The welcomed mystery of “Picnic at Hanging Rock”
“Personally, I always found it the most satisfying and fascinating aspect of the film. I usually find endings disappointing: they’re totally unnatural. You are creating life on the screen, and life doesn’t have endings. It’s always moving on to something else and there are always unexplained elements.”
- Peter Weir (Sight & Sound, 1976)
There are a remarkable amount of preferences that led me to watch “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (Peter Weir, 1975). The first one that comes to mind is the influence it had on Sofia Coppola’s work, especially “The Virgin Suicides” (1999). Still one of my favorite movies to date, The Virgin Suicides hung itself to my mind as if I was one of the neighborhood boys, watching and trying to point out exactly what led to all the happenings around those Lisbon girls. The scene, late in the movie, when the male characters meet by the pool, away from it all, completely lost — still, after all the time — represents a lot of my experience as the viewer. The mystery engulfed me, puzzled me, and left me wondering about the girls.
This first preference was also what led me to hear for the first time about the movie through a friend. But other things came while looking for information about the movie. How some of the viewers and critics call it a horror movie (which is possibly my favorite genre of movies), how the mood and looks of the movie made me think of a modern take on the fairy tale world, a trip to a fairyland of some sorts. The sound and looks of the trailer on YouTube got me hooked. It would take me another couple of years to watch the movie though as if I had created a myth surrounding what I already knew and was too afraid to be let down by the real thing. I had created in my head an image and I wasn’t prepared to let go.
But eventually, I did. I decided to change the what-if for the real thing. I sat down on a Sunday night and I started the movie. And the experience has since then invaded my mind and there made a nest. The images float through my mind’s eye. I have a memory of them and sometimes I just go for videos of it, as if I’m searching once more for that feeling, that amazement.
Peter Weir’s movie, based on Joan Lindsay’s novel, tells the story of three girls and a teacher from a boarding school in Australia in the year 1900 that go missing on Valentine’s Day when they were allowed to go out of the school in a camp trip for a picnic by the enormous and wild Hanging Rock. After their unexplained disappearance, the world of order, the civilization they belonged to, is left to deal with the repercussions of the mystery. Each part of this civilized world is put against the wall. They want to go on with their lives, they need to, but as time passes, most characters find themselves stuck, in need of an answer, a closure. The most prominent characters left wondering are the french teacher, Mademoiselle de Poitiers (Helen Morse), Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts), the headmistress of the boarding school, Sara Waybourne (Margaret Nelson), an orphan who has created a tight relationship with Miranda, one of the missing girls, Michael (Dominic Guard), a young gentleman from Great Britain, Albert (John Jarratt), a young servant for Michael’s family who turns into a friend and, finally, the policeman, Sgt. Bumpher (Wyn Roberts).
Each character has a specific way of looking at the mystery and dealing with its consequences. From the bourgeois idea of sexuality to the criminal take and the idea of a society in the presence of the wilderness that surrounds them. And yet, no explanation is enough. There are not enough clues for any of their beliefs to make sense. In the end, a rationalization of the problem is nothing more than a projection of the characters’ internal struggles.
To emphasize the eeriness of the whole situation, we, the viewers, are also invited to watch. Right from the first scene, we are put right in the middle of the rooms where those girls sleep and prepare themselves. They recite poems and giggle about a letter one of them received. It is Valentine’s Day and they will get out of that building, for once. Before they are on their way through, we watch them from close, but not intimately. We are there, in their intimate moments, but we are far from their minds and souls as if behind all that joyful preparation there is already a secret the viewer is not included on.
As the credits roll and we are put there among the girls, we are introduced to a sort of fantasy world. The editing contributes to this feeling of bending of space and time as if the world of those girls is somehow magical and to enter it means that details that are generally hidden will be more in the open. There’s a certain glow, a certain moisture around the image. The gaze over the female body is enhanced. Sexuality as a promise is veiled under the innocence and the decency of those white dresses.
Mrs. Appleyard makes sure to tell them that this is a rare opportunity. If they do obey and act as they have been taught to act, there might be more. She also warns them about the Rock: beware and don’t go too far. There are dangers out of those walls, dangers target to young girls like them but also dangers of nature itself. Snakes, lizards, insects: all ready to kill with their poison if you are too careless. Nature, at this point, could symbolize the dangers of sexuality, but it also poses a threat itself. It is the last call to order, to remind the girls where they belong. They will be out there, but they will also be back in school for discipline. And that is for the better.
Out of school and into the field, the girls pass through the dusty roads of Australia. They go further away from civilization and as long as they are still in the presence of society, they keep their decorum. Once in the wilderness, that decorum starts to loosen up. Among trees and bushes and under the shadow of Hanging Rock, they are soon transported to this world of dreams. A hazy version of the real world.
To create an enhanced feeling of dreaming, Weir and his cinematographer Russell Boyd made use of bride veils in front of the camera. This veil not only gives a sense of a transformation of the materiality of the world around the girls but also serves as a new wall in front of the viewer’s eyes. We continue to be close to the girls, especially the ones that adventure further into the Rock, but we are also far. We are invited into their adventure, but not into their secret. We follow, amazed, seduced — children astray into the forest, following the faeries to be lost forever.
In his interview with Sight & Sound, Weir also remarked that “we worked very hard at creating a hallucinatory mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotize the audience away from the possibility of solutions… There are, after all, things within our own minds about which we know far less than about disappearances at Hanging Rock. And it’s within a lot of those silences that I tell my side of the story.”
The veil over the camera, the close-ups over the missing girl’s faces, heels, and hands, uncovered as they climb higher into the Rock, the editing with dissolving images, one over the other, the disconnected dialogues that keep one of the girls in the group disassociated to the point she has to run away in fear, and the soundtrack, a mix of nature sounds and an eerie pan flute music that recalls a seduction of the wilderness. Time itself feels unpredictable. As soon as they come into the Rock, all the watches stop. It is just a first sign that time is out of control. No more ticking of a clock to tell them what to do and when. Time is bending. So much so that high in the Rock, the missing girls move slow, as if taken by some sort of enchantment.
After the dream, Edith is the only girl to make it back. Her companions Miranda, Marion (Jane Vallis), and Irma (Karen Robson) are moving on but Edith is taken by a deep fear. A piercing scream breaks the dream. We are pulled from it and back into the school. Later on, the remaining girls arrive. They are late and Mrs. Appleyard is furious. But that anger turns into fear as Mrs. de Pointier comes out of the cart in tears. Girls are missing. The other teacher as well. The dream has made victims.
A great parallel is to be made here. The disappearance of the girls and the suicide of the Lisbon girls (in The Virgin Suicides) have a similar effect on both the viewers and the remaining characters. And this parallel starts even before those ideas appear in the minds of the surviving cast. That happens because the girls are portrayed as mysteries, as blank canvas into which the characters (and the viewer) put their own reflection. Most of the other characters in both movies have enough personality for us to see them as people in their own rights, but the main girls that disappear from this world are, in the end, enigmas, puzzles, pieces of something you have to figure out, but never will, hence the mystery. The traces of personality we see on them are, generally, what the owner of the gaze bestow upon them. This is even more clear on the main girl from “Picnic at Hanging Rock”. Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) is the most beautiful of them all, she is like one of Boticelli’s angels, like one of the teachers says. Her presence is ephemeral. Everyone is watching her but no one sees beyond the vivid and shiny beauty. If she does have a personality, it is hidden beyond the admiration that whoever is watching has for her.
From then on, the movie takes a less dreamy and more straight-forward narration. In school, the ticking of the clock can be heard at all times. Discipline is reinforced, even if there is hardly a way to do it — everything is falling apart. The visit to the wilderness has invited chaos into order. And despite the struggle to be back to normal life, in the end, chaos wins. And because it is chaos, we and the remaining characters are left without an answer. Not even one of the missing girls being found mitigates the mystery. Irma is found by Michael — the British young man who adventure after them one night and is almost sucked into the dream as well. Nothing clear has happened to Irma — besides some cuts in her hands, she is “intact” and fine. But she has no memory — whatever happened is locked inside her. She has been transformed, even her peers act on that. But not even her change unlocks another piece of the puzzle. We continue to be left out, without answers.
To some, this meant the movie was bad. When moving from Australia to the United States, the movie’s reception changed. The American critics and public were used to having answers and the movie refuses to give them any. But some saw beyond it. And I tend to agree with this group. Watching a movie does not need to be about receiving answers. It can be, but it doesn’t have to. “Picnic at Hanging Rock” offers a mood, a feeling. I was hypnotized by the movie’s charms. I was seduced into its mystery and its dream. I am, of course, curious about what happened. My rational mind tries to put pieces together. At some points, I even try to imagine a possible outcome. But all of that to absorb and understand chaos, because as humans, we continuously try to put order into it. But as the magnificent landscape that is Hanging Rock and the bending of civilization by a force of nature, sometimes there are things not meant to be understood, but appreciated.
Roger Ebert concludes his review of the movie by saying that “Picnic at Hanging Rock” of course subscribes to none of those readings or to any reading. I’ve heard its ending described as inconclusive (it is) and frustrating (ditto). But why not? Do we want a rational explanation? Arrest and trial for vagabond kidnapers? An autopsy revealing broken necks? Poisonous snakes named as the culprits? If this film had a rational and tidy conclusion, it would be a good deal less interesting. But as a tantalizing puzzle, a tease, a suggestion of a forbidden answer just out of earshot, it works hypnotically and very nicely indeed.”
And I can’t help but agree that the answering of this mystery would make things far less interesting. Because whatever happens in “Picnic at Hanging Rock” feels like a dream that, despite its dark and dangerous subtleties, the dreamer doesn’t want to wake up from.
-
If you are still interested in the movie and/or the books, here is a selection of texts and videos available online:
Sight & Sound interview from 1976: http://www.peterweircave.com/articles/articleg.html
A very interesting take on the relationship between viewer, the male gaze and the girls from Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Virgin Suicides: https://www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2016/03/27/haunted-blondes/
An essay from the Criterion website: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/3202-picnic-at-hanging-rock-what-we-see-and-what-we-seem
A small bit of interview from the Criterion channel with Peter Weir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuImwxk3xUk&ab_channel=criterioncollection
A very good analysis of some of the movie’s themes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvcfxQQjvmw&ab_channel=Alpha-Alpaca-Pack
