“The stakes were quite high,” Wegner says. And an unusually dusty day-so dusty the crew had to wear goggles-aided in the eventual sequence maintaining a thorough authenticity throughout. Visual effects created “cow clones” to approximate the thousand or so animals described in the book. “He had actually taught them that they go and walk up one end of the field, and then turn around, and walk back up again.” “And that’s actually what happened,” Campion says.
He even went so far as to teach the cows and horses “to walk up and down” the big hill. The main question, in terms of the specifics of the scene, was: How do you shoot the animals being manhandled without actually manhandling them? Campion remembers their animal handler walking through the corral and picking out any animal with “any sort of aggression” before they shot. But it was still quite hard to work out.” No animal can be stressed or harmed on your film, and we support that too. Obviously, we couldn’t castrate any animal, even though these were things that happen normally on a ranch. “It really was hair-tearing-out,” Campion says of the process. This moment is followed by the two walking out of the barn toward it, and Peter too identifying the symbolic outcropping. Indeed, look behind Peter toward the mountains, and you see arguably the most important visual of the whole film: the hillside where Phil and Bronco Henry, and seemingly no one else, can see a barking dog. The specifics of the barn, built by production designer Grant Major, “feels effortless but actually involves a huge amount of planning,” Wegner says. “Peter realizes he’s got emotional control over Phil.” “You can really feel the power change here in this moment,” Campion says. The function of the saddle, in turn, proves similarly vital: It’s where Bronco Henry once sat, a huge moment in the development of Peter and Phil’s tricky relationship. Side by side with this image of Phil, we see another deconstruction, or texturing, of the macho-cowboy archetype made so iconic in films like The Searchers, and played off throughout The Power of the Dog.
“He’s almost in a fashion magazine in this shot,” Wegner continues with a laugh, “with his amazing hair and this kind of pristine shirt.” It’s amazing Peter’s so confident, strangely, in his body to make such a bold move to do that in front of Phil. I remember Jane and Kodi kind of discovering that moment. So he’s almost kind of sidesaddle-but in a very confident kind of way. He comes in and he sits like this when he first gets on, and then at a certain point throughout the scene, he moves one of his legs over. “I love what Jane and Kodi did here with Peter and his body language. “As an audience, we’re also slightly suspicious,” Wegner adds of her approach to capturing Peter’s barn entrance.
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