Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

          Although Australian director Peter Weir had been working steadily on feature and TV projects in his homeland since the late ’60s, he first scored worldwide acclaim with this evocative literary adaptation, which is often mistaken for a depiction of a real historical incident. Novelist Joan Lindsay, who wrote the book upon which the film is based, has given so many cryptic answers about the inspiration for his story that some interested parties have tried to prove that three girls from a private college (and one of their adult caretakers) really disappeared in 1900 while exploring Hanging Rock, a massive geological formation in South Australia. As written by Cliff Green, this film adaptation fuels the speculative fire by presenting Lindsay’s narrative like a true-life unsolved mystery. Moreover, Weir casts a beguiling spell by exploring the multilayered psychological impact of the disappearances on people throughout the area containing both the college and Hanging Rock. (The geological formation, at least, is real.)

          The film reveals characterization through crisis. Stern headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) frays when the careful order of her school dissipates; fragile orphan Sara (Margaret Nelson) crumbles after the loss of a fellow student with whom she was infatuated; and a wealthy young man, Tom (Tony Llewellyn-Jones), becomes obsessed with finding the missing girls. Lingering over all of these characters is the specter of Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), the leader of the group that went missing. An ethereal beauty, she represents a life force whose loss the world cannot abide. This is all very heady stuff, and Picnic at Hanging Rock is perhaps most successful as a conversation piece, since it raises all sorts of provocative questions about what happens when the lives we build for ourselves get shaken by unforeseeable events.
          Furthermore, Weir’s filmmaking is unassailably tasteful, with eerie pan-flute melodies floating over gossamer images of beautiful girls in white-linen dresses wandering through the volcanic outcroppings of Hanging Rock. Yet after the memorable first half-hour, which depicts the prelude to the disappearances and the actual Hanging Rock excursion, the narrative becomes muddy and turgid. Weir and his collaborators seem indecisive about which characters should be most prominent, and Weir vacillates between flights of dreamlike fancy and hard-edged vignettes of character-driven realism. The movie is also painfully humorless, so the middle stretch is quite tedious. Things cohere bit more during the finale, when viewers are finally shown the lasting impact of the disappearances, although it’s frustrating that certain climactic events are dismissed in a closing voiceover instead of being depicted onscreen. All in all, Picnic at Hanging Rock is filled with interesting insights, moments, and textures, but its restraint is stifling.
          Still, the picture helped Weir get noticed as a filmmaker of unusual sensitivity, so just a few years later, he directed his first Hollywood movie, the similarly moody The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). Six Oscar nominations later (so far), Weir is firmly entrenched as one of the world’s most respected cinematic storytellers.

Picnic at Hanging Rock: FUNKY