With Benedict Cumberbatch as a jeeringly malicious cowboy in 1920s Montana, Jane Campion’s taut, western psychodrama, her first feature in over a decade, is our best film of 2021Best films of 2021: the complete listMore on the best culture of 2021The year’s best film is a western, based on a novel from the 1960s (by Thomas Savage) when the western was a more accepted popular genre in both movies and books than it is now. But it modifies that genre, creating something more elusive and unmanageable: western psychodrama? Western gothic? And it tackles issues around sexual politics, toxic masculinity and family dysfunction in a very contemporary way.
![The 50 best films of 2021 in the UK, No 1: The Power of the Dog](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a34780f00e7d1b5705f6e22933b59b240ae4aa7e/510_0_12979_7796/master/12979.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=0bf62195475d3382e7667456c2096e17)
The Power of the Dog is Jane Campion’s first feature film in over a decade, the last 10 years having been mostly taken up with her hit streaming-TV series, Top of the Lake, with Elisabeth Moss. Maybe that project influenced the element of murder mystery in this latest film, whose title is taken from Psalms 22:20: “Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog!”