Picnic at Hanging Rock

"Waiting a million years, just for us."

Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) is a truly strange movie. Maddeningly opaque by design, this adaptation of Joan Lindsey's novel frustrates all efforts at categorization. Weir employs sumptuous artistry at the service of an unsolvable riddle.

On Valentine's Day 1900, the girls of Appleyard College in Woodend, Australia lunch at Hanging Rock. Three girls vanish without trace, along with teacher Ms. McCraw (Vivean Gray). The mystery turns Woodend upside down: Police Sergeant Bumpher (Wyn Roberts) fends off frenzied reporters and irate townspeople. Visiting Englishman Michael (Dominic Hubert) and valet Bertie (John Jarratt) obsessively comb the Rock for evidence. Headmistress Ms. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) seems most concerned with Sara (Margaret Nelson), a foundling obsessed with missing Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert). One girl's reappearance only complicates things.

Australian films seem preoccupied with contrasting the country's Western culture and primeval landscape. Confronting white Australians with Aborigines is a common device, establishing clear racial and spiritual conflicts. Weir himself explored these themes in The Last Wave (1977), but provides a more abstract opposition in Hanging Rock. Civilization isn't opposed by fellow humans but Australia itself: a land of physical beauty and dark secrets.

Weir nails both aspects. Australia's never looked lovelier, with Russell Boyd's photography striking a pantheist tone. He mixes gorgeous scenery with copious fauna: hungry ants, curious koalas, croaking birds and frilled lizards crowd the frame, even a "moving" plant. The Rock itself seems alive, with face-like cliffs peering intently at the girls. Bruce Smeaton's score mixes Gheorghe Zamfir's dreamy panpipes with Mozart and Men of Harlech, musically highlighting the culture clash.

These aesthetics conceal an unsettling edge. Weir and writer Cliff Green sprinkle portents throughout early scenes: Miranda casually tells Sara she "won't be here much longer." Ms. McCraw muses over Hanging Rock's formation a million years ago, "quite young geologically speaking." Every character's watch stops upon arrival at the Rock. The girls utter profundities as they near the peak, seemingly entranced. Natural portents grow more sinister: Edith (Chrstine Schuler) reports an ominous "red cloud," flies engulf a police bloodhound, Michael repeatedly encounters a telltale swan.

This invests the show with supernatural qualities, its story existing on an abnormal temporal plane. Weir doesn't completely rule out conventional explanations (abduction? murder? accident?) but without hard evidence they seem unconvincing. The girls apparently stumble on some primal secret: perhaps a higher consciousness like Aborigine Dreamtime? Lindsey later published an explanatory epilogue, The Secret of Hanging Rock, which only makes things stranger.

The story's key event resembles A Passage to India, another colonial tale focusing on a cliff-side mystery. Like Adela Quested, the Appleyard girls explosively mix nature with repressed sexuality. Dressed in virginal white, they recite love sonnets and dance joyfully about the rock. Even Ms. McCraw removes her corset before disappearing. Loveless Sara worships Miranda, a mystical girl who similarly enraptures Michael. Mrs. Appleyard goes mad from her own repression (shades of Black Narcissus?). The only healthy sexuality comes from Appleyard's servants (Tony Llewelyn-Jones and Jacki Weaver).

Frankly, Hanging Rock's central mystery isn't so alienating as its structure. Weir touches on many themes (the media circus surrounding Bumpher's investigation, Appleyard's school falling into disrepute) but leaves them as brief sketches, details in a mosaic. The plot is elliptical at best, the characters enigmatic. Rock lacks a figure like Forster's Mrs. Moore, observing "passing figures in a Godless universe" with studied objectivity. Everyone grows absorbed in the mystery, their psyches warped by sheer incomprehension.

Rachel Roberts plays against type as a frighteningly repressed, tormented governess. At first she seems merely cruel, but later scenes reveal her insecurity and anguish. Anne-Louise Lambert makes a striking Miranda: with Boyd's angelic lighting she truly is a "Botticelli Angel." Margaret Nelson's Sara is mostly meaningful glances and tragic gestures. John Jarratt's earthy Bertie ("I say the crude things; you just think them") proves the most likeable character next to Helen Morse's French nanny.

Picnic at Hanging Rock proves uniquely absorbing. Through its sumptuous visuals and eerie conceit, it ultimately depicts human fear of the unknown. Given the evidence presented though, maybe it's better that we don't know what happened.