Jane Campion Shot a Different Ending for ‘The Power of the Dog’ – Here’s What It Was

thewrap.com:

Spoiler alert: This article discusses the ending of the book and the film “The Power of the Dog.” There has been a buzzy discussion among audiences who have seen Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog.” It has to do with the artful, understated ending of the film, which has inspired collective questions of “What just happened?” even from those who paid close attention to the dark, subtle shifts in the plot and the violence buried just under the topsoil of the story’s surface.But that final moment you see in the movie wasn’t always what Campion envisioned at first for the her Western, the clear front runner in this year’s Oscar race with a dozen nominations.

Yes, a murder is committed at the end of the movie (as described here in this explainer), but it’s hidden in plain sight instead of being spelled out more clearly as Campion and her team initially planned. “We had a beautifully crafted shot, which would have been the last shot of the film,” the film’s Oscar-nominated editor, Peter Sciberras, told TheWrap.

Why and how that ending was scrapped, he said, “is a testament to Jane’s confidence and bravery as a director.”The film’s story concludes with the sudden death of 1920s Montana rancher Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch).

A doctor opines that Phil might have had contact with deadly anthrax, which is common among diseased cattle. Then we see the teenager Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) holding a rope in gloved hands and watching his mother (Kirsten Dunst) and stepfather (Jesse Plemons) kiss outside his window.Campion filmed a brief, additional sequence after that image of the happy couple in the window that she planned to insert just before the final creidts.“It was a slow pan across Peter’s desk in his room, which showed a medical.