Picnic At Hanging Rock [PG]

On St. Valentine’s Day 1900 a party of schoolgirls from an exclusive all-girls finishing college go on an excursion to picnic at Hanging Rock, a million year-old outback natural landmark drenched in a mysterious atmosphere. Four of the girls go off for a closer exploration of the Rock, one returns screaming and the others do not return at all. 

Peter Weir’s sophisticated and enigmatic drama still stands as a pivotal moment for Australian cinema! A sinister thriller without the darkness, suspense, or indeed any sort of ‘thriller’ characteristic, Picnic At Hanging Rock is a movie that still manages to spellbind audiences with its mystery, wonderment, and awe. This is staggeringly beautiful film! 

On St. Valentine’s Day 1900 a party of schoolgirls from an exclusive all-girls finishing college go on an excursion to picnic at Hanging Rock, a million year-old outback natural landmark drenched in a mysterious atmosphere. Four of the girls go off for a closer exploration of the Rock, one returns screaming and the others do not return at all. 

I think what I loved most about this movie is the fact that Weir displayed this uncanny knowledge about what hooks and holds an audience. Freelance writer and columnist Joshua Klein describes this movie as “a ghost story without the ghosts, a puzzle without a solution, and a story of sexual repression without the sex”, continuing on to say that it “remains maddeningly elliptical”. I have to agree with every single word! There is so much happening in this film, but most of it is mischievously implied rather than shown and I think that is what makes this film stand out as an unconventional thriller. 

Cinematically Picnic At Hanging Rock is more akin to a period drama, like Austen but set in the Australian outback. However, we get this wonderful and deceptively simple mystery that occurs and just strings off everything else: the true nature of characters, their secrets and desires, begins to worm its way to the surface and it’s completely mesmerising to watch as people become wholly undone by the strange disappearance of these girls. We’ve got themes of repressed homosexuality, the (sometimes) sinister yearning for strangers, the damaged moral compass, and complete breakdown of community, all shown in this shimmering way that is rich with metaphors, motifs, and cinematic sparkle. 

Weir’s composition of each shot is something that is to be praised as well because the entire film has this beautiful, gauzy sheen over it as though you’re watching it through translucent silk or something. It actually looks more like a dreamscape than anything else, another technique that takes a lot of the sinisterness out of the thing and just has it as an incredible mystery. One does not become frightened so much as entranced by this film and a story that has so many sinister and dark undertones gets depicted in this beautiful, enchanting way accompanied by a hauntingly sweet soundtrack of piano and panpipes. You don’t watch this film in suspense, but watch in awe as Weir’s use of slow-motion, unfocused camera shots, unsteady tracking shots, and deathly still frames work on you in such a way as to render you immobile until the final freeze frame. 

Starring Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Jacki Weaver, Frank Gunnell, Anne-Louise Lambert, Karen Robson, Jane Vallis, Christine Schuler, Margaret Nelson, Ingrid Mason, Jenny Lovell, and Janet Murray, Picnic At Hanging Rock is a breathtakingly beautiful film filled with mystery, drama, suspense, and beauty. Absolutely everything in this film works to captivate, completely and irrevocably captivate, its audience and it’s absolutely SPELLBINDING!