March 7, 2022
Jane Campion’s Western psychological drama The Power of the Dog, based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Thomas Savage, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Phil Burbank – a domineering cattle rancher who is jealous of his brother, George (played by Jesse Plemons), and a bully to his brother’s new wife, Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). As Phil eventually tries to make amends with Peter and connect with the young med school student, Peter starts to uncover some of Phil’s most closely guarded secrets.
Shot in New Zealand in the midst of strict COVID-19 lockdowns, Campion, who won an Oscar for best screenplay for The Piano in 1993, enlisted editor Peter Sciberras to cut the film, which was released on Netflix. CinemaEditor recently spoke with Sciberras about his work on the film.
CinemaEditor: How did you get involved in this project?
Peter Sciberras: I’d just finished working with Dave Michod on The King and got an email from See Saw Films out of the blue, which I wasn’t expecting at all. And then I got the script from [co-producer] Libby Sharpe and read it and loved it.I flew up to Sydney the following week and had my first meeting with Jane who I’d never met. So, it was kind of a job interview. And we really hit it off, and talked a lot about character and story, and intention in the script and the relationships and psychology of it all. A few days later I got the gig and that was it. And then I just waited for it to start shooting, which, I think it was maybe six months before the shoot began. It was quite a wait.
CE: What was it like working through COVID?
PS: Originally, the idea was to meet in Sydney where Jane lives after the shoot, but COVID threw quite a large spanner in the works. So, the shoot got shut down in March and didn’t resumeuntil June. Jane was in New Zealand for all of that. I was still inMelbourne. We were talking quite a bit [on the phone] about what we have and what we needed going forward. And then the shootfinally finished around July. So I traveled to New Zealand andquarantined for two weeks and met up with Jane. We cut from September through December in New Zealand, then returned to Australia when there was no more quarantine and finished the rest in Sydney. That was a very complicated schedule.
CE: The film has quite an eerie, haunting tone to it. Perhaps you could tell me a bit about finding and maintaining that tone. What goes into that?
PS: A lot, I guess. Maintaining that kind of tone – it’s a million small decisions. Also, I think a lot of that comes from the tension in the script. There’s always a sense of there’s something foreboding around the corner.Also, we worked with [composer] Jonny Greenwood who’s obviously incredible. He essentially scored [based on] conversations with Jane and the script, so he just handed us about 30 tracks really early on in the edit. So we were working with that throughout, but there was no indication where anything should actually go. They were essentially fully-formed cues, which we worked with and molded to the film.
I think Jonny’s music was really pivotal to that feeling and how we used it and where we used it. And also, we use it as a bridge quite often to take you out of a scene and then drop you in a scene and maintain a sense of emotion that you were left with, whether that be dread, or the sexual tension in the ending.
CE In the same vein, how do you go about selecting the performances?
PS: From the very get-go, before we touched anything in any scene, we watched all the dailies in a really meticulous way. It wasn’t just a skim. We studied every performance from every scene basically on the first pass. So, there wasn’t a lot of swapping in and out of performance when we got going. A lot of that work was actually done at the beginning, which made the first pass through the film a longer process, but by the time we’d done it, we had a very solid go at getting the right performances in the film.
CE So how much of it came together in the editing room versus the original script? Did you stick pretty much to the script?
PS: No. A lot of shaping was done. Overall, it was mostly the script, but then there was quite a lot of restructuring, which I didn’t expect. There were some key scenes just after the openingwhere they meet Peter and Rose that used to be where the naked mud swimming moment was. But that gave too much of the background away far too early. It didn’t feel like revealing Phil’s sexuality in that way was powerful enough or did justice to his character. We realized that we needed to get to know him andthen slowly peel back the layers rather than just giving it awayin the first 25 minutes. There’s a lot of that.
The opening scene of the film originally was the castration scene … but tonally it didn’t feel like the right way in, so we moved the castration to Pete’s arrival where it really felt like it was a solid underline to build the anticipation and tension of the story.
Also, there were no chapters in the film. The chapter cards came up as an idea maybe two cuts in. We had some dips to black and some other devices to try to give the audience a bit of orientation, but it felt like we needed something a little stronger, a little more direct, to let audiences be comfortable with being thrown into a different place or a different character with a significant amount of time having elapsed. And they’re almost like little cliffhangers in themselves, so you’re always leaving on a beat that leaves you wanting more information, with a sense of anticipation.
CE: What’s it like working with Jane? How hands-on was she in the process?
PS: She’s such an easy person to collaborate with. We had a great time in the edit. One idea just led to another, which felt great, really complementary. It’s a really bold film in many ways and required a lot of passes to get it to the right place, but it felt like it went really quick. We were always making progress and that’s got a lot to do with how open she is to trying things, and how quick she is to move on from things as well.
CE: Overall, what was the biggest challenge you faced on this film?
PS: I think keeping it tonallyconsistent, and also building momentum, even though we’re moving at what would be described as a slow burn kind of pace – not getting lost and letting it drift away from us. I think that was a really big thing for us. We talked a lot about keeping it moving forward, ratcheting it up, and tightening it up. That was a big challenge, especially given the more literary structure in terms of chapters and shifting points of view. I remember that when I read the script, that felt like it was going to be the biggest challenge.
There’s so much nuance and so much going on between the lines in this film. It’s so intricate and it’s hard to describe exactly how you do that, but it’s got a lot to do with intuition and feeling, and also really meticulous detail.
CE: Tell me about your assistant editor and what role he played.
PS: My assistant, Kasra Rassoulzadegan, is fantastic. This was our third film together. Given the complexity of traveling around to different cities, with one of us being in quarantine, and the other one not, he was just a really great support. He’s got really good taste, a good sounding board. He has also just become an editor, so I’ve got to find a new assistant for my next film, which is unfortunate for me, but I’m very happy for him. I’m really excited to see what he does as an editor now. It’s an awesome thing to watch.
CE: So what do you hope audiences take away from the movie?
PS: Well, I hope audiences watch it twice. It’s something we talked about quite a bit. It’s a very different experience with the second viewing. There’s so much to think about in this film and there’s so many layers to it. There are so many unexpected turns that it never goes to the place you think it will. It’s a story that really keeps you on your toes. I hope audiences really enjoy that element. We are always hoping that when you finish this film the first time, you’re left with a bunch of conflicting emotions about the characters and themes.
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2022 Eddie Honorees
Honoree – Sundance Institute
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