Review of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Eduardo C — 12 May 2010

Miranda's reading of Edgar Alan Poe's "A Dream Within a Dream" is a beautiful and effective way to open "Picnic at Hanging Rock". The film takes place in an Australian finishing school in the year 1900 where Edgar Alan Poe's vulgar, low-brow publications would hardly be considered proper for a young lady. There is also the matter of Miranda's reading itself: wistful, haunting and completely devoid of irony. The film has not even started and we already know that this girl is not of her time.

There is an undercurrent of repressed sexuality running through the Victorian school, but unlike the majority of her teachers and classmates Miranda happily acknowledges it. She is friendly, outgoing, flirtacious and demure. Where other girls rely on timid smiles and absent caresses without fully being aware of what they are doing she is remarkably open about her feelings.

During the fateful expedition to Hanging Rock, Miranda and three other people effectively vanish without a trace. Days later, one of the girls is found but is unable to remember anything that happened to her. The mystery of their disappearance haunts everyone who encountered it and is never truly resolved.

What is it about unsolved mysteries that so incites our passions? We struggle to attribute meaning to the random, to bring some order out of chaos as if our lives depend on it. Our need for the illusion of control over our own lives is so great that we would willingly renounce beauty of the ethereal for the false security of anything we can pretend to explain. The obsession with the girl's disappearance ultimately leads to the school's downfall. It closes down and characters move away, but they never really move on. They don't seem to want to. They keep searching, hoping for that one last clue that will bring balance back into their respective worlds.

To say that the disappearance makes no sense, however, is false. It makes perfect sense even if it cannot be explained. The film goes out of its way to show us what happened, how and why without ever feeling the need to sacrifice poetry for prose. From the very beginning Miranda's disappearance is not only inevitable but natural. It is clear she does not belong to this world, much less to this school. Before the trip she even warns Sara, whom she cares deeply about, to learn to love someone else because she will not be there for much longer.

Her arrival at Hanging Rock is marked by every clock stopping at 12.00. Nothing seems out of the ordinary until, one by one, Miranda and her her friends begin to ascend the mountain. This was no idle act of exploration. The rock called to them, and they had heard and responded. Also called was Mrs. McCraw, whose masculinity and fierce intelligence make her no more a product of her time than Miranda. Trailing behind is Edith, who was not called, is very much a product of her time, and is desperately trying to keep up with the girls she so idolizes but unwilling or unable to fully commit to it. It is no surprise, then, that Edith eventually turns around, frightened, and runs down the hill while the other girls ascend and ascend until they are never seen again.

The ascent itself is particularly revelatory. The girls seem almost posessed by a sexual frenzy. It begins seductively enough, with the girls moving as one as they begin to shed their clothes without saying a word. The more clothing they shed the more fervently they ascend. When the film shows it from their point of view the climb is liberating. When the film switches to Edith's point of view it is terrifying in its intensity.

To the rest of the world, the disappearance was a tragedy. To the girls and the teacher, it was a blessing. There was nothing for them in this world, after all. Having been spirited away they are now no longer a part of a specific time but of all time. Some creatures simply were not meant for this world and it is an unbearable act of cruelty to forcefully keep them here.