Picnic at Hanging Rock

Over the weekend I had the chance to see this amazing Peter Weir film from 1975 once again. It had been about 10 years since the last time I saw it. It is always so interesting for me to go back and see films or read books after a long period of time, and see different things in it than I had when I was younger. Picnic at Hanging Rock is a masterpiece of psychological tension, so evocative of another place and time. The story involves the disappearance of three boarding school students and one of their teachers while picnicing at the mythic site on Valentine's Day, 1900. Their disappearance is never explained or resolved, and the behavior of the young girls, which appears to be so in keeping with rural Australia in 1900, seems so innocent and yet so odd to us today. Check out this image and this one to get a sense of the atmosphere Weir creates. The unresolved mystery at the heart of this film is what I find appealing, along with the striking cinematography. Dialogue is minimal. We often hear characters' thoughts without them ever being spoken aloud. And the music, especially the pan pipes that fade in and out, is particularly haunting. While it seems very rooted in its time and place, it is also very evocative of some other films of the same era, especially two by Michelangelo Antonioni: The Passenger (1975) and Zabriskie Point (1970). All are highly recommended.

It was also poignant to have seen this film the same weekend we went hiking in Calaveras Big Trees State Park. The colossal trees and massive granite outcroppings, strikingly similar to the ones in the film, have been around for centuries, some for literally thousands of years, and it is easy to imagine all they have borne witness to.