Picnic at Hanging Rock
Directed by Peter Weir
Written by Cliff Green from a novel by Joan Lindsay
1975/Australia
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
Michael Fitzhubert: I wake up every night in a cold sweat just wondering if they’re still alive.
Albert Crundall: Yeah, well the way I look at it is this: if the bloody cop, and the bloody Abo tracker, and the bloody dog can’t find them, well no one bloody can.
I have tried to love this gorgeous, well-acted film. But there’s only so much dreamy, romantic, schoolgirl lethargy that I can take.
It is February 14, 1900, somewhere in rural South Australia at a girl’s boarding school, Appleyard College. It begins with the girls changing from their white nightgowns to their white dresses. They tend to each other lovingly. Miranda’s doting roommate Sara has written her a love poem. Miranda warns Sara that she should find someone else to love as Miranda will not be around too much longer.
As a special Valentine’s treat, the girls and most of the teachers are going on a picnic near the “Hanging Rock”. Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) has taken a dislike to the defiant Sara- mostly because her fees have not been paid – and forbids her from joining her classmates.
All of the girls are dressed in billowy white with gloves, corsets, etc, hardly mountaineering attire. They are warned that the rock is extremely dangerous and is inhabited by venomous snakes and poisonous ants. Everyone’s timepiece stops at 12 noon when they arrive at the site. The girls spend the afternoon lounging and sleeping. Near the end of the appointed time Miranda, Irma and Marion get permission to climb the rock a short distance. The fat whiny Edith is allowed to tag along. Then teacher Miss McGraw starts climbing the mountain. The girls are spotted by Michael Fitzhubert, a young English aristocrat as he is on a stroll of his own. He follows for a bit but turns around.
Edith returns screaming from the mountain after the other three girls ignore her pleas not to enter an interior recess. The class arrives back to the school hours late. The coachman reports that Miranda, Irma, Marion and, Miss McGraw never returned from the Hanging Rock and a search failed to locate them.
Michael is obsessed with locating Miranda and searches independently with his valet Bertie. On the last search expedition Michael spends the night alone on the rock. When Bertie comes looking for him the next day, he finds him battered and delirious. Bertie finds an unconscious Irma by following Michael’s trail. Irma doesn’t remember anything of what happened.
None of the other girls or Miss McGraw is ever located. Their disappearance looks likely to destroy the school. A couple of other vaguely mysterious deaths follow.
The gorgeous imagery just isn’t enough in this case, not for me anyway. I read somewhere that it is considered a “horror” film. So this time around, I tried to view it in that context. I failed to see anything horrifying about it. The film does have some good points to make about the futility of trying to living up to Victorian manners and values in a wilderness. I’m sure somebody could make a compelling movie about an unsolved mystery but the endless drippy pronouncements of sleepy adolescents just get on my nerves. I know I am in the minority on this and it is probably worth seeing once.
