87. Picnic at Hanging Rock

Peter Weir, 1975

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a beautiful dream. It is based on a true story, about how a group of schoolgirls set out for Hanging Rock in Australia on Saint Valentine’s Day 1900 and how some never returned. Yet, this is no mystery film. It is not some true crime story. It is very much a dream. It is a film filled with eerie, bizarre music, beautiful girls who dream their lives away, and haunting, lingering images. It is a film less about plot than the dream like meditation of a thing which happened, but which no one understands. That said, it is important to note that, while the film does indulge in one or two unrealized possibilities concerning the disappearance of the missing girls, it offers nothing even approaching a concrete explanation. This is fitting as the real mystery was never solved. This is, perhaps, the films most unique quality and one which rests at its core. Other films approaching unsolved mysteries, if I may borrow Robert Stack’s shtick, generally offer a solution. Take, for example From Hell, one of the numerous films which tries to present “what really happened” in the Ripper Murders of London’s Whitechapel district. From Hell suggests the killings were ritual in nature, committed by a nutty Free Mason. Time After Time, another Ripper film, suggests that Jack escaped Victorian London for 1980s San Francisco by means of H. G. Wells’ time machine. That said, it is remarkable that Weir leaves well enough alone in Picnic at Hanging Rock, offering not solutions, but a film which is every bit the enigma the actual event remains to this day.

Like some of Weir’s other, and In my opinion , better Australian films, Picnic at Hanging Rock is also about the natural in Australia. This is not to say that his films, particularly this one and The Last Wave, are rooted in reality. Instead, Weir approaches the idea of nature in Australia from an aboriginal standpoint. The view he offers in these films is one of a land that is impossibly old and possessed of powers beyond human comprehension. It gives mystical powers to native aboriginal people, makes young girls disappear, alters the perceptions of other women, and, most of all, defends itself against the growing encroachment of so-called civilized humanity into its ancient heart. Hanging Rock, after all, is an impossibly old, entirely natural rock, standing amid the Australian wilderness. It seems willing to accept into itself those people who are willing to embrace its power, while repulsing all others, stopping their watches, spinning compasses, and putting them asleep. Make no mistake though, while the rock is clearly possessed of some sort of ancient power, it is not the films antagonist. I am not saying that it, malevolently or not, snatched those girls most willing to commune with nature while actively repulsing those who resist it (The girls who disappear are shown to be the sort who enjoy spending days at a time outside, sleeping in the grass, picking daisies, frolicking among the wild. The girl in the smaller group which wonders onto the rock who is not taken is the bookish one who will not even remove her shoes and stockings outdoors). I am saying that the film is a dream and that, within its boundaries, anything is possible.