Powers of an old dog: Jane Campion’s cinematic late style in an immediate age

‘No one can survive in that water.’ It is hardly commonplace that a line of expository dialog in a narrative television series thoroughly unrelated to the vicissitudes of cinematic production should offer so perfect a metaphor for navigating a filmmaking career as this. Still, that line, delivered in the first episode of Top of the Lake (2013-2017), does just that. If anything, it is difficult to imagine a more effective manner of characterizing the often-treacherous world of film production than as inhospitable, deadly-freezing waters. As it turns out, the line is especially salient in considering the career trajectory of Antipodean auteur Campion in the second decade of the twenty-first century as she navigates a moving image media landscape where digital streaming technology comes to dominate – an environment where the lines separating streaming and cinematic media become even more blurry. To consider this situation, the following examination uses the filmmaker’s most recent creative offering, the revisionist Western adaptation of The Power of the Dog (2021). In so doing, it reveals Jane Campion’s late style, expressed in a time of increasing ‘immediacy.’