★ 7 / 10
_**Several females suddenly go missing in southeast Australia
Wuchak
_**Several females suddenly go missing in southeast Australia in 1900**_ When the students & staff of a girl’s school outside Melbourne take an outing to…
_**Several females suddenly go missing in southeast Australia in 1900**_
When the students & staff of a girl’s school outside Melbourne take an outing to Hanging Rock on Valentine’s Day in 1900, three girls and a teacher mysteriously go missing. What happened to them?
Directed by Peter Weir and based on the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975) is an artsy psychological mystery that seems timeless. The style is akin to movies like “Days of Heaven” (1978), “The Secret Garden” (1993) and “The Virgin Suicides” (1999). If you like those movies you’ll appreciate this one. While not as compelling as Weir’s future “Dead Poets Society” (1989), there are some obvious parallels. Both movies deal with prep schools that represent the curious constraints of civilization; you play the game to survive and the only way to escape is through some kind of exile.
The first act is artistic, but rather dull with an increasing sense of foreboding. Things pick up during the haunting outing at Hanging Rock. Once the females go missing the movie becomes compelling because the viewer WANTS to know what happened. The fun of the movie is to speculate on the clues and come to a probable conclusion, as well as look for symbolic meaning.
I should add that I own the “The Secret of Hanging Rock,” published in 1987, which contains Lindsay’s supposedly missing 18th chapter. I strongly believe this was a scam by the publisher to sell more books after the author’s death due to the increasing interest in the story via the movie’s international success. There is zero factual evidence of this apocryphal 'last chapter' containing the 'explanation' to the original book. Lindsay had repeatedly stated that she did NOT write any solution and purposefully left the story a mystery, fiercely advocating the open-endedness of her tale. It doesn’t help that this curiously brief ‘last chapter’ doesn’t fit the style & content of the original novel; it’s awkwardly blunt with its peculiar ‘explanation.’ Still, it is ONE of the possible answers and certainly adds to the interesting mystery.
The film runs 1 hour, 47 minutes, with another version running about 8 minutes longer. It was shot at Hanging Rock in the state of Victoria, about a 50-minute drive northwest of Melbourne in southeast Australia; the Appleyard College sequences were shot at Martindale Hall near Mintaro in South Australia, about a 7-hour drive northwest of Hanging Rock. Other scenes were shot in the studio at Adelaide, which is about an hour drive south of Martindale Hall.
GRADE: B
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★ 7 / 10
This picnic tastes great but is unfulfilling.
tommythek
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…
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.
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