Picnic at Hanging Rock - Criterion Collection

Starring:Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Jacki Weaver, Frank Gunnell, Anne-Louise Lambert, Karen Robson, Jane Vallis, Christine Schuler, Margaret Nelson (II), Ingrid Mason, Jenny Lovell, Janet Murray, Vivienne Graves, Angela Bencini, Melinda Cardwell, Annabel Powrie, Amanda White (III)
Director: Peter Weir
Studio: Criterion
Product Type: DVD

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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. --Dave McCoy

Description

Twenty years after it swept Australia into the international film spotlight, Peter Weir's stunning 1975 masterpiece remains as ineffable as the unanswerable mystery at its core. A Valentine's Day picnic at an ancient volcanic outcropping turns to disaster for the residents of Mrs. Appleyard's school when a few young girls inexplicably vanish on Hanging Rock. A lyrical, meditative film charged with suppressed longings, Picnic at Hanging Rock is at long last available in a pristine widescreen director's cut with a newly-minted Dolby® digital 5.1 channel soundtrack.

Customer Reviews:

Picnic at Hanging Rock.......2007-07-04

Spooky, intriguing, and transfixing, "Picnic" is a blend of low-grade supernatural horror and mystical Victorian fable, wrapped around an ineffable puzzle that refuses to yield its secrets. Weir gets a lot of mileage out of the repressive turn-of-the-century milieu, especially when it comes to hushed suggestions of sexual transgression among the vanished--and almost mythically virginal--girls, while the film's eerie pan-flute score enhances the general atmosphere of foreboding. Beautifully photographed and stubbornly ambiguous, "Rock" is an alluring choice if you're in the mood for something eccentric and off the beaten path.

Mesmorizingly Strange and Mysterious..!.......2007-06-15

I still remember first viewing this one in an "Art" theatre about 27 years ago , and have watched it since then from time to time, always finding something new and slightly unhinging. The story is told elsewhere. Last night, I really noticed such odd things as the insects eating the Valentine's Day cake, cut by Miranda the "Botticelli Angel " (actually Venus), whose disappearance is really the most disturbing to most of the characters, while the other slim blonde with the glasses is practically ignored. Nothing indicates the movements of the teacher who also disappears. Also, the other nature scenes, including a fleeting koala bear and serpent, plus the constantly eerie cloud and rock formations, add due the very strange atmosphere, along with the flute music, and fine use of Beethoven's Adagio from the 5th Piano Concerto. And the final action of the Schoolmarm? Does she feel some guilt about her attitudes and her repressive air..(Check out that really odd hair style!). The scene where the brunette (very good looking, perhaps needless to say) returns to the gym class is right out of Lord of the Flies, as the straight and narrow teacher keeps playing her piano waltz. The photography here is really unique, even beautiful, and dreamlike, as is the entire movie. Perhaps the many dreams and mirages in the story, including a long lost kid-sister, are meant to wrap the whole movie in an even weirder dream, since it is definitely tricky deciding what is real and what is imagination. But this may be the final lesson of the whole, very finely done, and very "Artsy" movie!

Not Perfect, But Haunting.......2007-05-30

"Picnic at Hanging Rock" is the relatively obscure first film by Peter Weir, who has gone on to direct "The Truman Show" and "Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World." I know him best for "The Last Wave" and "Gallipoli." This film is considered his masterpiece by many film circles, but is largely unknown to most of the world. Probably because it was unavailable for years on either video or DVD and just kind of spirited away. It might also be because of the plot, which is going to be a huge let down for many people. The film takes place on St. Valentine's Day in 1900 in Australia at an all girls' school. In the opening shots, Weir establishes the innocence of the girls...In fact; he hammers it into the ground, which only reveals the sexual hysteria that's occurring among them. On this day, they're going to have a picnic at Hanging Rock, a volcanic structure that provides one of the most haunting backdrops I've ever witnessed on film. The head of the school, Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) is portrayed as a villainous woman who tells one student, Sara, early on in the film that she won't be attending the picnic. There's no reason given why. Anyway, the group of girls arrive at the rock and four of the girls decide to go explore it. One of them returns screaming...Later, a teacher goes to find the girls. She and two of the three girls are never found. If this weren't the most talked about part of the movie you would be furious at me for revealing this information. After all, how can a movie that's built on a disappearance end with no conclusion. How can the disappearance of three schoolgirls and their teacher never be explained? "Picnic at Hanging Rock" reminds me of "L'Avventura" by Michelangelo Antonioni. In that film, a man's wife disappears and is never seen again. In an interview, Peter Weir said that he tried to make the film hypnotic enough to keep viewers in a trance trying to figure out what happened to the girls. True, we're given a lot of options and ideas. Were they raped and murdered by two men that were there? If so, why would those men attempt to find them? Did they fall through a crevice? Did aliens abduct them? When one girl is found, she's found without shoes...How were her feet unscathed by the rock? It's all creepy stuff, but the film itself doesn't fly by. It seems to me that it's got a feature-length idea, but not enough actual story to keep us (the audience) entertained. It's a creepy film that could be a lot better if remade today. Hopefully if that happens they don't change the inconclusive aspect, but merely make the film a lot more hypnotic, provide more clues for the audience to come to their own conclusion, and make a film that's a lot more entertaining than this.

GRADE: B

Pale Herzog imitation........2007-05-22

In the first half hour of "Picnic At Hanging Rock," a bunch of young girls from a disciplinarian, Victorian-style boarding school in Australia go out on a picnic (closely watched and supervised, of course) to an ancient landform called the Hanging Rock. Four of the girls decide to go off and explore the rock. For no apparent reason, they vanish, as if into thin air. One is later found, and three are never seen again, but the disappearance is never explained in the film.

At least, it's not explained with logic. But the director means to make this seemingly irrational disappearance into a symbol of the conflict between the girls' repressed youthful urges and their strict environment. The event occurs on Valentine's Day, and the film opens with the girls giggling and demonstrating their affection for one another. It all looks quite innocent, but there's a dark angst-ridden girl who writes passionate love poetry dedicated to one of the girls who disappears, which clearly telegraphs the film's point. And later on, we find that one of the strictest teachers at the school (to highlight her outward lack of emotion, she's a science teacher) also disappears at the rock, and she is last seen running up the slope while wearing only her underwear.

This setup is contrived, but it could still have been made into a compelling film. This would have required a Werner Herzog, a man who knows how to evoke a sense of savage irrationality in depictions of nature. I even suspect that Herzog's "Aguirre, The Wrath Of God" provided the inspiration for this film. In the opening scene of "Aguirre," a party of Spanish explorers slowly moves through a path in the Andes Mountains, and there is a sense that they are pushing into something vast and ancient, beyond their understanding. Peter Weir wants to do something similar in this film, but unfortunately he can't. His Hanging Rock just has no mystery in it. Actually, it looks like a fine place for a picnic. There's no hint of unknown danger. The sun is shining, the birds are out singing. The rock looks perfectly friendly, there's nothing imposing or aloof about it. Weir films it in very conventional shots. Even when his camera is moving, the rock looks static.

So, when Weir wants to create suspense, he has to resort to cheap tricks. The girls walk forward with glazed eyes and intone such silly lines as, "A surprising number of people is without purpose." They also quote Poe -- we're all "a dream within a dream," you see. Then they take off their shoes and stockings -- take that, Victorian morality! -- and spin around for a long time on the rock. A shrill flute melody plays, indicating that something weird is afoot. But there's still no feeling of danger, so one of the girls has to have a sudden fit of hysteria and run back down the slope screaming. When all else fails, go for volume.

But in some sense, this part isn't even the point, which is why it's over in half an hour. The rest of the film shows how the disappearance affects others, like the headmistress of the school or the dark angst-ridden girl or various townspeople. This is where Weir's real interest is. The disappearance itself is just a token "strange event" that creates some chaos in the orderly Victorian world, so that we might see that world's reaction. And Weir wants to show that the orderly Victorian world is completely incapable of dealing with strange events. The second something comes up that appears to have no logical explanation (and the film painstakingly explains that nobody has any idea why the girls vanished), that's it, society is completely paralyzed and soon collapses.

Sometimes this part of the film becomes sort of interesting to watch. The best scenes in the film are the ones in which Michael, a pampered mama's boy type, suddenly becomes obsessed with finding the missing girls, and charges off to the rock by himself. He only finds a piece of an undergarment, which causes him to act moody and disturbed. Since he seemed so unsure of himself before, his transformation has a certain dramatic effect. His obsession is then transmitted to his pal, a lowly hired hand, who previously didn't care about the disappearance.

But Weir isn't content with these minor changes and accomplishments, he really earnestly believes that Victorian repression leads to irrational catastrophe, and this causes him to overdo it. In the subsequent scenes, it turns out that everybody, literally everybody at the boarding school is angst-ridden, fighting dark desires, and generally losing it. The timid music teacher has fits of hysteria and ties the dark angst-ridden girl to the wall, with blatant crucifixion symbolism. The steel-willed headmistress turns to drink, and commits murder for absolutely no reason. (It really makes no sense why she'd do it when she could just have expelled her victim, which is what she was going to do anyway.) When the one girl is found and returns to the school, her classmates shriek and claw at her while the camera spins around.

Eventually, the film ends, and there's really not that much to say about it. But it's not a mystery, since it isn't tense or suspenseful, and it's not particularly emotionally moving, because by the end the characters' reactions seem completely artificial. And it's hard to call it atmospheric, because deep down, it's driven not by Nature's savagery, but by the same kind of cheap and extremely conventional rebellion as the director's later and more famous "Dead Poets Society."

Wow.......2007-04-16

This is the kind of movie no one would have the guts to make today--maybe not even as an indie movie. It's a horror movie that pretends that it's not a horror movie. Just as the girls have to pretend they are not sexual beings but this repression only ignites their sexuality further, Weir pretends this is a straight Victorian drama but that only heightens the mystery and horror further. Modern filmakers seem to have abandoned the "less is more" approach to their own detriment. People may find it boring--but it's to serve the theme. Weir tells his story the way Victorians lived their lives--with everything swept under the rug.

And there is a point to the second half of the movie. It's a retelling of the first half. Miranda and her girls are done in by the hidden mystery and supernatural cruelty of nature. Sarah is done in by the hidden cruelty of human nature which lies behind that perfect Victorian etiquette. The rock and the headmistress are basically the same character.

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