Though it’s February and light snow is on the ground, Rose Burbank stops for a picnic. She’s romancing George Burbank, a good-hearted undemonstrative rancher. He’s thinking about his automobile and what it would be to have a more luxurious model, a Pierce.
So, when Rose says, “This looks like a good place.” George’s train of thought is interrupted. “Good place? For what,” he says. “For a picnic,” Rose answers.
The “good place” Rose chooses is rolling grassland, now covered with a light layer of snow. If you are unfamiliar with it, it’s a dramatic landscape with distant haystacks, small clusters of cattle, and high mountains in the distance. But George, a rancher, is unimpressed.
Rose has prepared hot coffee and sandwiches, and they eat in the car. “I don’t think that anyone in the whole country ever had a picnic in a car before.”
Featured Image: Jesse Plemons as George Burbank and Kirsten Dunst as Rose Gordon
*Psalm 22:20 is known as a penitential psalm beginning with the familiar lament of the Psalmist, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me and from the words of my roaring?” Seeking God’s grace, among the things the psalmist requests is that God “Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the dog’s power.” The phrase “the power of the dog” suggests the power of evil.
See Thomas Savage. The Power of the Dog. New York: Little, Brown and Co. 1967; Jane Campion. The Power of the Dog. The screenplay by Jane Campion is based on Thomas Savage’s novel.