Jane Campion has been away from directing for 12 years. That’s a long time. That’s approximately how long her new movie feels like. Mind you, she was never a fast-paced director, always moving at her own Campion-speed, but this movie is so precision crafted as an Oscar vehicle meant to let the actors act that it seemingly forgets all about silly small things like dynamism or audience connection. The acting is, indeed, first rate, and if that’s all you look for in a movie, by all means, go for it. If you have some wild unrealistic expectations of, oh I don’t know, being actually entertained or engaged or excited about it…forget it. Campion both written and directed this one, it’s based on a book I’ve never heard of and has to do with a gay cowboy in the Montana of the past. But wait, you say, wasn’t there already a story like that? didn’t they already make a movie like that? Why, yes, lovely reader, they did, a far superior one. But alas, Campion went there anyway. And slowly, slowly, slooooowly told a story of two brothers who live in the middle of nowhere 1925 Montana - a steady, measured and doughy one played by Jesse Plemons and a lean, mean ranching machine played by (someone give him an Oscar already) Cumberbatch. Plemons marries a local woman (his real-life squeeze Dunst), who has a teenage son played by the so-gaunt-he’s-practically-etiolated Smit-McPhee, a child start that grew up in so bizarrely thin he appears to be two dimensional. On this creepy (bunny dissecting) and creepily thin child Cumberbath’s crude cowboy bestows his affections; affections that apparently echo his own he once had for a mentor/lover? figure. Freshly married Dunst drinks herself steadily into semi-oblivion but she noticed and minds. Drama ensues. Drama continues. Until someone drops dead. Yes, that suddenly, for Campion is a director who loves to linger on random details and skip over giant chunks of relevant plot. So yeah, you got cinematography that takes the most advantage out of the virtually negative in its isolation space and striking mountains, you got Oscar-caliber acting on all accounts…and that’s it. The story itself it too underwhelming and too underwhelmingly told. And this might just be me, but I’m all about the story. This movie is by-design a critical darling, it's built for acclaim. Other reviews seem to state as much. Simmering, slow-boiling, passionate blah, blah, blah...sure, yeah, but look at what it sacrifices to get there. Look how tediously pretentious it turned out. Campion gets her kicks with some more male nudity, her previous obsessions included a dubious stud in Keitel and here she’s got Cumberbatch taking a pretty thorough mud bath including a brief full monty. This is how much Benedict wants an Oscar – he’ll mud bathe, he’ll masturbate with cloth, he’ll longingly squint his repression at strange youth and growl his gruffness in his most Americana accent, he’ll wear a most unflattering procession of chops that’ll give his skinny frame a pretty silly silhouette. So yeah, someone recognize the power of Cumberbatch, for the only power this movie has is to put you to sleep and make you wish for your time back.
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