could have had? Is he a happy guy? You know, I have to say he said to me many times that, you know, he fell into music, he was interested in other art forms. I mean, I believe him. I take him at his word, but I'm somewhat skeptical because it's hard for me to imagine him doing anything else. You know, one thing that his friend, Roberto Gilles, told me is the reason Katano says things like that is because he can do all of it. And he just chose music. But he could have been a painter. He could have been a writer. He could have been a filmmaker. It's hard for me. I mean, I can't imagine Kaitano

doing anything but making music like this. I'm David Remnick, and that's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for joining. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Ave Carrillo, Brita Green, Cala Leah, David Krasnau, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino. with help from Alison McAdam, Harrison Keithline, and Mengfei Chen, and guidance from Emily Boutin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.