Jane Campion Rankings And Opinions

Ranking Jane Campion is a little like ranking thunderstorms: you can argue about which one was “best,”
but you’re still going to end up standing in the rain, amazed, slightly unsettled, and wondering why the sky
suddenly feels personal.

Campion’s work has a signature combo that’s tough to imitate: emotional intelligence with a sharp edge,
gorgeous images that feel like they’re hiding a secret, and characters who don’t behave the way movies
usually demand. Her films aren’t “comfort watches” so much as “clarity watches”the kind that leave you
quieter afterward, like your brain just got a tasteful haircut.

This article offers a ranked list of Campion’s feature films (with opinions, not commandments), plus a guide
to what makes her style so distinct. Because if you’re going to argue about her best work, you deserve the
fun of arguing with receipts (the emotional kind).

How This Ranking Works (So Nobody Throws a Beret)

Rankings are inherently subjective, but they’re more helpful when you admit what you’re measuring. My
criteria here are:

• Craft: direction, pacing, performances, visual language, and how well the film holds together.
• Impact: cultural footprint, awards attention, and long-term critical life (including reappraisals).
• Campion-ness: the unique “only she would do it like this” factor.
• Rewatch power: not “easy,” but “rewarding.” There’s a difference.

Also important: Campion’s “weaker” films are still more interesting than many directors’ “best” films.
That’s not me being dramatic. That’s me being honest and slightly intimidated.

Jane Campion Movies Ranked (Features)

1. The Power of the Dog (2021)
2. The Piano (1993)
3. An Angel at My Table (1990)
4. Bright Star (2009)
5. Sweetie (1989)
6. In the Cut (2003)
7. Holy Smoke! (1999)
8. The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

#1. The Power of the Dog (2021)

If you want the cleanest demonstration of Campion’s maturity as a filmmakerher patience, her precision,
her ability to turn silence into a plot enginethis is the one. It’s structured like a slow, confident tightening
of a belt: the story doesn’t rush, but it never loosens its grip.

What makes it top-tier Campion is how it interrogates power without announcing itself as a lecture. It studies
cruelty and vulnerability in the same frame, and it treats masculinity not as a costume, but as a cage people
willingly step intothen pretend they can’t remove. It’s also one of those films where the landscape isn’t
“pretty scenery,” it’s psychology with mountains.

Opinion that may start arguments: the film’s “coolness” is part of its violence. It refuses the catharsis you
think you want, and instead gives the kind you didn’t know you needed: the feeling that you finally noticed
what was happening all along.

#2. The Piano (1993)

The Piano is the film that made Campion a permanent part of the cinematic conversationand it still
feels singular. The story (a mute woman, a piano, a harsh coastline, complicated desire) could have been
melodrama in less careful hands. Campion makes it mythic without turning it into a fairy tale.

What’s striking is how the film communicates interior life. The piano becomes language, yes, but also
identitylike the character’s spine is made of music and stubbornness. Campion stages emotional power
shifts with objects, glances, and timing. It’s romantic, but not “soft.” It’s sensual, but never feels like it’s
performing for the audience’s approval.

If you’ve only seen it once, you may remember the big emotions. On rewatch, you notice the engineering:
how Campion builds a whole universe of feeling and then lets you wander inside it.

#3. An Angel at My Table (1990)

This is Campion doing something quietly radical: a life story that avoids the usual “biopic highlights reel.”
Instead, it’s about subjectivityhow it feels to become yourself when the world keeps misunderstanding you.
The film is tender without being sentimental, detailed without being fussy, and deeply respectful of its
protagonist’s interior reality.

In ranking terms, it’s here because it showcases Campion’s empathy and structural daring. She’s patient with
time, and she’s not interested in turning a complicated person into a neat inspirational quote. The film
understands that survival can be the most dramatic actand that art can be both escape and arrival.

Opinion: it might be her most humane film. Not the “nicest,” but the most fundamentally compassionate.

#4. Bright Star (2009)

If you think period romances are automatically polite, Bright Star will correct yougently, beautifully,
and then emotionally suplex you when you least expect it. Campion doesn’t treat romance as destiny; she
treats it as perception. You watch two people learn how to see each other, and then you watch the world
intervene like it always does.

The film’s power is its restraint. It finds drama in manners, in fabric, in the way a room holds breath. There’s
also a sly modernity in how it centers the woman’s point of view without turning her into a symbol. She’s
specific, flawed, proud, funny, and sometimes irritatedwhich is to say: alive.

Opinion: this is the best “gateway Campion” for viewers who want beauty before they’re ready for her darker,
sharper knives.

#5. Sweetie (1989)

Campion’s debut feature is messy in the way early genius sometimes is: fearless, odd, and allergic to
conventional likability. It’s a family story where love and dysfunction keep swapping clothes, and you’re never
sure which one you’re looking at.

The reason it lands mid-list isn’t because it’s “lesser”it’s because Campion later refines the same instincts
into cleaner masterpieces. Still, Sweetie announces her obsessions immediately: women who don’t fit the
boxes provided to them, domestic spaces that feel like emotional battlegrounds, and humor that shows up
like a coping mechanism (because it is).

Opinion: watching this after her later work is like seeing the blueprint for a building you already admire
slightly chaotic, but unmistakably hers.

#6. In the Cut (2003)

Here’s where Campion divides the group chat. In the Cut is an erotic thriller that refuses to behave like a
“normal” thriller. It’s hazy, uncomfortable, and purposefully disorientinglike the film wants you to feel the
vulnerability of moving through the world while being perceived, pursued, and misread.

The movie has been increasingly reappraised over time, and that makes sense: Campion was interrogating
the genre’s usual power dynamics, especially who gets to look, who gets to desire, and who pays for it. If you
come expecting sleek suspense mechanics, you may bounce off it. If you come expecting psychological
atmosphere, you may find it hypnotic.

Opinion: it’s a flawed film on purposeand the purpose is interesting enough that the flaws sometimes feel
like part of the point.

#7. Holy Smoke! (1999)

Holy Smoke! is Campion in her “let’s poke the bear” mode. It begins with the premise of deprogramming
someone from a spiritual group and turns into something stranger: a battle of identities where control keeps
changing hands. It’s provocative, sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortable, and intentionally unstable.

Why it ranks lower: it can feel like it’s daring you to keep up rather than inviting you in. That can be thrilling,
but it can also create emotional distance. Still, the film is a reminder that Campion doesn’t make “safe”
movies. She makes movies that ask: what if the person who claims to be saving you is also trapped?

Opinion: not her most elegant work, but absolutely her most “Campion chose chaos today.”

#8. The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

This adaptation is visually rich and intellectually serious, and you can feel Campion wrestling with the
expectations of classic literature. It’s full of fine performances and exquisite period detail, but it also has the
burden of compressionbig psychological turns have to happen quickly, and not all of them land with the
emotional force you want.

That said, it’s still valuable Campion: she’s drawn to how society trains women to narrate their own
suffering as virtue, and she’s fascinated by the moment a person realizes they’ve mistaken a trap for a
doorway.

Opinion: it’s the film on this list I most admire from a distancelike a beautiful painting you respect, even if
you don’t stand in front of it every week.

What People Argue About (And Why They’re All Kind of Right)

1) “The Piano is her definitive masterpiece.”

This is the classic position, and it’s easy to defend. It’s iconic, emotionally direct, and endlessly analyzed.
But some viewers now argue that The Power of the Dog shows a more controlled, evolved Campionless
operatic, more surgical.

2) “In the Cut was misunderstood.”

The reappraisal argument is strong: what once read as messy now reads as intentional disorientation, a film
refusing to glamorize danger. The counterargument is also fair: intention doesn’t automatically equal
satisfaction. Either way, it’s a fascinating “Campion problem film,” which is still… a Campion film.

3) “Her work is ‘female-centered,’ but not ‘female-simplified.’”

Campion’s women are not symbols of empowerment with great posture and perfect comebacks. They can be
stubborn, contradictory, private, even frustrating. That’s not anti-feminist. That’s anti-cartoon.

Campion’s Signature Moves (The Stuff You Start Noticing Everywhere)

• Silence as dialogue: pauses, looks, and withheld information do major storytelling labor.
• Desire without decoration: attraction is messy, power-laced, and emotionally consequential.
• Nature as mood: landscapes mirror the internal climatebeautiful, threatening, and honest.
• Social rules as pressure: manners and expectations aren’t background; they’re plot devices.
• Ambiguity with purpose: she trusts the audience to sit with uncertainty instead of solving it.

Where to Start (Based on Your Vibe)

If you want “modern classic” prestige

Start with The Power of the Dog. It’s accessible in the sense that it’s clear, not in the sense that it’s comforting.

If you want the iconic entry point

Go with The Piano. It’s the film people reference when they talk about Campion the Auteur (capital A).

If you want beauty and heartbreak with manners

Choose Bright Star. Bring tissues, but in a tasteful way.

If you want the “debate starter”

Watch In the Cut and then immediately text a friend: “I need to talk.” (Don’t worry. They’ll understand.)

of Experiences Related to Jane Campion Rankings And Opinions

One of the funniest things about Campion rankings is how quickly they turn into personality quizzes. Mention
The Piano and someone will nod like they’re remembering a past life on a windy coastline. Mention
In the Cut and you’ll get one of two reactions: “That movie is brilliant” or “That movie made me want to
lock my doors and also question cinema as a concept.” Neither person is wrong. They just watched Campion
from different emotional distances.

A very real viewing experience with Campion is the “delayed reaction.” You finish the movie, you’re not sure
how you feel, and thenlateryour brain replays a scene while you’re doing something normal like eating
cereal. Suddenly you realize: oh, the movie wasn’t asking me to be entertained; it was asking me to notice.
Campion films tend to improve in your memory, not because you forget the hard parts, but because you
understand what the hard parts were doing.

Another common experience: you start watching for plot, but you stay for texture. In Bright Star, it’s the
softness of domestic moments and the ache inside beautiful restraint. In An Angel at My Table, it’s the
feeling of time passing in a way that’s neither tidy nor dramaticjust true. In The Power of the Dog, it’s
the way tension lives in spaces: doorways, hallways, open fields, a table where someone sits a little too
confidently. The “thriller” isn’t only what happens. It’s what the room feels like before it happens.

Ranking Campion also changes with age. People often meet her through The Pianoit’s iconic, it’s
immediate, it has that “you will never forget this” energy. Later, some viewers drift toward her quieter work,
because quiet becomes more impressive the more noise you’ve lived through. You might find yourself
revisiting An Angel at My Table and appreciating how radical it is to make a life feel like a life instead of a
highlight reel. Or you might circle back to Sweetie and realize the chaos isn’t randomnessit’s a carefully
observed kind of emotional weather.

And then there’s the social experience: watching Campion with other people is rarely passive. Someone will
ask, “Waitwhat did that mean?” and the room will split into two camps: those who want a clear answer,
and those who love that it doesn’t have one. Campion’s films don’t just tell stories; they generate opinions.
That’s why her rankings are always alive. The list isn’t only about what’s “best.” It’s about what stays with
you, what you’re ready for, and what you’re willing to sit with when the credits roll and the movie doesn’t
pat you on the head.

If you want a practical takeaway, it’s this: your Campion #1 is likely the film that best matches your current
emotional curiosity. Today you may want the controlled dread of The Power of the Dog. Another year you
may want the romantic ache of Bright Star. And on one weird, brave evening, you may decide it’s time
to rewatch In the Cut and see what you notice now that you’ve lived a little more life.

Conclusion

Jane Campion rankings are less about crowning a single “winner” and more about mapping a filmmaker who
refuses to make the same emotional movie twice. If you want the most polished demonstration of her
control, The Power of the Dog is hard to beat. If you want the defining classic, The Piano remains a
landmark. And if you want the conversation starterthe film that proves Campion’s “misses” are often just
movies arriving earlyIn the Cut is waiting for its next rewatch.

The best part is that this list is allowed to change. Campion’s work meets you where you areand then
quietly moves the floor an inch to the left so you notice the room differently.