A dream within a dream... (Picnic At Hanging Rock (DVD))

Member Name: Rumblefish

Product:	Picnic At Hanging Rock (DVD)
Date:	18/05/01 (719 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing, affecting, atmosphere, superb score, brilliant cinematography

Disadvantages: Lack of "explanation" not for all tastes

St Valentine's Day 1900 was bathed in sparkling sunlight in the village of Woodend, near Melbourne in Australia. This was the day of the annual school outing for the girls and teachers of Applegate College on the outskirts of the village, and there was much excitement as they drove out to enjoy a picnic at a local beauty spot, Hanging Rock. By the end of the day four of the party had vanished. Three were never to be seen again.

This is the premise for Peter Weir's 1975 film PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK. The film is based on Joan Lindsay's 1967 book of the same name, which in turn is said to document a true story. Quite apart from being one of the most visually hypnotic films ever made, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK is a movie of almost infinite mystery and complexity. It is almost impossible even to box it into one genre. It is a period drama and sci-fi thriller, a gentle coming-of-age movie yet also a terrifying horror film.

Long before Peter Weir was directing superior if relatively formulaic Hollywood fare such as WITNESS, DEAD POETS SOCIETY, and most recently THE TRUMAN SHOW, he was at the vanguard of the Australian New Wave of the Seventies. Works like PICNIC and Nic Roeg’s WALKABOUT brought a new level of artistry and emotional maturity to Australian cinema, and Weir’s film in particular is no less effective now than it was in 1975.

PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK begins almost playfully, as we meet the young girls of Applegate College as they prepare for their outing. The girls laugh carelessly, but it is clear that one them, Miranda, has some sense of what is going to happen. They wave at the villagers as they are driven out to Hanging Rock - a huge, craggy and rather ugly geological formation a few miles away. It is a sweltering hot day, and there is a constant drone of insects as the party follow their picnic with an afternoon nap. Three of the senior girls (Miranda, Irma, and Marion) are given permission to explore the Rock,
and are quickly joined by a fourth, younger girl, Edith. Two young men, a stable boy named Albert Crundall and an aristocratic young Englishman named Mike Fitzhubert, glimpse the girls in the bush and wolf-whistle, but then lose sight of them. When the rest of the picnicking party awake they find that the four girls have still not returned, and that one of the teachers, Miss McGraw, is now also missing. Edith then suddenly emerges screaming from the bushes, hysterical and unable to explain what has happened…

Although PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK’s story does move on from its emotionally shattering initial premise, this is not a film driven by narrative, and I don’t consider it a spoiler to say that the mystery is never fully resolved, because at no point does it promise to be. It is the seductively enigmatic tone of the film that is so absorbing, as the viewer is drawn almost irresistibly into the question of what happened that day at Hanging Rock, yet always kept one tantalizing step away from the answer. It is the lack of any neat and tidy answers that makes it such powerful entertainment, because we instinctively need to understand the reasons behind such a tragic and disturbing occurrence.

Do not though think that this is a slow or dull film. As the search for the girls becomes ever more determined and (seemingly) ever more hopeless the tension rises and there is an almost unbearable feverishness about the cycle of events. One of the most jarringly thrilling sequences I’ve ever seen in a film comes when Mike, obsessed with the disappearances and under some suspicion himself, climbs the rock in desperate search for some trace of the missing girls. Only in the film’s latter stages does the pressure cease, as grim acceptance finally sets in.

Weir directs with the assuredness you might expect of a filmmaker of his subsequently proven pedigree, but what is so amazing is that he manages to imbue the film with so man
y layers of atmosphere and emotion. The film is consistently eerie and brooding, most obviously with Weir’s representation of Hanging Rock itself, but with its rendering of Australia as wild, dangerous, and oppressively hot. Yet at the same time there is a lyricism and beauty to Weir’s vision. The girls wear immaculate lacy white dresses, bonnets and parasols, and much of the film seems centred on the carefree curiosity, and indeed sexual awakening, of adolescence. Despite its often ominous ambience, the film fades into its end credits on a note of beauty, with a flashback to an earlier scene of Miranda looking back over her shoulder with a serenely enchanting smile – only this time the shot is in slow motion and set to Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ piano concerto (which is of course one of the most stunningly graceful pieces of music ever written).

In fact this is a film not unlike, say, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or BLADERUNNER, whose classic status can be attributed as much to its music as anything else. As well as glorious use of Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, there is a truly unforgettable score by Bruce Smeaton, which employs both piano and synthesizer to immense effect, succeeding in reflecting - indeed complementing - the film’s delicate chemistry of bewitching mystery and menacing horror.

The performances are solid across the board, despite the fact that the roles, particularly those of the girls, are filled by relative unknowns. However the late Rachel Roberts (herself an actress with a tragic life) was one of Britain’s finest actresses, and plays the alcoholic and increasingly haunted college headmistress with real authority. And NEIGHBOURS fans with long memories will recognise Miss McGraw as Vivean Gray, who played none other than Mrs Mangel in the Aussie soap.

Perhaps the most powerful element of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK is the possibility that it may be a retelling of real-life events. The fil
m is so disturbing that one is almost frightened to believe such a thing, yet you will often read that this film is a “true story” and no conclusive proof has been found either way. St Valentine’s day in 1900 fell on a Wednesday, not, as the book and film had it, on a Saturday, and no references have been found to the disappearances in local press archives of the time. On the other hand all the places depicted in the book and the film did exist, right down to the name of the local doctor, and there was indeed a Ladies’ College at Woodend. On the back of the film’s success Joan Lindsay was asked in an interview in 1977, “Is it fact or fiction?” “Fact and fiction are so closely intertwined,” she responded, almost inevitably.

If we are to take it as fact, what did happen at Hanging Rock? Did the girls simply fall from the Rock and lie hidden in the undergrowth? Did they get lost and die from exposure? Did Mike and Albert abduct them? More outlandish, but in the context of the film strangely plausible, theories have also been put forward. Such as that the girls slipped into a parallel universe or somehow time-travelled (there is certainly a sense of “timelessness” to the film). Or that they were spirited away by aliens, the Rock having acted as some kind of intergalactic beacon (Steven Spielberg used Devil’s Tower in Wyoming to illustrate this concept in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND two years later). The theory at which the film vaguely hints is that the girls were simply consumed by the primeval qualities of the Rock, which is portrayed as a huge phallic symbol.

In 1998 Peter Weir made a “director’s cut” of the film for re-release performances and its American DVD release. Most unusually for a director’s cut, this actually shortened the film by seven minutes, Weir apparently deciding to blur what little there is in the way of explanation even further
.

Whether this film is fact or fiction, its quality in purely artistic terms is surely not open to question. You could watch most films ten times and they would never entrench themselves in your subconscious as deeply as PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK does after just one viewing. It is not the neat parcel of logic and explanation of most stories, but instead something altogether more provocative, unsettling, and exciting.

I could not sum up the film’s brilliance better than do these words from Miranda: “What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream…”

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