Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975.
Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Rachel Roberts, Anne-Louise Lambert, Vivean Gray, John Jarratt, Helen Morse, Margaret Nelson, and Anthony Llewellyn-Jones.
SYNOPSIS:
Three students and a teacher go missing on a school trip, causing much drama in the aftermath.
Peter Weir’s 1975 classic Picnic at Hanging Rock begins on Valentine’s Day in 1900, where a class of teenage girls and two teachers from a strict girl’s school go for an educational day out at Hanging Rock, an area of hills, rocks and trees away from the hustle and bustle of the town.
However, three of the girls and one of the teachers disappeared that day with no explanation. A week later, one of the missing girls reappears, unable to clarify anything about what happened. All this set to a backdrop of Victorian-era discipline, repressed sexuality and a simmering, omnipresent lament on class that bubbles just below the surface.
But those are all just the basics, as Picnic at Hanging Rock is one of those movies that remains largely plotless, giving you a vague sense of a mystery story that could lead into a police procedural to try and find out what happened, but would rather put you in a certain place at a certain time and let events unfold, never feeding you – or, indeed, the characters on the screen – information and creating a mood of uneasiness and unpleasant things happening with no explanation or resolve.
This may frustrate anybody coming to this movie expecting a detective story or some sort of outback horror slasher, especially given the 107-minute running time, but there is an atmosphere here that cinematographer Russell Boyd manages to create with his intense angles and sweeping camera work, the location doing most of the work with Boyd highlighting it and composers Bruce Smeaton and Gheorghe Zamfir accentuating the off-kilter atmosphere with their haunting scores.
It isn’t just the mystery of the missing people that is going on, but the fallout of their disappearance. Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) is the stern headmistress of the school and has to deal with the armour of her strict discipline approach being penetrated by what has happened, unable to provide answers or give reassurances, and her subplot of having to deal with pupil Sara (Margaret Nelson), who did not go to hanging rock and has her own issues to deal with as her tuition fees have not been paid and she may have to leave, is played out with a very deliberate pace but the performances are spot-on, with what is not being said between the various women in the school proving to be more salacious than anything that was written in the script.
Presented in a stunning 4K transfer, this limited edition set comes on four discs – two 4K UHD and two standard Blu-rays – featuring both the Theatrical and Director’s Cuts, audio commentary by film academics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson, several interviews with cast and crew, A Dream within a Dream feature-length documentary from 2004 about the making of the movie and the usual deleted scenes/trailers, all housed in a splendid rigid slipcase along with the original 1967 novel, art cards and a collector’s book featuring essays on the film by various academics and critics. As far as box sets go, Second Sight continue to up their game with their dedication to quality content, and if nothing else, the overall look of Picnic at Hanging Rock in such a clean and beautiful print is worth celebrating.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is not for everybody as it is a slow-burn with very little in the way of a distinct narrative, but as far as artistic expressions go it is quite difficult to fault and on a technical level it is very impressive, especially with the sets and its recreation of turn-of-the-century costumes. Obviously, this extensive box set is going to appeal to collector’s more than casual viewers but this is definitely the version of the film to experience if you have the means to do so because this is what high-end 4K setups with cinema-sound speakers were invented to show off.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Chris Ward
