The entire quote is from The Hollywood Reporter‘s Sheri Linden, and it comes from a 12.9.21 “Critics Conversation” between herself, David Rooney and Liva Guyarkye….here it is:

Linden: “There’s a terrible loneliness at the heart of Ruth Negga’s remarkable performance [in Passing]. Clare’s vivacity is at once an expression of audacity and an act of hiding. In very different ways, Negga’s character and Kirsten Dunst’s tender turn in Power of the Dog reverberate with a nation’s calamitous history — Who is valued? Who decides? But it’s on an intimate, moment-to-moment level that these two performances tore my heart out.”

So Dunst’s Rose Gordon, a kind-hearted, hard-working mother of a teenage son (Kodi Smit-.McPhee) and recently married to Jesse Plemon‘s fleshy, ginger-haired George Burbank only to run afoul of his brother, the snarly, menacing Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) and thereafter descends into alcoholism…how exactly does poor Rose’s plight mirror our shared “calamitious history“? I’m completely mystified as to what this means.

Rose’s story seems like a local matter to me…a family drama, a matter of Phil’s malignancy, a cattle-ranch issue. In what way does this reflect on anything national, then or now? Or state-wide even? Who apart from those who live and work on the Burbank ranch…who cares what poor Rose is going through?