It’s in the rage on Phil’s face as he realizes his tight-knit relationship with his brother is coming to an end with George’s marriage to Rose. It’s in George’s downward gazes at the floor, knowing he is helpless to stop his brother’s torments. It’s in the steely glares Peter shoots Phil when he’s being picked on. It’s in the pained and panicked look on Rose’s face when she begins drinking after another round of Phil’s harassment. From this perspective, we get a sense of what the cast may never verbalize. Campion and her cinematographer Ari Wegner write whole character studies in their close-ups. There are no flashbacks, just a few scenes of characters sharing their past with each other. Backstory is filled in quickly and briefly in dialogue, if it’s ever filled in at all.

It is on the back of a horse that he found himself, and it is on those cow paths, mountain passes, and hidden rivers that he learned to disguise his desires.Ĭampion's adaptation of Thomas Savage’s novel of the same name strips out many details from the book and takes it back to its rawest in-the-moment elements. For Phil, this windswept nature is an escape from the life of privilege he wants no part of. For Peter, it presents a hardened masculinity he must learn to overcome. Using New Zealand for 1920s Montana, writer/director Campion sets this quiet-yet-angry Western against a harsh background that’s both beautiful and imposing.

The unlikely camaraderie unlocks a number of secrets and hidden intentions, changing everyone’s relationship to each other. That is, until Peter tries to spend more time with Phil. He steps up his intimidation of Rose and Peter, like intensifying heat with a magnifying glass. This enrages Phil, who takes the loss of his brother to a woman quite badly. George reaches out to comfort her, and ends up falling for her. At a stop at a restaurant, Phil harshly taunts Rose ( Kirsten Dunst), a widow running the joint, and her son Peter ( Kodi Smit-McPhee), who Phil bullies until Peter walks off the job and leaves his mother in tears. Where Phil is calloused and mean, George is gentler and more soft-spoken, often at the mercy of his brother’s teasing. Cumberbatch’s Phil is the rough and tumble Remus to the movie’s kinder Romulus, his brother George ( Jesse Plemons).

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