Even at the most glamorous of British parties, the suffering in Ukraine could not be forgotten. Benedict CumberbatchThe actor is best known for playing the title role in Sherlock. wore a blue and yellow badge as he walked up the BAFTA red carpet at the Royal Albert Hall. It was, he said, a small gesture from an industry in which imagery speaks "as loud as, if not louder sometimes, than words".

No film this year offers greater proof of that than The Power of the Dog. Starring Cumberbatch, it won the best film award and the best director prize for Jane CampionA New Zeland director and writer who won an Oscar for The Piano.. It is also the favourite for this year's Oscars.

Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Thomas SavageAn American writer whose wife Elizabeth was also a successful novelist. , the film is set in MontanaA state in the northwest of the US known for its mountainous landscape. in 1925. Kodit Smit-McPhee plays Peter, a sensitive, delicate boy whose mother Rose (Kirsten Dunst) runs a boarding house. When she marries wealthy cattle owner George Burbank (Jesse Plemons), the two go to live with him on his ranch.

But the ranch is shared by George's brother Phil - the part played by Benedict Cumberbatch - who is as tough and mean as they come. He bullies Peter and enjoys humiliating Rose. The film takes its title from Psalm 22Psalms is a book of 150 Hebrew poems in the Bible. The Book of Psalms is the first Ketuvim and part of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, and it is also in the Old Testament. : "Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog."

The film, writes Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, explores cruelty and misery "like a surgeon exploring a wound." But there are plenty of surprises in store, including an ending that you can only understand if you follow the plot minutely.

Traditional Westerns have heroes who are strong and fearless and rarely show emotion - a type personified by John Wayne and Clint EastwoodStill acting at 91, he made his name in the TV Western series Rawhide and films such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.. At first, The Power of the Dog seems to be heading in this direction. But then Jane Campion turns tradition on its head, challenging the machoMasculine in an overly assertive or aggressive way. Usually used today in a mocking or condescending way to describe people who think that being tough is all that matters. values that earlier films glorified.

Phil, described by one writer as "a sadistic caricature of masculinity", turns out to have a secret side he will not admit to. At the heart of the movie is how different characters define what it means to be a man.

Phil, Michelle Nijhuis notes in a Lit Hub review, has "all the accepted markers of Western manhood", such as being able to put up with any amount of discomfort. But as Jane Campion presents it, "the masculinity so tirelessly defined and celebrated by the Western genre is not a cure for weakness, but a cover for it". 

In The Power of the Dog, Phil's repressed emotions have tragic consequences. But not everyone believes that repression is a bad thing.

In his book The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Philip Rieff argues that human culture actually depends on repression. We all have instincts that we know to be bad, and that we must try to overcome. But today psychotherapists encourage people to follow their instincts. This can only result, Rieff said, in barbarism and chaos.

Yes: They lead a life in which toughness is everything. Not being able to show or express their emotions means that part of them remains undeveloped and they cannot relate properly to others.

No: We live in a world where we often have to do things we find difficult or unpleasant. Cowboys' toughness allows them to focus on the challenges they face without emotions getting in the way.

Or... We can embrace the good things cowboys represent without accepting their shortcomings. It is possible to be strong and determined but also sensitive and open about your feelings.