The Power of the Dog is an Oscar darling this year, with an astonishing 12 nominations. But it isn’t the first feature film about gay cowboys in recent memory. Brokeback Mountain, which preceded it in 2005, was nominated for eight Academy Awards of its own, the most for any film that year.
Both flicks focus on gay male characters struggling to reconcile their identities with unaccepting societies. Both boast strong casts and beautiful scenery. Both are period pieces adapted from literature. But which story touched us more? Which made us hornier? And which made us fall asleep faster than a fistful of Ambien?
All will be revealed as we delve into the latest Mandatory Movie Battle, in which we pit Jane Campion’s sweeping Western against Ang Lee’s bittersweet drama.
Warning: spoilers for both films ahead!
dog vs brokeback
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Plot
Brokeback Mountain finds rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) both working as sheep herders in Wyoming circa 1963. One night, alone on the eponymous mountain, a drunken Jack makes a pass at Ennis; eventually, it’s reciprocated. And yet, despite sizzling sexual chemistry, both men marry women. Still, they manage to steal away intermittently to see another in a tortured, secret affair that spans two decades.
The Power of the Dog follows two brothers – smart but mean-spirited Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) and sweet but sort of stupid George (Jesse Plemons) – who are cattle ranchers in Montana in 1925. George meets and eventually marries a widow named Rose (Kirsten Dunst) who has an effeminate son, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). When George brings his new family home to the ranch, Phil’s menace reaches new heights – but in the end proves no match for Peter’s cunning.
Brokeback Mountain is simply the more relatable plot. Who hasn’t gotten all twisted over an on-again, off-again love interest? The Power of the Dog, however, is a rambling, cliché-laden story about characters you couldn’t give less of a fuck about. You want to see brotherly drama at its finest? Try Legends of the Fall.
Winner: Brokeback Mountain
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Source Material
Brokeback Mountain was based on a short story of the same name by American author Annie Proulx. It was originally published in The New Yorker on October 13, 1997, and won a National Magazine Award for Fiction in 1998. Because it started out as a short story, there was ample opportunity to flesh out the characters and the story. The Power of the Dog was adapted from the 1967 Thomas Savage novel of the same name, and suffered the opposite fate: too much left on the cutting room floor, like George’s entire backstory.
Winner: Brokeback Mountain
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Cast
Brokeback Mountain features critically acclaimed Gyllenhaal and Academy Award-winning Ledger – not to mention multiple Oscar winners Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway. That cast packs quite a punch. The Power of the Dog does have Cumberbatch, one of the most captivating actors onscreen today, plus up-and-comer Plemons, but with only one leading lady (Kirsten Dunst) whose career has sort of sputtered out, the cast leaves something to be desired. A major flaw in the casting of both films? None of the leading gay cowboys are played by gay actors. C’mon, Hollywood.
Winner: Brokeback Mountain
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Cinematography
Fun fact: Neither of these films was shot in the places they depicted. (But you could've fooled us.) The Power of the Dog is an immersive film. Over the course of the movie, you start to feel like you’re really living in the wild, wild west – even though it was filmed in New Zealand. While the shots of Alberta (that substitute for Wyoming) in Brokeback Mountain are also breathtaking, it isn’t quite as all-consuming.
Winner: The Power of the Dog
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Run Time and Pacing
Both films clock in at just over 2 hours. Brokeback Mountain is a staggering 2 hours and 14 minutes long, but watching it, you don’t notice the length because of the film’s sensual sights, emotional torque, and steady pace. The Power of the Dog is a 2-hour, 5-minute snore-fest. It slogs along and at times is infuriating to watch. We’ll admit that halfway through, we gave that 10-second fast-forward icon a workout.
Winner: Brokeback Mountain
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Female Characters
There isn’t much for Dunst’s character to do in The Power of the Dog. She cooks, cries, gets married, plays the piano poorly, and gets drunk (kind of in that order). Even the worst thing she does (uncovers a bottle a booze from a pile of trash, then chugs it) is sort of ho-hum. The wives in Brokeback Mountain, while constrained by societal conventions of the era they live in, aren’t idiots or wilting violets. They both suspect their husbands aren’t just meeting up for innocent “fishing trips” and they can – and do – stand on their own when their husbands fail to fulfill their roles.
Winner: Brokeback Mountain
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Homophobia, Misogyny, and Toxic Masculinity
Both films feature gay characters in time periods of pervasive homophobia, but with a crucial difference. Phil in The Power of the Dog, despite being gay himself, is the epitome of toxic masculinity. He hates on gay men and women alike. He castrates a bull with his bare hands, for chrissake. He’s a vile character and when he dies, no one feels sorry for him.
Watching Jack and Ennis in Brokeback Mountain, however, you can’t help but empathize with their struggle to understand and accept their sexual identities and to figure out how to be true to their selves in a society that condemns them. But at least they aren’t hating on fellow gay cowboys. While the dudes do deceive their wives so they can see one another, they don’t actively harm, insult, or demean them.
Winner: Nobody! There are no winners when we’re talking about homophobia, misogyny, and toxic masculinity. (Obviously.)
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Cigarette Scenes
Cigarettes play into both films. In The Power of the Dog, they’re used as either a warning or a form of foreplay while in Brokeback Mountain they’re used as an anti-anxiety remedy or in post-coital celebration. In all cases, damn, smoking never looked so sexy.
Winner: Tie
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Climax
The tension in The Power of the Dog quietly builds over five chapters but ends with a whimper rather than a bang. Peter plots to kill Phil with a piece of cow hide that’s been infected with Anthrax. We knew Phil was going to get his comeuppance (or at least, we all hoped he did), but the murder is kind of passive-aggressive and anti-climactic. We honestly wanted something more violent, bloodier, and maybe even at the hands of Rose or George, who both end up being weak milquetoasts.
Brokeback Mountain takes viewers through the gut-wrenching ups and downs of the cowboys’ relationship and ultimately ends with Ennis receiving word that Jack has died (likely killed in a hate crime). It’s not the happy ending we were hoping for, and that’s what makes it real – and powerful.
Winner: Brokeback Mountain
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Overall Winner
It should be pretty clear by now which cowboy flick we’d tip our hat to. Brokeback Mountain did it first and did it better. Give us the Gyllenhaal-Ledger gay power couple any day. The Power of the Dog is a total fucking drag (hold the fucking), and even Benedict Cumberbatch can’t save it.
Overall Winner: Brokeback Mountain
