Cast: Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Anne Lambert, Karen Robson, Jane Vallis, Margaret Nelson, Dominic Guard
Director: Peter Weir
Screenplay: Cliff Green, based on the novel by Joan Lindsay
Cinematography: Russell Boyd
U.S. Distributor: Atlantic Releasing Corp.
Is Picnic at Hanging Rock a drama? A mystery? A horror film? A nightmare? A dream? Or perhaps all of the above… Peter Weir's 1975 Australian picture, not released in the United States until 1979 and then unavailable for nearly 20 years, is many things to many people. This languorous feature, saturated with beautiful cinematography and understated performances, has the potential to become a sleep tonic, yet it never does. The movie is too haunting and hypnotic for that. This is one of those films possessing the potential to linger in the viewer's mind long after the images have passed from the screen.
The movie opens on February 14, 1900: Valentine's Day. The students from Mrs. Appleyard's School for Girls - a kind of boarding finishing school where decorum and etiquette are the most important subjects - are going on an outing to Hanging Rock, a local geographical landmark. Only one of them, Sara (Margaret Nelson), is being left behind. The reasons for her exclusion are unclear, but it could have something to do with her unhealthy attachment to Miranda (Anne Lambert). At Hanging Rock, as everyone - including the chaperones, Miss McCraw (Vivean Gray) and Mlle. de Poitiers (Helen Morse) - lounges in the afternoon sun, four girls go on an expedition of the rock formation. Three of them do not return and the fourth, when she gets back, is in a state of hysteria. Also missing is Miss McCraw. The police are called in, but their search turns up nothing: no bodies and no signs of foul play. When one of the girls, Irma (Karen Robson), is discovered unconscious but largely unharmed a week later, she is unable to provide any clue about the whereabouts of the others - her memory is a blank.
Despite an opening caption asserting that the events in the film are real, Picnic at Hanging Rock is fictional, based on a novel by Joan Lindsay. In some ways, the movie is structured like a whodunit, but there is no resolution. Picnic at Hanging Rock isn't about the truth of what happened to the girls, but the many possibilities of what could have occurred. One could speculate endlessly about outrageous solutions that fit all the facts, but this is beside the point. Part of what Weir is exploring with this movie is the mystery of life - that not everything can be explained in a rational matter. Certainly, missing pieces make it difficult to envision the entire puzzle, but even if those pieces were found, there's no guarantee the image would be clear.
The movie haunts in part because there is no resolution and in part because of the dream-like way in which Weir presents his story. At the end, two girls - a mixture of blossoming sexuality and innocence - are still trapped out there, somewhere. They will never be found. We are so used to leaving a movie theater with a sense of certainty about what befell all the characters that this sort of ambiguity is unsettling. This is one of those times when the absence of a catharsis makes the movie a more complete and compelling experience. Had we found out the fate of Miranda, Irma, Marion (Jane Vallis), and Miss McCraw, Picnic at Hanging Rock would have been just another police procedural.
For a movie with a PG rating, this one is overflowing with images of sensuality and/or repressed sexuality. Certainly, it conforms to, albeit in a tasteful way, the most common stereotypes about what goes on at all-girls schools. Countless porn movies have been made about the subject, but Weir takes a more restrained and erudite approach. Yet it's clear that not all the relationships between the girls are platonic, and the longing of the chaperones, especially Miss McGraw, is barely concealed. The two young men who spy on the girls as they wander around Hanging Rock adds an element of voyeurism. And when Miranda, Irma, and Marion remove their shoes and stockings to walk barefoot upon the rocks, it doesn't take a scholar to recognize the metaphor. (Lest someone rush out to rent the film expecting something racy, everything sexual in Picnic at Hanging Rock is arrived at by inference. There isn't an explicit moment to be found.)
For Picnic at Hanging Rock to work, the viewer must be drawn into the movie and experience it as one of the girls. Observing from arm's length is a route to boredom and frustration. Every choice Weir makes as a director is designed to envelop (although whether he succeeds or not is up to the individual). The cinematography is lush yet dream-like. The musical score is dissonant, hinting at something unsettling. And Hanging Rock is photographed like a living, supernatural thing. It is a character in the movie - an ominous one whose secrets remain its own.
The acting is effective, although there aren't any standout portrayals. The best known of the actors is Rachel Roberts, the veteran British thespian, who plays Mrs. Appleyard as the kind of buttoned-down, sexually ambiguous woman we would expect as a headmistress of a school of this sort in this time period. The actresses playing the three lost girls - Anne Lambert, Karen Robson, Jane Vallis - are credible. For many who appear in the movie, this is their only screen credit (or one of a small number of appearances), yet there are none of the forced, awkward performances one often associates with amateur acting.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is the film that put Peter Weir on the international map - sort of. His third feature, it was the first to get significant distribution beyond Australia's shores. However, it didn't make its way to the United States until after The Last Wave achieved a degree of notice in 1977. Weir would go on to make Gallipoli and The Year of Living Dangerously before taking his cameras to America and filming Witness. The version of Picnic at Hanging Rock currently available on DVD is the director's cut. Weir removed eight minutes of footage from the theatrical release and inserted a couple of quick shots.
Picnic at Hanging Rock has its share of detractors, and I can understand their point-of-view. This is an art film, and one that depends strongly on mood. (L'Avventura, the Michelangelo Antonioni film that also features an unsolved disappearance, falls into the same category, and is occasionally compared to Picnic at Hanging Rock.) You either fall under its spell or you don't. Narratively, it's not strong, although it's unfair to claim that "nothing happens." Quite a bit happens, but little is resolved. Life is often like that. Many who fall under Picnic at Hanging Rock's hypnosis will leave the film unsettled but gratified at having seen it.
© 2006 James Berardinelli