loaded question: what’s a movie that’s crammed with clichés but feels like it isn’t?

I finally had a chance to see The Power of the Dog, more than a year after it came out, so my answer is going to be The Power of the Dog. The thing is: The cliches aren’t the slightest bit hidden. Almost every character is an archetype, but they’re also its opposite. The dashing suitor is also comically befuddled. The tough cowboys are also refined and vulnerable. Even the shifting personalities are a cliche about duality. Anyone who reads Tarot cards knows that a person’s traits are reversed when you flip the card upside down.

The themes are also familiar–toxic masculinity, for example, and homophobia–and we’ve seen them in Westerns from time to time, but this is a Western that hardly bothers to be a Western. Sometimes it’s a mystery. Sometimes it’s a character study. There’s even a musical number, of sorts, where you’d normally see a gunfight.

Mostly the film just wants to be beautiful. The camera lingers on a mountain range until we spot the shadow of a dog. The score includes a cello that’s plucked like a banjo, because that’s what a barren prairie sounds like.

If it seems like I’m recommending the movie, I’m not sure I am. I’m just saying that this is one of the strangest Westerns you’ll ever see. Right when it ought to be ending, it flips genres again, and fits both a crime and its solution into a few short scenes. In fact, one of the most important scenes happens entirely offscreen, and that scene sums up all of the most urgent themes of the film. I guess what I’m saying is: If you want to make a movie that’s loaded with cliches, make sure it’s as weird as possible. People may not know afterward if they enjoyed it, but they’ll never forget it.