Review of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Nick K — 17 Sep 2008

Director Peter Weir's filmography has ranged from the brilliant ([i]Witness, The Truman Show[/i]) to the horrible ([i]Greencard[/i]). However, the film that really projected Weir onto the world stage of filmmaking was his third movie [i]Picnic at Hanging Rock[/i]. Based on the Joan Lindsay novel of the same name, [i]Picnic at Hanging Rock[/i] relates a fictional historical mystery. Although the film is sometimes dragged down by slow pacing, [i]Rock[/i] is stunning from a cinematography standpoint. Weir's adeptness at heightening tension to a fever pitch is also second to none.

On a bright Valentine's Day in 1900 several students from an exclusive Austrailian boarding school travel to Hanging Rock in Victoria's Mount Macedon area for a picnic. However, a day of carefree innocence ends in tragedy when three of the girls and their teacher go missing on the geological formation. A week later only one returns with no recollection of what happened. The how and the why of the girls' and their teacher's disappearance is a mystery that traverses everything from the criminal to the supernatural.

[i]Picnic at Hanging Rock[/i] exudes an almost Hitchcockian feel throughout the film. However the suspense is not generated by a crossdressing psychopath or a flock of demented birds. Rather, [i]Rock[/i]'s true strenghth comes from the unseen, of what's left off camera and left instead to the viewer's imagination. Weir is excellent at playing off the idea that no ghoul or goblin can ever be scarier than the fears we generate in our own minds. This idea is represented keenly in the scene where the girls disappear. Rather than being dragged off into the unkown, the girls voluntarily walk up into Hanging Rock in an almost trance-like state. The slow motion cinematography of Russell Boyd gives the scene a dreamlike quality.

In many ways unease and disquiet are the driving forces behind [i]Picnic at Hanging Rock[/i]. [i]Rock[/i] resonates with a constant tension that is exacerbated by a disonant score and the strains of classical artists Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. The fact that most of the film is shot in bright sunshine also challenges the idea of expected evil. Murder and rape are crimes best suited for dark alleys at night. Yet Weir's film constantly provides pastoral scenes of nature. These scenes while functional in their effect are often too lenghty and tend to drag the pace of the film down. However the theme and imagery of repressed feminine sexuality, demonstrated perfectly by the character Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) heightens the tension beautifully. Strangely, the subdued and restrained acting in [i]Rock,[/i] while serving to accentuate the tension, is sometimes confounding. Despite the expected feelings a disappearance might generate, strong human emotion rarely comes to fruition in [i]Rock[/i].

And unlike most thrillers where the killer is caught and justice is served, [i]Picnic at Hanging Rock [/i]revels in irresolution. Ultimately, the mystery of the people's disapperance simply remains that---a mystery. Peter Weir has literaly constructed a Lady or the Tiger (or Sopranos if you will) film. Rather than force feed an ending to the audience, Weir lets the viewers draw their own conclusions. Whether the disappearance is supernatural or grounded solely in the physical world is irrelevant. The [i]mystery[/i] and the intrigue generated by the mystery is what drives [i]Picnic at Hanging Rock[/i] and makes it not only a significant film in the career of Peter Weir, but also a significant film in the history of Austrailan cinema.