![because manuel was sure he had heard the same strange story many months ago because manuel was sure he had heard the same strange story many months ago](https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Jv6nWq7JWHs/Xzb1cl6H8oI/AAAAAAAAfOw/a65ItBuaJloLoOVQzUdIOHxbP2XgHKLXwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Untitled1618.png)
She was riding a black horse, beautiful and skittish, down a steep, narrow pathway along the face of a cliff. Campion normally doesn’t dream much, but soon she began having the same nightmare over and over. She asked Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons, who play brothers, to waltz together, to help them learn intimately how the other’s body smelled, felt and moved, visceral qualities that boys who’ve grown up together would know.Ĭampion also tried something new: She went to see a Jungian dream analyst out of Los Angeles, hoping to more deeply connect with Phil’s psychology, and she suggested Cumberbatch do the same. Then she had him write back as Bronco Henry. She asked Cumberbatch to write a letter as Phil to Phil’s dead lover, Bronco Henry. They ate together, cooked together or just sat in rooms, in character, not talking. For “The Power of the Dog,” she gathered the actors for a few weeks to hike, improvise and do exercises. She sent Benedict Cumberbatch - who stars as Phil, a vicious, hypermasculine rancher - to Montana as well, to learn roping, riding, horseshoeing, whittling, banjo and bull-calf castration.īut in rehearsals, her approach tends to be more oblique. She went to visit the ranches in Montana where Thomas Savage, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, grew up. Before she began shooting her new feature, “The Power of the Dog,” she returned again and again to the mountain range in New Zealand she had chosen as a location, checking what the light was like at different times of day, in different weather, across seasons. When directing a film, she works sometimes for years to ready the environment - and herself. Jane Campion believes in rigorous preparation.