The thing I love about many of the films of Peter Weir is the uneasy relationship of man with the great unknown. Whether it is about society (The Mosquito Coast), mortality (Fearless), discovery (Master and Commander), mythic apocalypse (The Last Wave), or perception (The Truman Show), Weir has always been one of the best (if the the best) at mixing the art-house with the mainstream. But the film that launched him onto the international stage, Picnic At Hanging Rock, is probably his least accessible yet the most pure. To describe it has a horror film is not apt (although there are elements of that), a better descriptor would be “uncanny.” The creeping sense of the unease due to not knowing why things are happening is the driving force of the film, and the effects on the characters (ranging from confusion to somnambulism) serve as the horror element.
This critical scene from the film is beautifully scored by Romanian flutist Gheorghe Zamfir (Sergio Leone and Quentin Tarantino would also make effective use of his virtuous pan-flute compositions in Once Upon a Time in America and Kill Bill) which amplifies the mysterious and foreboding. The film, after all, was based on real events which were well known to the audience at the time and still remain unexplained: During a Valentine’s Day picnic outing of an all girls school, several of the girls mysteriously disappear; and Weirs adaptation of the story is perhaps one of the most tasteful acts of supernatural sensationalism ever made. The hand-held, stalking camera work only adds to the voyeurism element. The scene culminates in the missing girls, barefoot and gowned in white lace, looking down (godlike and philosophical) on their sleeping classmates which they would never see again. This could have came across as goofy or clumsy, but it is handled with a bold and surreal austerity. There is something ingrained in the Aussie psyche that makes the countries native filmmakers paint the wilderness as harsh, even nightmarish, but above all unfathomable.
One of the handfull of truly great finds I uncovered when I sought to watch the first 100 Criterion titles this year. For all that is great about what is onscreen, the offscreen stuff is just as powerful… for me the sublime moment of the film (maybe a spoiler) is when a witness describes seeing one of the professors ambling through the forest partially naked… maybe they actually show that onscreen but I seem to remember it as something spoken of, and there is something so wrong about this detail, possibly satanic, that I remember feeling unnerved by it.
a real masterwork… once again Kurt you should check out Walkabout… tonally it is similar to this film… and of course both are Australian.
I myself refer to Picnic at Hanging Rock as an “atmospheric horror” film. Any film that has a certain tone or feel that their are elements beyond their control and aren’t encapsulated in some sort of tangible antagonist would fit the description, and Picnic at Hanging Rock is probably my favorite of them all. Great choice.
I’ve only ever seen a high school production of Picnic at Hanging Rock so I only have the basic just of the story but that scene…enough to make me want to see this.
!!?? There are highschool plays of this? Wow. I can’t see this working outside of the audio/video/camera-angle aspects of how to tell this story.
High School or otherwise, this would seem to be totally unworkable on stage.
There was at my highschool! Though I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t great and the director took it into a really minimalist direction. All I remember was that they used Enya’s “Boadicea” and I couldn’t listen to that song for months after seeing the play. WAYYYYY too creepy. It was years before I figured out there was a movie.
I was taken to see this film as a child and it has been in my top five favorites ever since. The sense of mystery and forboding, the unease and simultaneous beauty have dominated and inspired my own writing and art my entire adult life.