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when I first saw 1975’s Picnic at Hanging Rock in the mid
‘90s, we didn’t have the internet. And the Criterion laserdisc I owned (one of
the very last Criterion laserdisc releases) was bare bones, so beyond the film itself,
there was no information on it. If memory serves me correctly, for some time I
believed it to be based on a true story, and the movie’s opening intro, coupled
with its mission to not answer its central mystery, might lead anyone to
believe that it is. It just seemed
like a highly artistic interpretation of real events. And it still does today,
though via this brand new Criterion edition, decked with numerous bells and
whistles, it’s easier to discover the truth, which is that Picnic at Hanging Rock
was based on a fictitious novel by a lady named Joan Lindsay – a paperback copy
of which is included in this set.
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| Hanging Rock - from a distance |
The
story at first revolves around a girl’s school in Victoria, Australia, in 1900,
and the students’ St. Valentine’s Day outing to the imposing volcanic monument,
Hanging Rock (which is a very real
place). Upon arrival, quiet weirdness abounds, and after several lazy,
dreamlike hours, three of the girls and one of the teachers have gone missing.
The second half of the film studies the effects the disappearances have on not
only the school, but also the nearby town and its variety of residents. It is,
after all, a small town at the turn of the century where people do not just disappear.
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| Mrs. Appleyard passive-aggressively terrorizes Sara |
The
movie is crammed with ideas, thoughts, and feelings, expressed through an
intricate, restrained drawing of its numerous characters, with the repression of
the time period leading to people unable to properly communicate their fears,
hopes, and desires. Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts), the severe, imposing
school headmistress, takes out her frustrations on the awkward student, Sara
(Margaret Nelson), while the much younger and more vibrant Mademoiselle de
Poitiers (Helen Morse) is wracked with guilt over her inaction the day of the
picnic. The befuddled Sgt. Bumpher (Wyn Roberts), who leads the investigation
and search party to find the missing, continually finds himself at a loss for
words (his position, coupled with his resemblance to Graham Chapman, leads to a
frequent expectation for him to finally break out with an “All right! All
right! All right!”).
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| Michael and Albert spy the schoolgirls headed for the rock |
The
privileged young English boy Michael Fitzhubert (Dominic Guard, who, for my
Whovian brethren, played Olvir in “Terminus”) is haunted by the disappearances
more than anyone else, and he makes it his mission to find out what happened,
regardless of the potential cost to his own well being. By contrast, his blue
collar Aussie acquaintance, Albert (a young John Jarratt, the bad guy of Wolf Creek),
is haunted by his own past, and has closer ties to the school than he could ever
know. Not every struggle in Hanging Rock is caused by the
mystery, yet they often appear to be reflected in it.
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| Anne-Louise Lambert as Miranda |
What
is perhaps most absorbing about Hanging Rock is not the characters we spend
time with throughout the entire film, but rather the missing girls, led by the
luminescent Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), and their intellectual math instructor,
Miss Greta McCraw (Vivean Gray) – all of whom cast a potent spell in the 40 or
so minutes of screentime they have. Lambert is a cinematic angel, and her visage
haunts the movie long after she’s gone, just as it does the viewer after the
credits roll. But these days Gray’s McCraw is my favorite. The steely,
calculating teacher, enlightened with a knowledge of the world that Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson would appreciate, appears to be living out of time and place. McCraw
hypnotizes, not least because the movie dishes even less on her disappearance than
the others. The film strongly suggests that the rock awakens something primal
and perhaps even sexual in these women – something they were unable to tap into
or unleash in the society they had grown up a part of, but that the rock
opened, and they found inviting.
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| Mlle. de Poitiers (l) and Miss McCraw (r) |
Yet
those assertions are more my interpretation than anything else. Picnic
at Hanging Rock should mean something different for each viewer. It’s
that kind of movie, and the open-ended narrative is the lack of punctuation on
an unfinished sentence. It’s an exercise in mood and sound (the music ranges
from classical works to Zamfir’s pan flute to evocative original compositions),
and most certainly stunning cinematography by Russell Boyd. Though it was not
director Peter Weir’s debut film, it was the one that introduced his considerable
talents to the world. Weir has since gone on to helm some truly incredible
films over the course of his long career, though there’s not a one of them I
wouldn’t put up against Hanging Rock just to demonstrate how strong
the movie really is.
Lastly,
keep an eye out for a very young Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom, Silver
Linings Playbook), who receives theatrical billing much higher on the
marquee than her character - an amorous maid working at the school – demands.
Off the cuff: Anyone else often find themselves playing games of “Is that Jacki
Weaver or Sally Struthers?”
Blu-ray/DVD Extras: Picnic at Hanging Rock arrives in a “dual format” combo single Blu-ray/ two DVD set, which is a recent Criterion experiment that
apparently, as of last Friday’s announcement, will be halted come September.
Bit of a shame, really. I can see how DVD consumers would have issues with the
price increase, but Blu-ray enthusiasts that “didn’t like making room for DVDs
they didn’t want” just smacks of the oft-ridiculed first world problems. As a
Blu-ray freak, I am always happy to
get a free DVD with my purchase, Criterion or not, so I didn’t even really have
time to warm up to this new presentation before it was dispensed with. In any
case, the movie looks jaw-droppingly gorgeous and the 5.1 surround track more
than gets the job done. Weir uses both pictures and sound to weave his
tapestry, and both are surely tighter here than on any previous Region A/1
release.
At
the top of this piece I mentioned the Criterion laserdisc. It was followed by a
bare bones DVD edition in 1999, and now, 15 years later, we have this hulking
combo set that includes the paperback novel. Seriously, when the package
arrived, I thought there were two movies enclosed. After all this time,
Criterion rectifies those previous meager presentations with a host of lovingly
prepared goodies.
Extras
kick off with a 10-minute introduction by film scholar David Thomson, which is
followed by an enlightening 25-minute interview with Weir - a welcome
inclusion, as he meditates and dishes on all things Hanging. Likewise,
“Everything Begins and Ends” is a 30-minute doc featuring interviews with
producers Hal and Jim McElroy, exec producer Patricia Lovell, DP Russell Boyd, and
cast members Anne-Louise Lambert and Helen Morse. At first glance it would be
easy to take this disc to task for not featuring a commentary track, but
between the Weir interview and the doc, there’s really no need for one as plenty of ground is covered, and Hanging
Rock is not the kind of movie that viewers should be walked through scene by scene anyway.
Additionally, there’s a theatrical trailer, and 26-minute period doc from ’75
entitled “A Recollection…Hanging Rock 1900,” much of which is shot at Hanging
Rock, including further interviews with Joan Lindsay, Dominic Guard, Weir, and
others. Lastly, on the video side of things, there’s a 50-minute black and
white short film called Homesdale. It was this movie that
led exec producer Lovell to hire Weir to helm Hanging Rock, though why
that is remains yet another mystery, as the tone, feel and subject matter of
the short isn’t much like the feature film. Even Weir
seems puzzled by the fact in the interview piece. (Frankly, Homesdale is such an oddball piece, its weirdness makes Hanging Rock seem pretty straightforward by comparison – perhaps therein lies the answer.)
All screengrabs in this piece were taken from the DVD.
