[Diane]

I caught this film for the first time a few days ago. Actually, I saw the director's cut, which trims the movie by about 7 minutes, I think. A very interesting mystery of a movie.

Any fans of the film here? Any big differences between the original theatrical version and the director's cut? In his review, Roger Ebert seems to think that Peter Weir trimmed his film to further add to the mystery, although he admits that the memory of his original viewing is fuzzy.

So, thoughts on the meaning? Is it about sexual repression? Colonialism? The passage from childhood to adulthood? Cruelty? All of these? None of these?

--Diane

[Darrel Manson]

You might want to look at the discussion from the previous incarnation of the board.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is very typical of Peter Weir who often puts people in a foreign environment (a literal environment in this film). In a way, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World fits this, and I keep hoping that he's not going flop on the period piece / adventure aspects, although I'm beginning to have my doubts from the little I've read.

I haven't seen the Director's Cut, but it seemed to me that it didn't need much additional mystery. One of the strengths of the film is that it is so mysterious.

[M. Leary]

Ibid...

[Diane]

Oops, should have checked the archives first. Thanks, Darrel, for that link. It's an interesting tease, since that thread mentions a previous discussion, but doesn't link to it. I find the archives a little baffling, so any links to other threads would be appreciated.

I have a feeling I'll have to revisit the film again very soon.

Unforgettable line from the movie: Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.

[Ron Reed]

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Any fans of the film here?

I'm a big fan of Weir, though it's been a long time since I saw PICNIC. Theres a nice Weir article at the Directors Guild page;
http://www.dga.org/n..._peterweir.php3 - with a good bit at the end specifically on his spirituality.

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So, thoughts on the meaning? Is it about sexual repression? Colonialism? The passage from childhood to adulthood? Cruelty? All of these? None of these?

This summer I was doing some research on THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY, which is one of my all-time favourites, and I came up with this fascinating response from Weir on these questions;

INTERVIEWER: “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is a film which is very interesting in its exploration of a sort of smothered sexuality in an environment which represses it...

WEIR: I was never really interested in that side of the film. I didn’t see it as a part of its theme. I remember when I went to London for the promotion, that that was the area which most interested the British critics. Comments ranged from talk of repressed sexuality to the less subtle, talking about lesbianism and so on. But it didn’t interest me. For me, the grand theme was Nature, and even the girl’s sexuality was as much a part of that as the lizard crawling across the top of the rock. They were part of the same whole: part of larger questions.

INTERVIEWER: It’s interesting that you don’t feel it to be more important, because it does seem very intelligently worked out through the film. For instance, there are kinds of contrasts you set up between the attitudes of those influenced by Victorian education - the girls and the teachers - and those of the servant, Minnie, and her boyfriend, Tom. Also, there is the contrast between Albert the groom, who makes fairly crude comments about the girls as they go up the rock, and the inhibited, more ‘chivalrous’ response of Michael. I think you can trace that sort of thing through the film...

WEIR: Perhaps, but that kind of approach is quite foreign to me. The words and analytical thinking, which come from your side of the table, represent something I have unlearned. It is a tool that I was brought up with through my education, something I was trained to use and something I have found I didn’t want to use or live with. I am not trying to imply something mystical, simply that to use words like this, is very distant for me. I think what I have done in my own sort of personality course over the past 15 years is what enables me to make films, or to make them my way, and I think this sort of approach gets in the way. Of course, I sat with Cliff Green and worked things out, and that was a necessary process to get something on to paper, something an audience can understand - a blueprint for the film. Perhaps it would have been easy to talk about this closer to the film, but now, as I am left with a horde of images from that film, it’s only the way I began the film, or began thinking about it.

INTERVIEWER: The scenes that seemed to matter in the film were not the ones of the girls going up the rock so much as those of earthy, more human behaviour - like those ones between Minnie and Tom, which give a context to the rest. Here are people behaving like people, and not like those who have been victims of a certain kind of education...

WEIR: It’s an interesting part of the balance, but it didn’t interest me then, just as it doesn’t now. In the film, what interested me were other areas: sounds, smells, the way hair fell on shoulders, images - just pictures.

http://www.peterweir...s/articlep.html

(That's excerpted from an article found on the Peter Weir Cave web page, a fan site which has lots of great articles, interviews, etc.)

Another interesting bit on PICNIC, from elsewhere on the web;

"What I attempted, somewhere towards the middle of the film, was gently to shift emphasis off the mystery element which had been building in the first half and to develop the oppressive atmosphere of something which has no solution: to bring out a tension and claustrophobia in the locations and the relationships. We worked very hard at creating an hallucinatory mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my power to hypnotise the audience away from the possibility of solutions... There are, after all, things within our own minds about which we know far less than about disappearances at Hanging Rock. And it's within a lot of those silences that I tell my side of the story." http://www10.pair.co...eir/articl...ml

[Diane]

Thank you, Ron, for posting all this great info. It's so interesting that Weir downplays the emphasis on sexual repression, which still seems to be an idea of primary interest to critics discussing the film (at least in the few reviews I've had a chance to read). After one viewing, I'm like Weir—left with a series of overwhelming images.

Plus, I'm liking Jeffrey's comments from the old thread:

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It's about so many things... but mainy seems to be about the difference between approaching life with fear and approaching it with awe and courage. This has implications about the confining and controlling aspects of civilisation versus the freedom and seeming-chaos of nature, about sexual insecurity and sexual freedom, about the emptiness of mere knowledge and the riches of childlike faith...

This is one of my favorite films, and one of Weir's very best. I love that Weir refuses to solve the mystery for us. Without that the film wouldn't work or have the haunting quality that it does.

--Diane

[M. Leary]

AHA!!

I found the other Picnic at Hanging Rock thread here.

[Diane]

Woo hoo! Thanks for digging up that thread. Some thoughts:

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Anything can be construed as sexual in nature. Anything at all, thanks to Freudian analysis.

This is a gripe that I have, too. It's all too easy to point the finger to sexual repression. Ebert's review seemed almost predictable, but I have to admit, he has his points, even though the whole story cannot be easily explained away by that one aspect.

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I think Ebert's point is not just that the story has elements of sexual tension, but that it is a direct criticism of Victorian notions of sexuality set against the mysterious natural spirituality of the Australian outback. Here you have rigid and "proper" notions of what is acceptable, but the human spirit continually strains against these boundaries, forcing us to become frustrated and unfulfilled people (the principle). But here they are in a wild and dangerous land that mocks such artificial notions.

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I'm not yet convinced that these proper notions are *centered* around sexuality. (But I'm willing to accept that point if I find that Victorian society was defined overwhelmingly by its view of sexuality.)

I studied the Victorians quite a bit in college, and yes, much of society (and especially its view of women) centered around sexuality. Specifically, Victorian society was a duel one: Prostitution was rampant, but women were deemed to be angelic creatures (middle- and upper-class ones, anyway). The love of a good woman was all it took to redeem a man. A man could be excused for visiting prostitutes, but a lady's reputation must remain spotless. Men have desires that cannot be denied. A proper lady has no such desires; she only endures sex for the purpose of having a family. Etc., etc.

For anyone who hasn't seen the film, SPOILERS are ahead.

One scene in the film that was so striking to me was the scene where Irma returned to visit her schoolmates after her recovery. She was leaving the school, going home with her parents, and the contrast between her and the other girls was startling. She's dressed as quite the grown-up: hair up, wearing bright scarlet, looking years older than her schoolmates in their ringlets and white frocks. Within literature, bright red is a sign of a sexual woman or a fallen woman—even though, as the good doctor points out, Irma has not been raped. Still, her reputation has suffered. To the Victorians, reputation was almost everything—a spot on it and you might as well be ruined. In a similar turn, Mrs. Appleyard assumes that Miss McCraw has been raped, even though she's never found and no one really knows what happened, other than the fact that certain articles of clothing (especially that restrictive corset) are missing. So, you have sweet Irma telling her friends goodbye, only to be attacked by them in a hysterical frenzy. A Victorian reaction to a stained reputation, maybe?

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I'm inclined to think that Picnic is more generally about the tension between tamed-society and the untamed-extrasocial. Or, put another way, the tension between fitting into the mold of the finishing school image and not fitting into that mold. Hanging Rock itself is definitely Other relative to the school; far from the serene and proper atmosphere in which girls become ladies, Hanging Rock is crawling with unimpeded nature. Sure, one aspect of the girls' repression is sexual, but I would say the broader repression is centered more on gender than sexuality specifically.

I agree with this. The sexual issue is definitely there, but the girls are so repressed generally that they are expected to be without feelings if they are to be truly ladylike. Example: When Mrs. Appleyard tells the girls that Irma has been found, they have to wait until she's out of the room to show any excitement. Yes, others are still missing, but who would show no emotion when one of their friends has been found?

Sorry for the long ramble. I thought I knew where I was going, but maybe not...

--Diane

[DanBuck]

Is this film based on a true story?