I wasn’t as physically capable as other kids, and that brought me a lot of grief in my younger years before I learned how to deal with it. Did you relate to Peter’s sense of being an outsider?Ībsolutely.

When you were 16, you were diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a medical condition that causes vertebrae to fuse and results in chronic pain. Because he was isolated, he didn’t have any expectations of others to live up to in terms of how he dealt with his traumas. I believe it has a great deal to do with the environment he was raised in, which was very secluded and isolated, as well as his experience of trauma - he had to physically cut his own father down when he committed suicide. In an hourlong conversation, Smit-McPhee discussed how his struggle with chronic pain helped him related to Peter’s outsider status and what he makes of the film’s ending. Smit-McPhee first gained notice as a son navigating a postapocalyptic hellscape with his father in the 2009 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” before playing a bullied boy who falls in love with a vampire in the 2010 horror romance “Let Me In” and the devilish but kind-at-heart Nightcrawler in the recent “X-Men” films. The role is the latest in a career built on sensitive, inquisitive characters.

Inside Campion’s World: Tenderness may not be the first thing you see in a Campion film, but it is fundamentally what she’s painting with.

Kirsten Dunst’s Reinvention: After years of being called upon to project blond, sunny sweetness, the actor has become a chronicler of finely etched despair.

A Vicious Bully: Benedict Cumberbatch is earning some of the best reviews of his career for his turn as a seething cowboy.

Spoiler Alert!: The movie’s subtle conclusion offers a “big reveal” that takes a moment to comprehend.

Review: Campion’s first movie in more than a decade proves she is never worried about making her audience squirm.

“The Power of the Dog,” Jane Campion’s simmering Western drama based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, is currently streaming on Netflix. What to Know About ‘The Power of the Dog’’

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