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Picnic at Hanging Rock By Dave McCoy
Situated somewhere between supernatural horror and lush Victorian
melodrama, director Peter Weir's lyrical, enigmatic masterpiece is an
imaginative tease. The setting is a proper turn-of-the century Australian
boarding school for girls, a suffocating institution built on strict moral
codes, repressed sexuality, and a subtle but enforced class structure. As
the film opens, girls draped in immaculate white dress prepare for a
picnic at the nearby volcanic formation, Hanging Rock, and Weir hangs an
air of dark foreboding over the proceeding. "You'll have to love
someone else, because I won't be here very long," says one virginal
girl, Miranda, to her friend. Her words are prophetic: during the picnic,
Miranda, along with two other girls and an uptight schoolmistress, vanish
into the rocks. While a search party repeatedly returns to the rock to
look for either the girls or the reasons for their disappearance, Weir
leaves the mystery unsolved. Like Antonioni's L'Avventura, the
vanishing is open to numerous interpretations--both rational and
illusory--but Weir drops enough allegorical clues that it feels like a
parable. He transforms the landscape and weather into menacing and eerie
images; outlines of faces can be seen in the rocks, while the oppressive
heat beating down on the picnic doubles as an atmospheric metaphor for the
girls' unbearable social and sexual confinement. These images and other
plot twists toward the end hint that this mysterious vanishing, on some
level, was actually a form of spiritual escape--the only out, other than
death, from the film's bleak, tightly structured community. Regardless of
how you see it, though, this hypnotic puzzle remains the highlight of the
'70s Australian New Wave. The DVD version presents the film in letterbox
form.
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Share Your Memories!Is Picnic at Hanging Rock one of your favorite movies? What do you remember about it? Share your stories (or your reviews) with the world! (We print the best stories right here!)
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Your Memories Shared! |
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"Hey! I am so in love with this movie! For me it's like watching it for the first time every time. I have seen it so many times but yet I still sit there with my hands clasped together hoping that they'll be found. I also get wrapped up in trying to find clues that I may have overlooked. Another thing too is that I feel so bad for Sara. I have to admit I sort of hoped that Miranda would be found for Sara's sake. All in all, I just am captivated by this film and always will be." --abnerthree |
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FILM
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|  | Director: Peter Weir
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| | Stars: Rachel Roberts, Anne-Louise Lambert, Dominic Guard
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| | Released: October 16, 1975
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| | Availability: DVD VHS | | |
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