Review of Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) by Jean-Francois V — 05 Sep 2008

"Picnic at Hanging Rock" is an atmospheric, dreamlike movie which I unfortunately watched under a fundamental misconception. Having heard of the film back in the early 1980s, when a handful of Australian directors were renewing the genre the way Asians have been doing for a few years, I had always believed that the film was based on the unsolved mystery of the disappearance of a group of young girls during a picninc in Australia in 1900. I did notice that the film itself was based on a novel, but I had assumed that the novel itself was historical, and historical novels can be stupendously accurate. Right to the last line in the movie, I remained convinced that I was watching a docudrama, and kept trying to figure out what was probably "fictionalized" or biased by modern sensibilities (such as the very hippy, "Summer of love" atmosphere to the film, as if the girls were stoned on Shakespeare's sonnets) and what seemed to be genuine reconstruction based on eyewitness testimonies and police records.

And then the end titles hit me: "All the characters in this films are entirely fictional"! (Apparently, the original novel on which the film was based was itself something between a hoax a la "Surviving with Wolves" and a novel that used the document format as a literary device, the way Michael Crichton did for instance to give "Congo" a more realistic feel.).

The result is that I find it very difficult to say what I would have thought of the film if my brain hadn't been in docudrama mode all the time. It might have bored me, but I think I would have been seduced by it anyway, and not just because two of the lead actresses - Anne-Louise Lambert and Karen Robson - are so radiant that the first minutes of the film give you the impression that you have stepped into some aristasian Shangri La of unspoilt female beauty. I just loved the Edwardian purity, the pacing, the David-Hamiltonish photography and the potent suggestion of a supernatural presence in the mountain (I wish the Moses movies could achieve such subtlety.).

The only film I can think of that can compare to this one is "Mrs Morison's Ghosts", though it had a more down to earth quality and was closer to a made-for-TV movie. So this is truly a unique cinematic experience, with hints of Argento and Jodorowsky, and a tone entirely its own.