Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 20-October-02
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
I have heard a lot about Peter Weir's "Picnic at Hanging Rock" over the past few years --- it seems to be enjoying a second life as a forgotten classic, even though Weir went on to fame with other, more popular pictures such as "The Year of Living Dangerously," "Dead Poets Society," and "The Truman Show." I can see why it didn't really fly in 1979 (when it reached the States); the time was ripe for the adoring awe of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and the fantastic heroics of the first "Star Wars" trilogy. Unlike most films which hint at or show strange and magical worlds beyond our own, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" focuses not on the chosen few who transcend ordinary experience to find new destinations, but on the ones who are left behind. From that point of view, the story is a lot more frightening. (There's a fine line between adventurous wonder and uncomprehending fear.)
The first half of the movie depicts an unsolved mystery. On Valentine's Day, 1900, a group of schoolgirls from Appleyard College (a finishing school for proper British ladies) goes on an outing to Hanging Rock, a small mountain in Australia. Three of them, and one of their teachers, disappear without a trace. The darling of the school is Miranda (Anne Lambert), an airy sylph who attracts both classmates and teachers with her beauty and slightly unearthly presence. It is she who feels the call of Hanging Rock and leads three of her friends on an exploration of its slopes. Only one, a pudgy, unimaginative hanger-on named Edith, returns. (Another, Irma, is found alive but unconscious several days later.) The chaperons of the group are Miss McCraw (Vivean Gray), a brainy spinster, and Mademoiselle de Portiers (Helen Morse), a pretty, young French assistant. Miss McCraw, for some unexplained reason, follows the girls to the top of mountain and also disappears.
The events leading up to the girls' disappearance are depicted in a languid, dreamy way with a slight hint of the paranormal. Once at Hanging Rock, for instance, everyone's watch stops at exactly twelve noon. In addition, as the girls start climbing the mountain they seem to be drawn more and more by some mysterious force (which is also shown to work on one of the men who goes looking for them). Indeed, Edith abandons her friends and runs away screaming in terror after they awaken from a seemingly enchanted nap and begin climbing, slowly and without looking back, into a cleft in the rocks. We don't witness Miss McCraw's ascent, but we see her attracted by some call from the mountain and later learn that Edith saw her running up the hill as she herself was coming down.
So what happened to them? Weir doesn't tell us. He offers up the idea of a supernatural force related to Hanging Rock, but he also provides a couple of human suspects who may have dispatched with the girls and Miss McCraw for criminal ends. These are a young British nobleman, Michael Fitzhubert (Dominic Guard), and his family's Aussie servant, Bertie (John Jarratt), who were also visiting Hanging Rock on the momentous day and witnessed the girls setting off on their hike. Both men admired the girls, Michael discreetly and Bertie openly, and Michael, in particular, is questioned by the police. But the movie shies away from pointing them out as murderers (and we are told that neither Edith nor Irma were raped during their time on the mountain). Michael, in fact, becomes obsessed with the thought of the beautiful Miranda being lost to the world and conducts his own search of Hanging Rock after the police have given up, assisted by the genial Bertie. They seem to be just as bewildered as everyone else.
The second half of the movie is split between the search for the missing persons and the effects of the tragedy on the residents of Appleyard College. Particularly distressed are Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts), the matter-of-fact proprietress whose livelihood is threatened by the negative press surrounding the unaccountable event, and Sara (Margaret Nelson), an orphan who adored Miranda and whose benefactor has stopped paying her tuition. The college scenes are the movie's weakest, because they lose the eerie feeling created by Hanging Rock. In fact, the story seems to cling to the mysterious veil provided by the mountain to an improbable extent, most notably in the fact that the three people who have personal experience with the power of Hanging Rock --- Edith, Michael, and, especially, Irma --- do not offer up a single piece of information that could explain what happened (and no one seems to press them). Left without recourse to the supernatural, the latter part of the story veers into melodrama, although Weir's straightforward direction and the sober deportment of the actresses keep it from being overblown.
"Picnic at Hanging Rock" reminded me of the "The Virgin Suicides" in its theme of young beauty swallowed up by enigmatic forces, leaving others behind to wonder at it all. Weir's movie has more to work with, however, in its historical setting and the presence of Hanging Rock, which calls to mind primal forces that we cannot tame or even fully comprehend. There is an interesting suggestion that the mountain might have freed the girls and Miss McCraw in some way from the constrictive expectations of gentile womanhood in 1900 (Irma is found without her corset, and Miss McCraw was last seen by Edith running up the hill in just her pantaloons). But the how and why of the disappearances are better left unexplained. What we are shown is what happens to people who live in the earthly world of struggle, pain, and passion when they are confronted with things they can't understand. The disappearances on Hanging Rock --- whether they represent nature, the paranormal, the divine, or merely death --- generate dread, frustration, awe, and even jealousy in those who are not initiated into their mystery. This is the flip side of the magical quest story that leaves behind an unnerving, but not unpleasant, sensation.
Copyright © 2002 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
