PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK: Peter Weir’s Surreal Mystery is As Dizzying As Ever in a New 4K Restoration
The most immediate sensation that I got from watching the new 4K restoration of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock was the trance-like camerawork within rock structures where a few of the boarding school girls go exploring within. This was the first time I had ever watched the movie and while I was expecting it to be a bit sinister considering the main plot, I was truly surprised by the hypnotic nature of its central mystery. The sounds, ethereal music, the slow-motion pans and tilts that makes the maze-like structure of the rocky walkway and its various crevices feel dizzyingly elliptical, all highlight Weir’s mastery of sensation and feeling so early in his career. It’s the film’s most immediately memorable sequence because it plays almost completely on the mood drawing from form, while the rest of the film plays out in a more conventional mystery-thriller fashion.
Hypnotic Rocks
Not just by the setting of an all-girls school, Picnic at Hanging Rock has quite a bit in common with Don Seigel’s The Beguiled, released six years earlier, in the way it in turns explored the way its four central young women, Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), Marion (Jane Vallis), Irma (Karen Robson), and Edith (Christine Schuler) become entranced and enveloped in an intangible sense of doom. The role of men in these films exist on the peripheries as both false saviors and tragic figures, upending romantic dynamics with a keen sense of dread that is damning for both women and men. Michael (Dominic Guard), who is seen briefly near the beginning of the film giving loving glances to Miranda, has recurring nightmares about the disappearance of the girls and goes to find them in the rocks with his friend Albert (John Jarrett). The filming of the rocks at various daunting angles and the acute use of height between the various elevations of the rock formation are utilized perfectly to make turn it into a supernatural formation, one which emanates and feeds off the curiosities of those who traverse it.
Guilt and Tragedy
Weir uses survivors guilt brilliantly. The one girl who goes venturing into the rocks but comes back is the meek Edith, who is unable to give a proper account of what happened other than noticing a strange red cloud. She becomes the unwanted center of attention and the film’s suspense shifts from the disappearance of the girls to the Edith’s internal turmoil and Ms. Appleyard’s (Rachel Roberts) stern command of the school and damage control of the controversial situation. The supernatural angle of the film comes into play in the dreams that Michael has involving a white swan and the general sense of intangible dread experienced by various characters are the rock face.
Conclusion
Picnic at Hanging Rock soars in the way Weir manages to build a stark contrast between his filmmaking technique at the rock, which becomes so much more experimental, fusing and dissolving images and textures, to the scenes at girl’s college which play out much more like a traditional drama. The various layers of feeling from ethereal coming-of-age fantasy, to domestic drama, to supernatural mystery to surreal nightmare turn Weir’s film into a beguiling experience that defies genre.
The 4K restoration of Picnic at Hanging Rock was released on the Criterion Collection
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