NOTE: I AM NOT THE AUTHOR OF THE ARTICLE. FOLLOWING IS A SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE. YOU CAN FIND THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE USING GOOGLE.

The main points Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Puzzle of the Art Film

It has been called the 'quintessential Australian period art film.'

It is a film set in a not-so-long-ago days of colonial Australia.

The ending of the film is not resolved although various clues and red herrings are in the film.

The movie installs a foreboding sense of the supernatural.

The plot is a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel.

The strictly regimented environment in the school they leave behind when they go to picnic at the rock is a 'hotbed of barely restrained sensuality.'

The girls that climb the rock at one point fall into a 'mysterious sleep.'

Watches stop working at the same time. (Which could indicate some kind of electromagnetic interference in the area. It would be interesting to know of they watches started working again once they left the area of the picnic.)

Three of the girls pass into a crevice leaving one, Edith, behind and screaming. (This is an interesting point since people don't normally scream unless they see something frightening. Seeing the girls walk away in and of itself shouldn't have been frightening enough to cause Edith to scream in the way she did. Get angry, yes. Yell at them, yes. Scream? No.)

Sara committed suicide back at the school. (I think the jury is out on that one. Mrs. Appleyard had treated her so badly and threatened to send her back to the orphange that it could have been the final straw for Sara but on the other hand Mrs. Appleyard was flaky enough that the two could have gotten into an argument and Mrs. Appleyard could have hit Sara hard enough to accidentally cause her to fall out a window.)

The rock is a 'devouring feminine presence.'

The girls disappear and the threat of their unbridled sensuality goes with them. (One thing here. Various articles say the same thing but as to the book and the original film there is no overt sex. Sara seems to be in love with Miranda but nothing happens. What the various writers seem to be saying that just because these young girls were beautiful then they are automatically sex objects and that's what we should concentrate on instead of their intelligence or abilities.)

(The article relates patriarchal control to the fact that Irma and Edith were checked by a doctor to make sure sexual relations had not happened. This was to eliminate any possibility of rape and would pretty much be standard procedure for girls who had disappeared and then been found or one that had run away from something screaming.)

Since Irma came back to the school later and was dressed in red it is indicative of her being 'blooded' on the rock. (Yet the doctor indicated that she had not been sexually violated so how can the red of the dress relate to blood?)