Another review

A Completely Incomplete Mystery ; by WendyD3520 ; Feb 07 '01

Pros: beautifully filmed, haunting story

Cons: if you require a tidy ending, you'll be disappointed

The Bottom Line You will begin to appreciate this movie when you stop trying to figure it out.

Recommended: Yes

Type A personalities beware: Picnic at Hanging Rock is a movie that presents a problem with no solution. It is a riddle with no answer. Set and filmed in Australia by Peter Weir (Witness, The Truman Show, Dead Poets Society) in 1975, this film is now available in a special director's cut that has seven minutes less footage than the original. And so, for the critics that complained that not enough information was given the first time around, Weir seems to be telling us that he gave us too much. Maybe he's afraid that we came away with theories that he never intended.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (based on a 1967 book written by Joan Lindsay) is set in 1900 Australia and around the students of a girls' boarding school called Appleyard College (Mrs. Appleyard played by Rachel Roberts). The stern, oppressive Victorian school , its appearance and atmosphere, lies in stark contrast with the primitive environment. The girls at the school have been kept away from boys a little too long. It is St. Valentine's Day and they are full of romantic and sexual energy and they are developing crushes on each other - mostly on a beautiful and cerebral girl named Miranda (played by Anne Lambert).

The freshly starched and corseted girls and their teachers are going for a day trip to an ancient volcanic formation - Hanging Rock - to have a picnic. Four of the girls, including Miranda, decide to take a walk on a path up through the rock (at once beautiful and sinister with close-ups of buzzing insects and scrambling lizards, and with an eerie musical score), but only one of them comes down. There are clues as to what might have happened to the other girls, but none of them add up so we don't even know what is intended to be a clue or a hint. We almost certainly feel a personification of the rock itself, and remember that the girls seemed compelled to climb higher and higher. The only girl to return from the rock, Edith (played by Christine Schuler), emerges in a state of hysteria, crying out that her friends are gone. Meanwhile back at the picnic, everyone has taken a nap. While they've slept, all of the clocks have stopped exactly at noon, and one of the teachers has disappeared. In fact, Edith remembers seeing the teacher coming up the rock as she's running down - the teacher missing her skirt.

The rest of the movie involves the search, unsuccessful until a young man (Dominic Gould) that seems to be obsessed with Miranda finds one of the other girls (played by Karen Robson). She is scratched and bruised, but her bare feet aren't hurt at all and she has no memory (at least she says she has no memory) of what happened to her or the others. The whole second half makes you feel drained and weighted down as if you'd been sitting in the hot Australian sun letting ants crawl all over you.

If it seems like I've given too much of the story away, all I can say is that these details do not make the movie the stunner that it is. As you watch, listen to what the girls say before they leave for the picnic. Did they know that something was about to happen? Listen to the curious things that everyone says about Miranda. And try to make sense of the rock, but don't be upset when you realize there is none to be made. This is like one of those poems that is meant to be felt - not unraveled. It doesn't matter if you conclude that the girls were taken by actual men, moon men, or the rock, itself.

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