Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) User Reviews

Death and the Maidens

[pocca · 8/10 · 8 May 2005]

Even though this has been described as a film about sexual repression (and Peter Weir may have thought he was making such a film), I don't think it is--rather, it is a celebration of the dreamy, self contained sexuality (or rather pre-sexuality) of young adolescent girls just before they seriously turn their attention to men. Sure, they may be living in a society straitjacketed by Victorian mores, but the girls really don't seem to be the unhappier for this, non withstanding the earthy maid's comments that she feels sorry for them. Miranda and her friends seem completely content and at ease in their languid, hothousey world of poetry, pink and white bedrooms, and mutual crushes (I was reminded of the similarly dreamy, self contained little universe of the sisters in "The Virgin Suicides--another film that is supposedly about repression). During the noon day nap at Hanging Rock, the girls, heads resting in one another's laps, are in a state very much resembling post coital bliss--far from seeming repressed, they are among the most content women I've ever seen on screen. It is quite arguable that Victorian morality had something to do with their sexuality turning inward like this, but all this does is lend credence to the truism that repression intensifies sexuality--which may explain the lingering fascination the Victorian era has for the modern age, and why one of its most striking symbols of its oppressiveness--the corset--is also very erotically charged. The girls' disappearance into the eerie black land form (that seems to have faces at times, bringing to mind fairy tales about trolls who steal golden haired children) suggests that at in their present state they are so contented that anything else life might hold for them could only be a letdown, that only whatever dark force (death? nothingness?) is haunting Hanging Rock could possibly be a worthy enough lover for these girls who are already so supremely self fulfilled.

There are, unfortunately, aspects of this film that don't work, or rather jar with the elements discussed above, the most prominent of these being the Dickensian subplot of the persecuted orphaned pupil Sarah. The actress herself is affecting in her part and her boyish beauty contrasts well with Miranda's ethereal femininity (she looks like a young Renaissance prince at times), but her story really belongs in another movie because at heart "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is more Gothic than socially conscious.

Maybe Weir really was aiming to make a movie about the evils of sexual repression, class inequality or even colonization, but such possible themes are blown away by the languid, ethereal images of the young adolescent girls at the beginning of the film, floating contentedly through their hours like clusters of Monet lilies.

"There's some questions that has answers, and others don't."

[rmax304823 · 8/10 · 3 August 2008]

What a movie. Australia started come out with films that received worldwide attention in the early 1980s, with "The Last Wave", and a cascade of them has followed, from the raucous "Mad Max" to more contemplative issues. And on top of that, they've been putting out a horde of toothsome blonds, from Olivia Newton John to Nicole Kidman. GOOD ON YA, MATE! When it comes to magnificently featured blonds, Anne-Louise Lambert, as Miranda, will serve in "Picnic at Hanging Rock." It's true she's a bit tender, only in her mid-teens like the other girls at Mrs. Appleyard's (Rachel Roberts') expensive boarding school in rural Victoria. But the fact is that the film is full to the brim with budding but repressed sexuality -- repression of all kinds, in fact, with all that strict discipline and formality. Even one of the other students seems to have a crush on Miranda. So blame Joan Lindsay and Cliff Green, the writers, instead of my own admittedly warped interests.

All is not well at the Appleyard School. The continent at the time was nothing much more than an English outlier and the school has imported its parent culture wholesale -- the strict class system, everything. It's already old fashioned. And it's feeling the financial pinch too.

All Mrs. Appleyard needs is some kind of scandal, and that's what happens. The girls go on a picnic to nearby Hanging Rock, a jagged jumble of bushes and gray boulders with stucco textures sticking up out of nowhere. A handful of girls, including Miranda, decides to climb to the top. A plump whiny girl follows and when she tires she loses contact with the others. Panic -- in self-disciplined British style -- follows when the other four fail to return. A search is implemented. Bloodhounds, aboriginal trackers, but there is no trace of the girls.

After a day or two, one girl is finally retrieved in an unconscious state and brought back to the school. She's out of it because of exposure and shock, but she is at least "intact", as the doctor puts it, although there is some mystery about why her shoes and stockings are missing, and why she isn't wearing the corset that is part of the girls' uniforms. No trace of the others is ever found. The affair effectively brings about the end of Mrs. Appleyard and her boarding school.

Not much of a story, is it? A couple of girls go missing from a school and that's that. Not a drop of blood in sight. Not a single motorcycle roar within hearing. And yet the film seems pregnant with a sense of languorous dread, of something that is not quite right -- cockeyed, off kilter. We can sense it from the very beginning, with a score drawn from the deep chords of an organ and from Zamphir's Peruvian nose flute or whatever it is. When there is no music on the sound track we can hear the buzzing of flies or the soft growls of wind about the stone mansion.

Why, when Miranda is leaving for the picnic, does she tell another that she's not coming back. And after all, what DID happen to those missing girls? Applause for director Peter Weir and for others of his ilk, like Nicholas Roeg, who have the courage to put out a movie that isn't all hustle and bustle, that takes care to establish an atmosphere that is almost a character in itself, that lingers over the contrast between elegant, lacy civilization and the indifferent implacability of nature's raw rocks.

Everything begins and ends at the right time and place, one of the characters insists repeatedly, and the world of movies have a place for films like this that challenge and mystify rather than just tickle your glands.

Purposefully vague...yet even on that level it is half-realized

[moonspinner55 · 6/10 · 11 July 2001]

This Peter Weir drama is so languid and low-keyed, art-house lovers are always tempted to pass it on as an automatic masterpiece (witness the 1,000+ people on this board who gave it a 10). Plot concerns three turn-of-the-century schoolgirls who disappear along with their teacher while on a field trip with their class in the Australian Outback. Film takes a very odd approach: it wants the mystery to be unexplainable, yet all the while drops little clues along the way. It has a sinister atmosphere that eventually gives way to irritation because nothing is ever done with the trappings of the premise. It's a striking film visually but not verbally, as the line-readings of the young girls are rather monotonous (possibly on purpose). Weir shows a great gift for visual communication, however his narrative suffers in the process. As a result, that beautiful, haunting final shot ends up not meaning much and "Picnic At Hanging Rock" leaves its audience swatting at red herrings. **1/2 from ****

A beautifully enchanting and haunting film

[Filmtribute · 10/10 · 7 September 2001]

Although the images have stayed with me since I first saw Picnic at Hanging Rock some 20 years ago, the power to instil a strange sense of loss remains. The revised director's version released in 1998 unusually cuts seven minutes from the original as, according to Pat Lovell (executive producer), Peter Weir wanted to remove any pretty romances and speed up the final act. The sound quality has been enhanced and the look improved through colour regrading, but sadly a couple of key scenes involving Irma (Karen Robson) have been omitted. We are told at the outset that some of those who start out for the St Valentine's Day picnic in 1900 are never to return, and, even though various clues are shared with us, no attempt is made to solve the puzzle. Miranda (Anne Louise Lambert), who provides a voice over, based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, sets the tone at the beginning with, `What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream', and the film goes on to concern itself with the aftermath of the disappearance and the impact on all involved with those missing. It explores an apparently idyllic way of life that is not what it first seems, how this false paradise is fragile and how it is shattered by the breakdown of established order. Tensions and hysteria all surface, exposing the suppressed passions that are the reality of life, as well as the claustrophobic atmosphere of the affluent Victorian European life style in an alien land. This theme is further expressed by the virginal white dresses worn for the picnic, which seem out of place in this environment and represent the stifling restrictions placed on the young women. The layers of dress and petticoats the girls have to wear, combined with the various shots into mirrors, as if into another dimension, also reflect the story's many strands.

Russell Boyd's award winning cinematography is stunning and actively encourages you to feel the summer heat. The beauty of the actresses and the sounds of the Australian bush, under the sinisterly foreboding gaze of the Rock, with its blatant phallic symbolism, seduce you so that you will more feel a sense of the horror, as Edith (Christine Schuler) does. The flashback at the end, poignantly coupled with the adagio from Beethoven's piano concerto No. 5 (Emperor), leaves you with a sense of loss of youth and virtue. Peter Weir subsequently recreated this impression in the final scene of his equally outstanding Australian feature `Gallipoli'. I am also reminded of the effect produced by Jane Campion (The Piano) in her early work `Two Friends', where the tale ends in the past when the friendship is at its closest, making the passing of innocence feel more painful with ageing and the passage of time.

Cliff Green's script is not only faithful to Joan Lindsay's narrative but also complements it exceedingly well, although dialogue is often replaced by visual impression and unnecessary details are excluded to maintain the sense of mystery the author intended. However, the novel's literary mistake regarding Felicia Hemanes' famous Victorian recital piece is repeated, which is actually `Casabianca' (about the Battle of the Nile) and not `The Wreck of the Hesperus' by Henry Longfellow. Discrimination is displayed by Mrs Appleyard (Rachel Robert's fantastically monstrous harridan) towards Sara (Margaret Nelson), a forlorn orphan in love with Miranda, who is kept back from the picnic for not learning the poem, whereas Irma's position as heiress obviously carries influence, as clearly on the Rock she can only quote the first line. Sara is shown pity by the housemaid, Minnie (Jacki Weaver), whose own sexuality is realised with the handyman, Tom (Tony Llewellyn-Jones), in stark contrast to the general ambience of repressed desire.

Miranda's sentiment that `Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place' is demonstrated by Joan Lindsay who based her fictional account on Hanging Rock, a sacred Aboriginal site, near Mount Macedon in Victoria. To provide added authenticity Peter Weir filmed at the Rock during the same six weeks of summer. Aborigines believe time is not linear and Lady Lindsay eschewed the notion of man-made time, hence the title of her autobiography `Time Without Clocks'. At Hanging Rock both the watches of Ben Hussey (Martin Vaughan) and Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray) stopped at twelve o'clock. Incidentally 14 February 1900 actually fell on a Wednesday, not a Saturday, unless the author used the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian, so that the eleven days were not lost?

The open-ended nature of the fable is deliberate to mirror life where we may learn or uncover some secrets but never understand the mystery. Plenty of extraneous facts and unexplained details are related, such as the absence of scratches to Irma's bare feet, yet identical injuries appear on her head and Michael's (Dominic Guard), her joint rescuer with Albert (John Jarrett), very redolent of the `X Files'.

The film is beautifully shot with haunting music, exceptionally well cast and acted, and tightly directed. The ever excellent Helen Morse is an inspired choice as Mademoiselle Dianne de Poitiers, the French mistress and the girls' confidante, who describes Miranda as a Botticelli angel from the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence, and Peter Weir specifically uses the image of the Birth of Venus. In fact Miranda, Irma and Marion (Jane Vallis), the three senior boarders who vanish, are evocative of the Three Graces, who dance in attendance to Venus, in Sandro Botticelli's Primavera. Anne Louise Lambert's portrayal of Miranda (an ironic reincarnation from her famed role in 1973 as the bed-hopping nymphomaniac in the Australian soap `Number 96') captures the vision perfectly with her ethereal loveliness and enigmatic smile, and is reminiscent of the knowing look on the death mask of the renowned `L'Inconnue de la Seine', who coincidentally died around 1900 in Paris.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a masterpiece of its time, and still rates as one of my favourite films today.

Excellent director, immaculate film.

[eshaun · 10/10 · 19 April 2003]

Peter Weir is a master of taking the mysteries of human nature, combining them with the essence of humanity, then distilling those aspects through the inexplicable itself. This has been an earmark of his films "Dead Poets Society," "Fearless" and even "The Truman Show" but nowhere is this more apparent than with "Picnic At Hanging Rock."

Beautifully filmed in rural Australia, the plot of "Picnic At Hanging Rock" is deceptively simple: students at an upper crust Victorian-era girls' school go on a field trip to Hanging Rock --an unusual geographic site miles away from civilization. On the trip, three of the girls and one of the teachers go missing. A simple plot, right? Well, on the surface it is indeed simple, but the way Peter Weir deals with the subject matter will keep the viewer absolutely enthralled and at a loss as to the cause of the girls' inexplicable disappearance. What has frustrated many viewers is that the responsibility of the hypothesis lies solely on them: there are no conclusive answers, but rather a number of theories as seen through the eyes of second and third parties.

Additionally, Weir spices up the overall feeling of uncertainty with repeated images seemingly unrelated to the flow of the movie. Swans, ants, flowers, flies and poetry all appear repeatedly throughout the film, indicating that there is some deeper significance to the nature of the disappearance. Something that is just out of the viewer's grasp. In truth, Weir's direction in this film is akin to a more accessible and humanistic David Lynch. Much of the same thematic ground is covered, and the pronounced sense of uncertainty is a trademark of many Lynch films, especially his recent masterwork, "Mulholland Drive."

Finally, what makes "Picnic At Hanging Rock" a true marvel of filmmaking is the complete integration of all elements in the support of the ephemeral theme. The pan-flute of Zamfir adds an otherworldly element to the score; the cinematography makes Hanging Rock look alternately commonplace, and enigmatic, depending on the scene. This collusion of all elements makes "Picnic At Hanging Rock" essential viewing for anyone interested in immaculate emotive filmmaking. -E. Shaun Russell

Eerie, beautiful "romance porn".

[Lanwench · 6 February 2000]

I first saw PAHR while in high school, and it was the beginning of a long and drawn-out love affair with the film. The look, feel and sound of it drew me in at once, and the open-endedness of it appealed to my romantic teenage notions, striking me as being terribly, terribly profound. I searched out the book, and the sequel (both out of print in the US) and had a good long obsession over the film.

Years later, I still appreciate it deeply, but I realize now that if I were to see it for the first time today, I might not be quite so entranced. Yes, it is moody and beautiful, full of deliciously gossamar images, beautiful actresses, a haunting soundtrack, and a hypnotically slow and deliberate pace... but I can now see that it is a very youthful effort on Wier's part. It is decidedly a young director's film, firmly mired in the style of its era (the 70s). The heavy-handedness of the direction is evident in many ways, mostly in the repeated metaphors of Miranda as a swan, an angel, etc.... It has anachronistic costumes, makeup and hair, although the sets design is attractive and accurate enough.

However, let it be noted that the film is far more about symbolism and atmosphere than anything else, and on that front, it succeeds admirably. Among the highlights:

The repressed Victorian schoolgirls, whose burgeoning sexual longings are channeled into torrid, purple verse and close romantic friendships

The famous corset-lacing scenelet

The implied relationship between Mrs. Appleyard and the "masculine" Miss McCraw

The disappearance of only the "pure": Miranda (love), Marion (science), Miss McCraw (math), and the rock's rejecting Edith (gluttony), Irma (worldliness), and all men.

One might go on about the sexual imagery of the rock itself, with its monoliths and chasms, but I will refrain. Because after you've seen the movie, you realize how many times these things have been hammered into your head.

I still love this film dearly, despite the obviousness of it all. I wish that a soundtrack were available, as the original music is lovely. If you know a teenager, or are one, this is the movie for you. May your love affair with it go on as long as mine.

Pre-Raphaelites in Australia

[paul2001sw-1 · 6/10 · 19 June 2003]

In Peter Weir's film, "Picnic at Hanging Rock", a party of upper class schoolgirls and their teacher go missing. Among the vanished is Miranda, an artistic, angelic, sapphic and telepathic young woman. The film offers no explanations but concentrates on the psychological effect of Miranda's departure on her erstwhile companions. But this is not a strictly realistic film either: with a stylised, dream-like aesthetic, one imagines it as the sort of film Miranda herself would have enjoyed. In form it resembles Antonioni's L'Avventurra, though less subtle and (thankfully) also less boring. But when everything about the missing girls (not just their disappearance) is left beautiful and mysterious, a hole inevitably opens up in the middle of the film. A little more humanity, and a little less divinity, in their portrayal might have made it possible to care about their loss.

the unspeakable takes control

[MissRosa · 9/10 · 28 May 2000]

This is mesmerizing film with a cipher at its center. Less is more. I am amused at some of the comments. There seem to be two types: those which depict the movie as "beautiful, ethereal and subtle" and those which depict the film as "too symbolic, too slow, boring, too 70's."

The point is, there is no point. The central vision of the film is enigma, the void, mystery. This seems to make a lot of explainers uncomfortable, but the use of emptiness at the core of a work of art is nothing new. "The hand that erases writes the true thing" Faulkner's masterpiece "The Sound and the Fury" is about a character who is absent. The characters that surround her, and who actually people the novel? Not all there, lacking, disintegrating, unknown, unwanted, unloved.

If there must be a meaning, it is that nothingness is the biggest threat of all. "I will show you fear in a handful of dust" We fear our disappearance. We'd like to believe that our little lives, our little comments, our little film lists will endure forever. But they won't. Nothing will.

what is existence? a random ever-changing collection of energized particles.

At any point, we can cross the line into nothingness. Nature will subsume us.

The film "A Passage to India" had the same theme. It was NOT essentially a movie about rape or sex scandal. It was about the yawning pitch-black eternal emptiness of the caves. It drove two women mad. Nature as an amoral uncaring unmoveable eternal reality.

Just as Picnic was NOT about repressed Victorian sexuality. These were pretexts, and were utilized because the fear of sex is the fear of letting go. The fear of sexuality leads irrestibly to our main fear: that darkness, emptiness, and the powers of nature will overwhelm us and erase us.

In Picnic, there was no villain, no enemy, no fall guy, no perpetrator, process or predicament that we could blame for the girls' disappearance. They simply disappeared. And that is the scariest nightmare of all.

This picnic tastes great but is unfulfilling.

[tommythek · 7/10 · 26 July 2001]

Confession: I don't know WHAT I think of this movie! Not only that, I had to go to IMDb's user comments to find a person or persons to TELL ME what I think of this movie. None did. I read all 45 of the user comments (reviews) and I STILL don't know what I think of this movie. That's how enigmatic this movie is. To me, anyway.

I did learn one thing, however, from reading these 45 preceding user reviews. A very great many of these user-reviewers are some of the keenest and most astute moviegoers whom I've ever encountered. They know things about this movie and have picked up things from it which are completely over my non-perceptive head.

Example: One user-reviewer, an English gentleman, I believe, obviously did his doctoral thesis on this movie. He knows things about it that even Peter Weir (the director) doesn't know. A number of others did their masters on it. Many of the latter refer to Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), one of the girls who disappeared, in terms of her being a sort of virginal Botticelli-like angel. While I do agree that Miranda is a most ethereal character, whenever she would appear in a scene, "Botticelli" was not the first word to jump into my mind. But that's just me.

Much is made by many of these perceptive and sharp user-reviewers of the girls' awakening feelings of sexuality and of the phallic symbolism of Hanging Rock to the girl climbers. Oh. I was just wondering: Where'd the girls go? What happened to them?

One of the many puzzling aspects to the story of this movie, one on which no one seems to agree, is.....is it true? At first I thought it was. Then I thought it wasn't. Now, I have no idea! And the user-reviewers are of no help on this, politely at odds amongst themselves on the story's veracity. I'd like to believe that the movie and novel which preceded it are based on a true incident. No, not because I would wish anything bad to have happened to these adventurous, yet innocent, young girls some 101 years ago. I wish it were true only because it would be but one more "event" to add to the great mystery that we know as life. A mystery, a question, to which no one has the answer.

Listen to me! I sound like I know what I'm talking about. Which I don't! Especially about this movie. In the final analysis, this movie left me generally unfulfilled. There is much in it that is worthy of praise, first and foremost the moviemaking skills of Peter Weir. But when credits rolled, something was missing. I felt as if I'd just eaten a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, having enjoyed every single bite, then, upon arising from the table, felt my stomach completely empty. A feeling stranger than strange.

Anyone viewing this film for the first time must be prepared for a movie in which all the various and loose plot ends do NOT get all tied up by the film's denouement. If one is so prepared, one may come away from it more fulfilled than was I. "Tastes great," unfortunately, was as far as I could get with it.

One sad note: At the movie's conclusion, Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) arrived at a fate not much unlike one arrived at by Ms. Roberts herself just five short years after the movie's release. Just as art often imitates life, so, too, in this case, did life imitate art.

Picnic....

[timhughes2000 · 10/10 · 30 April 2004]

This film is magnificent! From the storyline, the settings, the atmosphere, the cinematography, the Victorian repression, the music throughout, the sense of the ordinary, the epic and the bizarre all clashing together to make something altogether superb from such disparate parts.

Whether it is supernatural, otherworldly, plain disappearances, a murder scene, or who-knows, no one ever really finds out. And what might seem important, might not be, and what might seem trivial might not be either! It is the imagination made reality on film, and the most dreamy and atmospheric film I have seen.

The fact that it is in Australia as well, at the turn of the century counts for a lot. The story in the movie could be read in countless ways; as symbolic of the horrors and hypocrisy of Victorian society; as a criticism of European ideals imposed on an alien landscape; as the end of one society, that of Victorian, to the beginnings of the modern world we all now live in. It is this that is the crux for me; the appearance of something new from something so old; the old landscape, the passing values of Victorian society, the passing values of class deference in English-speaking societies, and obviously Australia.

There is another thing that gets me about this movie; the down to earthness of Australians up against the bizarre and epic nature of an ancient landscape that refuses to be tamed.

There is for me a sadness in this film, and repression of every kind, but, somewhere, in tiny glints throughout the movie, the future is glimpsed when ordinary people can be free of such repression, and somewhere the story of Oz itself is in this movie. I don't know how or why, but it is! I think! Whatever, I love this movie and can't get it out of my head.

So Close to Perfection, But So Far Away

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 3 March 2012]

A story about the disappearance of several Appleyard College students, and a teacher, from Hanging Rock.

This was acclaimed director Peter Weir's second film, and now considered one of Australia's most-beloved films... for the rest of us, Weir might better be remembered as the director of "Dead Poets Society" (1989) or maybe the man behind "The Truman Show".

The film is difficult to enjoy, because while it is visually stunning, its slow pace really pushes the patience of the audience. One could argue that the slow pace is necessary to really enhance the feeling of awkwardness and eeriness. Indeed, the film has been called "creepy" by critic Greg Harris; while I am not sure this is the proper word, it does leave the viewer feeling uneasy.

Roger Ebert called it "a film of haunting mystery and buried sexual hysteria" and remarked that it "employs two of the hallmarks of modern Australian films: beautiful cinematography and stories about the chasm between settlers from Europe and the mysteries of their ancient new home."

I am unclear about the "buried sexual hysteria", though Ebert does go on to talk about theories of rape and murder that I think exist more in his mind than on screen. I am also unclear about his "settlers from Europe" idea. I will not argue the beautiful cinematography, though -- the framing is excellent, and the use of Hanging Rock's natural images (including several face-like rock structures) is well-executed. There is some confusion over how big the rock is -- does it require a trail of bread crumbs to get back or is it a five minute climb -- but this may be part of its charm.

Where Ebert really nails the film, though, is when he sums it up as being "free of plot, lacking any final explanation, it exists as an experience." Indeed, many of the film's shots evoke memories of paintings, such as Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party", and in one moment a girl is even compared with Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus". The film exists, like Ebert says, as an experience free of plot... a moving, two-hour painting that we can take away from as we wish, and like or dislike as we would a classic work of art.

Peter Weir's own words further suggest he was not trying to give a clear-cut narrative. "We worked very hard," says Weir, "at creating an hallucinatory, mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere." We are free of time and space while watching "Picnic", as we could be in 1900 or 1776 or any other time (and it is interesting to note the film takes place on Saturday, February 14, 1900 -- a date that never existed).

Much more could be made of the film's themes and symbolism with the hearts, the boys, the trances and the swans... but I know of no coherent way to express these things. Which, I think, may be exactly what Weir intended.

I Recommend For Those Who Love Subtle, Beautiful Movies

[Bacall-3 · 10/10 · 14 January 1999]

The plot is simple on one level: A group of girls at a private school, growing up and experiencing the throes of adolescence angst. On a much more subtle level, there is an indefinable presence.... Is it a spectre? Or are the girls' over-active imaginations causing them to believe that sinister things are happening around them, especially at Hanging Rock? (a nearby scenic landmark with a possible secret).

The beauty of the film is its softness, and how effectively it is used to convey horror by its SILENCE...The costumes of the period and the music are lulling, as is the beautiful sometimes soft-focus cinematography.One is unprepared for the lingering chill in the room as the movie ends. There are also the lingering doubts: What really happened at Hanging Rock? Each viewer is left to decide... **NOTE: This is not an action adventure, not a typical horror or mystery. I cannot fit it into any one category, ART is the most likely, although it is certainly dramatic. I doubt very much that many men I know would want to watch this, so forewarned..it is not for the action-adventure crowd.

beautiful cinematography

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 4 August 2005]

This is a very pretty movie--both the cinematography and music are well done (though the frequent use of pan pipes was an unusual choice and seemed a bit odd for an Australian film). And, the way the story was portrayed, it really did a good job of making you believe this was a true story and not fictional (which it is).

So why isn't my score quite as high as other reviews? Well, there just isn't a whole lot of story here and the pacing, at times, is a little too slow and drawn out for my taste. It seems that since it isn't based on a true story, they could have interjected a little more suspense or mystery--especially in hashing out what occurred to Sara at the end of the picture. Still, it is very well made and quite unusual. All in all, a very good film--particularly the haunting score played by Zamfir.

A dreamlike trance before the ambiguous story ends...

[Doylenf · 5/10 · 7 October 2006]

The unknown is always a bit mystifying and even terrifying, but in a fictional story we do like to have satisfying endings to any riddle or any story mixing the supernatural with reason. Here we have a dreamlike exercise that weaves a tale of Victorian schoolgirls, circa 1900, who disappear after a school picnic on a sunny day near Hanging Rock.

That's the story in a nutshell. Before they disappear without explanation, we see the girls leading rather repressed lives without really getting to know any of them.

The disappearance is something the whole story seems to be building toward, because there's an air of dread and mystery about Hanging Rock that makes the viewer feel the conclusion will reveal something--but it never does. The ambiguity remains right up until the final moment.

Summing up: Moody, atmospheric, but rather hollow at the core and some will simply find it a pretentious bore.

If you're up for a free-form dramatization of the word 'unease'...

[Cloten · 14 September 2001]

I remember reading (God knows where) someone's shaggy-dog story about this film. Apparently, this individual had a friend (as people who tell these kind of stories tend to) who went to see 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' sometime in the mid 1970s. He was late, there was the inevitable confusion, and he consequently spent the next two hours whimpering in fear - waiting for the chainsaw-wielding assassin to appear and rip into a bunch of immaculately attired Edwardian schoolgirls.

This is probably as good an analogy as any for the sense of dread this film (fitfully) manages to accumulate. Watching it is like seeing weather systems build. Small increments appear, converge on other increments, circling each other ambiguously before merging into a grey, baleful mass that sits there on the horizon, making atmospheric noises. In 'Picnic...' the wind moves plangently through eucalypts, clocks tick, an orphan girl is the victim of snobbish behaviour, girls gossip, more clocks tick, the wind moves through more eucalypts, the clocks stop, something 'unspeakably eerie' happens, and that's pretty much it.

Ultimately, the film is about Peter Weir placing markers of European culture - corsets, watches, a locally built replica of an Eighteenth century English manor - in the vast, contoured, deeply ambivalent Australian hinterland, and letting his camera record the absurdity of those spatial relationships. His early twentieth century Australians anxiously encircle themselves with the accoutrements of civilization they've brought with them - its dress codes, its class politics, its architectural styles - as if shielding their bodies from the unfamiliar landscape outside. Yet their attempts to maintain a European identity by 'keeping up appearances' come off as merely obsessional.

The elaborate dresses the girls wear, the formalities observed at the picnic (and at a surreal dinner party set on a flat, sunblasted lake edge - a Seurat painting gone horribly wrong), far from being emblems that mark a cultural continuity unifying Australia with Europe, seem oddly fetishistic - deeply arbitrary. Weir's characters seem to sense this meaninglessness also; they're enervated, without conviction. They seem to realize that, in bearing items of European material culture within this new environment, they're merely in possession of a bunch of dead letters - signifiers rendered powerless (decontextualized) by distance. As more than one character remarks, 'it all looks different here'.

To add to the unease, Weir intercuts all this with shots of the landscape - huge, forested, confrontationally empty. There's a sense of something staring back, unimpressed, 'personified' by the oddly biomorphic shapes within Hanging Rock itself.

One can still feel the reverberations, twenty five years on. There are definite echoes of 'Picnic...' in 'The Piano', 'The Virgin Suicides', and the whole slew of films that erstwhile Antipodean Sam Neill rather dodgily categorises the 'Cinema of Unease'. If you really want to freak yourself out, try watching this and 'The Quiet Earth' in the same sitting. You may never feel absolute faith in your ties to the physical universe again.

Well, hello, new all-time favorite film!

[Coventry · 10/10 · 12 January 2022]

In all my years as a member of this wonderful website, there are approximately 120 films - out of literally thousands - that I gave a 10 out of 10 rating. Those titles, covering a variety of genres, are close to perfect in my humble opinion and they all left an everlasting impression on me. Of that already rather small selection, however, only a handful of films genuinely blew me away from start to finish, haunted my thoughts for days afterwards, and fascinate me so immensely that I want to analyze and embrace every slightest detail of them. "Wake in Fright" is such a favorite, and so are "Sweet Movie", "Aguirre - Wrath of God", "M", "The City of Lost Children", and "Santa Sangre". The elite band finally has another new member, as "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is a work of pure cinematic art.

I'm tempted to refer it as "Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock", but I must refrain from using 'only' the director's name. I realize it's a giant cliché, but this movie - more than any other movie I've ever seen - is truly a collective achievement, in which every important aspect is in perfect harmony with the rest. Peter Weir, first and foremost, is the most essential contributor, of course, because he's the glue that keeps the fantastic wholesome together. The ensemble cast is stupendous, with seemingly every member meticulously and ideally cast for the role she/he depicts, like Rachel Roberts as the eerie headmistress, Helen Morse as the cherubic French teacher, John Jarrett as the Outback country boy, and - naturally - the heavenly Anne Lambert as the Botticelli angel Miranda. There's Russell Boyd's hypnotizing cinematography, with almost too many highlights and touches of sheer ingenuity to list. Just look at the magnificent use of simple things, like daylight or slow-motion. Kudos, also, to whoever in charge of scouting and finding all these great locations, such as the elite boarding school in the middle of the Outback and the breathtaking titular beauty spot. Going hand-in-hand with Boyd's brilliant camerawork is the downright mesmerizing music in "Picnic at Hanging Rock". Bruce Smeaton composed an excellent original score, but then extended with some classical pieces and the pan-flute tunes of Georghe Zamphir, it becomes truly exquisite! Seriously, the music is so incredibly beautiful...

But perhaps - undoubtedly, even - the absolute greatest thing about "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is the enigma of it all. Fact, fiction or partially fact; - who cares. As created by Joan Lindsay for her novel, and devotedly turned into a film screenplay by Cliff Green, this story is a mystery without a solution. That alone makes it unique already, but somehow it became one of the only stories in history in which it is acceptable the puzzle isn't resolved. Moreover, we wouldn't want it any other way. The true identity of London's Jack the Ripper never got revealed, and the young girls who vanished on Valentine's Day in the year 1900 during a picnic at Australia's Hanging Rock were never found; - period. That's the way it should always remain.

A beautifully enchanting film

[InnerWisdom1000 · 10/10 · 14 December 2022]

This film is a rare gem in that it weaves a spell on the viewer and transports them to a place afar. One can almost imagine oneself on a beautiful summer's day having a picnic with a large rock mountain beside in the background. There is a sense of an abundance of time, of calmness, tranquility and utter relaxation. The tragedy of the disappearance of some schoolgirls and their governess in the midst of this idyllic bliss is profound and shocking.

Wonderfully scripted, consumately acted and breathtakingly directed, this is a film for the ages.

And the one thing this film and all great films have in common?

Simplicity, less is more, and no gimmicks.

Thank You to all in the making of this wonderful gem....

Beautiful cinematography, otherwise a little flimsy

[miked-26800 · 7/10 · 4 June 2021]

When I first viewed this film twenty or so years ago, I was under the impression that it was based on actual events. This belief of course added to the sense of drama and mystery. I subsequently learnt that the film is based on an historical novel. On first viewing it is difficult not to be impressed with the amazing cinemaphotography. Seeing the film again recently it seemed much less impressive. The story line is flimsy and many of the shots seem posed and artificial. The stand out acting performance by Rachel Roberts.

Surreal and Eerie Film of Disappearing

[Reviews_of_the_Dead · 8/10 · 12 February 2020]

This was a film that I heard from one of my favorite podcasts. They had said they didn't necessarily think it was horror, but the concept of the film had me intrigued. I finally decided to check it out and write this review. Now I'll be the first to admit, it isn't technically horror. It does have enough elements for me that I'm going to write this up to say why. The official synopsis is during a rural summer picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls' school vanish without a trance. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind.

As the synopsis states, we are at a college that prepares women to be ladies back in 1900's. It is Valentine's Day and the girls are going to a rock formation that was created by volcanic activity in the area millions of years ago. The school is run by Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts). She is quite strict. As the girls file down to leave, Miss Lumley (Kirsty Child), advises Sara (Margaret Nelson) that she will not be attending. We aren't given the reason yet though.

Sara is an interesting character as she is love with her best friend Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert). I don't think it is in the way that sexual, because we learn later that Sara grew up in an orphanage. Miranda informs her that she needs to open up to other people as she won't be at this school with her forever.

The rest of the girls file into the carriage that will take them to Hanging Rock and Mrs. Appleyard informs them they can remove their gloves when they pass the small village. Along with them are two teachers, Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray) and Mlle. De Poitiers (Helen Morse). They are also warned to watch out for poisonous snakes and ants that live in the area.

While there, Miranda along with Marion (Jane Vallis) and Irma (Karen Robson) decide to go exploring. They're given permission and head off with Edith (Christine Schuler) allowed to follow them. Strange things start to happen like their watches stop. They were forbidden from climbing the rock formation, but do anyway. The higher up they go, the more weird things that happen. Edith wants to return and is shocked when the other three remove their shoes and stockings. They go even higher up and Edith screams.

Also in the area is Michael Fitzhubert (Dominic Guard). He is there with his uncle, aunt and their valet Albert (John Jarratt). They noticed the young women as they were going up the rock formation. They're shocked by the news that they're missing. They are also the first suspects of possible doing something to them. This takes some weird turns from here. Edith is found, but Miss McCraw went to look and now she's missing. What happened to them and where could they have gone?

Now I need to start off here stating that director Peter Weir did a phenomenal job of creating a creepy atmosphere. I knew before seeing this that there are way too many things that are poisonous in Australia and that is prevalent when they are going to leave and the things they're told to watch out for. The danger is high and these young women still go off on their own. It isn't unbelievable that a volcanic formation would be magnetized, which is why their watches stopped working. It is when the women start to climb the formation does it get eerie.

I normally talk about the soundtrack of a film as one of my last things and I'm not the greatest at noticing them unless it really sticks out. They have a flutist playing a song to Pan and it is quite creepy sounding. To go along with it though, the women start to do things that aren't natural and acting weird. Immediately seeing it, I started to wonder if possible there is something supernatural here at play. If not that, it could go back to natural things causing them to go mad. It was perfect connection to make the film have an even more surreal feel.

What makes this film even more interesting is I felt it gives us another explanation in the form of Michael and Albert. Michael feels guilty and it made me wonder why. Seeing him get sucked in the madness to try to find them had me wondering if he was a part of it or just a good hearted person.

The final aspect of the story I wanted to touch on was seeing the lives of those affected by this event. Sara loses her only friend and she learns that she might be kicked out of school. Her benefactor is behind on the payments for her to stay there. Mrs. Appleyard has to deal with the backlash of losing these students and her school hangs in the balance. We even have the police officer assigned to the investigation as he is mobbed by his own people for answers. This event affects more than just the lives of the missing and it is something we don't really think about.

My only real big issue is that I thought there were some pacing issues in the later second act of the film. I thought it did well in establishing the characters and the mystery. Seeing the beginning of the breakdown of those involved was good, that had me hooked. It kind-of meanders for a bit before it picks up in the third act again. It actually has a pretty bleak ending as well, which I was a fan of.

Acting for this film is something else that was quite strong. Roberts is really good as the headmistress. She wants her school to succeed as well as the students, but she is villainous in how vindictive she can be. She is extremely strict as well. Morse is quite a sweet teacher, but weight of what happens to her seems to break her and I thought it was a solid performance. All of the girls are all good in their distinct ways. Nelson is also quite a tragic character. I also wanted to commend Guard. His character I originally disliked, but seeing what he is willing to do turned me around. It's also fun to see Jarratt in another of his early roles here. The rest of the cast rounded out the film for what was needed.

There's not really much in the way of effects for the film. They do make the characters look disheveled, which is interesting since the time period they are all dressed up. The costumes look authentic and also quite warm to be in. I think it is also interesting as well since they have to be so proper. The cinematography is also well done.

I'm already touched on it a bit, but the score to this film is absolutely amazing. There are really two different types of songs that the film uses. At times that they are going more for the eerie feel, there is the flute that is played. Being that it is a song to Pan, it's interesting that things that are out of the norm are happening. There is more classic music for the other times which I thought was good as well as it fit the scenes.

Now with that said, this film isn't necessarily horror, but the feeling of dread and the mystery definitely make it close. It is haunting to try and figure out what is happening. Going from there, seeing how this event affects everyone is as well. I thought the acting was really good across the board. There was a slight pacing issue, but it doesn't ruin the film. I liked how they really made it feel like it took place in the 1900's and was shot very well. The score of the film was great and fits the scenes perfectly. I would say that this is a good film and one that I will check out again in the future.

Atmospheric, ambiguous, and amateurish

[gbill-74877 · 6/10 · 13 July 2018]

Director Peter Weir creates a dreamy feeling to this mystery of the disappearance of three schoolgirls and a teacher during a picnic at Hanging Rock, Victoria in 1900, and that's probably the key to really enjoying this film, soaking up its atmosphere. I liked the ambiguity of it all, as well as the little Victorian age touches, communing with nature and reading poetry. However, as a whole, it seemed a bit like a made-for-TV production, amateurish in places, and melodramatic in others. The whole point, of course, is that horror is more intense when it is unseen and unknown, and, like others, I see the film as a forerunner to 'The Blair Witch Project'. It was harder to appreciate moments when character actions seemed illogical or the film left loose ends dangling. It's telling to me that the original book explained the events in a very silly way (google it), but author Joan Lindsay's editor had that chapter removed. The film is entertaining, but it didn't live up to its acclaim for me.

The scariest picnic ever!

[SrCAPnCDLvl99 · 10/10 · 23 January 2004]

It'd been quite some time since I last saw Picnic At Hanging Rock, but as soon as I heard that haunting Pan flute it all came back to me and I felt the goosebumps covering my skin once again. This film still has that level of quality to it, and I still consider it one of my absolute favorite films of all time.

As soon as you push that tempting Play button on your remote control as you're watching the Criterion Collection release of this film, you're thrown into a dream that starts as a fantasy but quickly turns into a nightmare as those girls disappear at hanging rock. You know that they're going to and there's nothing you can do to stop it...

I have discovered that most people speak of this film as drama, or maybe something in the line of an art film, which is funny to me as I've always seen it as a horror film. I mean, this film is really scary. Those girls disappeared and noone ever knew what happened to them. I remember thinking of this film as I saw The Blair Witch Project back in 99. Those kids also disappeared in the middle of the woods, only; in that film, you saw what happened to them, something that remains a mystery in this. That's what makes it so great.

It has to be told though, that the film does lose it's pace a bit towards the end as all the scenes are centered around the Appleyard school and leaving out on the mysterious Rock, but that is when the Pan flute is reintroduced, which keeps you in the meditative state you've been lulled into during the course of the film. There's so many scenes that you'll end up thinking about for hours to figure out what they really meant, only to come out empty handed, or possibly with a headache as a result. For instance: I've never understood the importance of the brother & sister link between the kids form the orphanage. If a film touches you in the way that this film does, you can't help but giving it the highest of praise and the 10/10 rating that it truly deserves. This is Peter Weir's one, and unfortunately only, true masterpiece as of yet; a film you must see before you leave the face of the earth and vanish into that dark shadowy place beyond; running into your very own Hanging Rock.

GOOD ONE, BUT..

[andrewchristianjr · 7/10 · 29 May 2021]

I liked the style, mood, and music. But I thought it was very anticlimactic and dull. Also a bit outdated at scenes.

Helen of Troy as a Young Girl or "Everything begins and ends at the exactly right time and place"

[Galina_movie_fan · 8/10 · 31 October 2005]

It is easy to describe the film without giving too much away. Its plot summary tells you exactly what happens:

"Three students and a school teacher disappear on an excursion to Hanging Rock, in Victoria, on Valentine's Day, 1900. Widely (and incorrectly) regarded as being based on a true story, the movie follows those that disappeared, and those that stayed behind, but it delights in the asking of questions, not the answering of them."

Peter Weir in his early film skillfully moves from the recognizable intimate world of the girls' school filled with poetry and high neck dresses, corsets and the mutual crushes to a pagan environment in which "modern" principles and standards have no meaning and no values.

If we assume that the movie does not belong to the straight realism genre but to the "magical" or "mythological" realism, a lot of things would make sense. We may never find out what exactly happened to the girls and their teacher but it would not matter - we could guess. I see this movie as Miranda's story. The girl of such beauty, charm, and charisma simply could not exist in this world for long time. She seemed to know or to feel it when she told her friend Sarah, "You have to learn how to love someone else because I am not going to be here for long time". I've read many times that this is a movie about sexual repression and I would not say that I completely disagree but I think that it has many interpretations, and with its open end and the mystery still present after all these years, any explanation is possible. During their ascend to the Hanging Rock and the noon day nap, the girls and especially Miranda don't seem repressed or unhappy; on the contrary, they are in the state of content and bliss. I'd say that they were longing for something miraculous to happen and I did not feel the presence of menace or nightmare luring through the trees and ready to materialize in the still hot air and swallow them.

I think that Miranda with her golden hair and ethereal beauty was reincarnation of the young Helen of Troy. At that day, February 14 1900, two parallel worlds came as close to each other as possible and there was a window inside the Hanging Rock. One was the turn of the 20th century Victorian world with its restrictions, rules, and laws of what is proper and not and another- the ancient world of the Greek Gods that used to rule the Heaven , Sea, Earth, and Underworld and sometimes, would kidnap the mortal women of immortal beauty. You'd ask "What? Why"? I say, how about the Flute de Pan, the instrument that was first invented by the God of Nature, Pan and which hypnotizing sounds lead the girls inside the rock? The Gods knew that Helen's beauty could destroy the countries and be merciless killing force for many men. They did not stop it thousands years ago from happening - they decided to do it on the Valentine day, 1900. They took Miranda -Helen and I hope they sent her to the Island of Blessed Spirits where she is happy and where "even the highest flying birds of memory could not reach her."

You know, I wish the film stopped right after the disappearance. As much as the further scenes involving the search for the girls and their teacher, the sad and heartbreaking Dickensian tale of an orphan Sarah, and the story of the "iron lady", Mrs. Appleyard are interesting and compelling, they seem strangely unnecessary - they don't add anything to the Miranda's vanishing. The movie is about eternal beauty and femininity, their rarity and impossibility to reach and to own them. The social aspects would work perfectly in another movie, not in this one. Anyway, first thirty minutes of "Picnic at Hanging Rock" are perfection, beauty, and unbearable sensual delight that I've not seen or experienced very often in the movies. I'd rate first 30 minutes – 10+, the rest of the film – 7.5.

Poe and Boticelli ?

[michael-bond · 7/10 · 7 October 2006]

After a couple of viewings of this undoubtedly enigmatic film it seems that the 'mystery' (if solvable at all) must revolve around the following 'clues', if that is indeed what they are : 1) Why did time stop at 12 ? 2) What is the meaning of the scratch marks on Irma's hands, and yet none on the rest of her body, except for the mark (identical to the one on the boy) on her forehead ? 3) Why do the girls fall asleep simultaneously just before their final ascent ? And what's with all the bird imagery ? And why do Irma AND Michael remember nothing of their experience on the Rock? That some kind of allegory of sexual awakening is intended, is so obvious as to be hardly worthy of mention.

All in all rather a frustrating film, though cinematographically excellent, and intelligently wrought.

Dreamlike? Ambiguous? Obtuse? Yes, yes, yes... does that make a good film?

[nathan-63 · 3/10 · 26 July 2002]

I'd say no.

The movie looks pretty. Some of the acting is good but at other times is way over the top. I did not find the movie suspenseful or scary and I'm not sure why anybody would, although some people seem to.

Roger Ebert and Peter Weir (both people who liked this film) sum it up nicely.

Ebert describes it as a film that is "free of plot" That it is a film that doesn't have any final explanation and exists only as an "experience"

Weir says that he worked very hard to have the audience lose awareness of the facts. He did everything he could to hypnotize the audience away from thinking that there might be a solution.

So if you watch this film you should NOT try to figure it out. Realize that it's NOT really a mystery and there is NO answer. If you try and apply any logic or reason to the film, you'll find yourself being frustrated. If you want to see it, expect a film "experience" but don't expect a clear story, realistic characters or a plot.

I found the film to be long, slow and plodding. The point where the three girls disappear is probably the best moment in the whole film, as somebody else noted, but one brief moment of entertainment in an otherwise ambiguous film is not enough.

I watched it thinking that it was a mystery. I watched the characters do odd things (like falling into fits of apparently simultaneous-narcolepsy) and thought to myself "What the heck was that?". I tried to use logic to piece together things that people did and said.

I obviously went into this film with wrong expectations. I thought there'd be a plot, I thought there'd be a mystery. I should have read Ebert and Weirs' comments prior to watching the film and I'd realize that there is no plot and that the director didn't want you to even think for one moment that there was the possibility of an answer. It is a film that is intentionally obtuse.

If you're looking for a dreamlike escapade or something to soothe you to sleep then perhaps this film is for you.

PS: This film is NOT based on any true events any more than The Blair Witch Project is. Search the internet for more information and educate yourselves.