Friday 16 December 2011

Picnic At The Hanging Rock Review


  
                                         
Figure One - Cover

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a 1975 Australian feature film directed by Peter Weir and starring Anne-Louise Lambert, Helen Morse, Rachel Roberts and Vivean Gray. The film is adapted from the novel of the same name, by author Joan Lindsay.
The film relates the story of the disappearance of several schoolgirls and their teacher during a picnic to Hanging Rock on St. Valentine's Day in 1900, and the subsequent effect on the local community.

•Directed by: Peter Wier

•Written by: Joan Lindsay & Cliff Green

•Genre: Drama, Mystery, Suspense & Classics

•Duration: 115 Minutes


Figure Two - Scene at the Hanging Rock 

Picnic at the Hanging rock starts at a Victorian school for girls in which the girls set off for a picnic trip to “The Hanging Rock”. Once getting there three of the girls ask if they can explore, they head of towards the rock slowly making their way up it becoming drowsy but finally go through a passage and not to be seen again, leaving behind suspicion. Throughout the film and at the end the audience is left wondering what the film was about and what actually happened to the girls, which makes you sit in your seat and puzzle about it for a few minutes.  

“We are left with an uncanny respect for the mysteries in life that can never be solved by logic alone.” (Brussat, 2002)

The possibility of what happened to the girls is unsettling to the audience who are so use to finding out what happens at an end of a film, but unlike most films “Picnic at Hanging Rock” doesn’t do this, it simply tells you a story and leaves it up to your imagination to decide – was it evil?, was the hanging rock possessed? or did the girls fall down the rock to their deaths?  


“It's all pretty overheated and under explained but this arty, vague, and possibly supernatural movie lingers on in the memory.”(Guide, 2010)

                                           
Figure Three - The lost girls 


The Australian setting for the film is beautiful place, the school and the girls are also beautiful, which makes the beginning of the film peaceful and calming but once they head to the hanging rock, the presences of evil and horror starts to creep in putting the audience on edge and then the girls start to act strange and camera angles from bushes, plants and insects which alienates the audience from the scenery and making them fear for the girls.  

“His visionary camerawork keeps resting on plants, animals, hives of restless insects, the screen almost bursting with wildness. Weir’s emphasis is on nature’s alien quality, how these prim girls are set against unknowable forces.” (Nathan, 2010)





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