Picnic at Hanging Rock

A-

Directed by Peter Weir

"Picnic at Hanging Rock" was the film that not only helped launch Peter Weir's film career but was also critical in putting Australian cinema on the global map. It remains Weir's best known work and a classic film whose open ended conclusion still sparks vigororous debate to this day.

Weir's film is set in a girl's preparatory school in the sunblasted Australian outback at the turn of the century. Ms. Appleyard, the school's headmistress, organizes a picnic for her students at Hanging Rock, a volcanic rock formation that sits on the edge of town. Things at the picnic go bad, however, when three girls, along with one of the school's teachers, disappear on the rock leaving little trace of their whereabouts. Their dissapearance sparks a widescale manhunt lead by the town's understaffed police department as well as a number of individual search and rescue attempts, most notably by a young aristrocrat who may have been the last person to see the girls alive on the rock. As the days wear on and the search intensifies, a number of strange occurences are reported by those who have visited to the rock in search of the girls.

The film's conclusion is notoriously open ended and has given rise to a multitude of explanations as to the girls' ultimate fate. The ultimate resolution of the film is debatable but a quick cruise through the internet reveals that those who have read Lindsay's novel, including an extra chapter published after her death that more or less confirms the girls' fate, are fairly confident in an ironclad resolution to the film.
Resolving the missing girls' fate largely overshadows the other merits of "Picnic at Hanging Rock" which is too bad since Weir's film isn't just a slipshod adaptation of Lindsay's novel but rather an atmospheric and haunting interpretation of a literary work that was likely quite difficult to translate to the screen. I feel that seeking a "resolution," although appealing, is largely detrimental when watching this type of film simply because the point isn't to be mesmerized by twists and turns but rather to be enveloped by the mood of the film. As such, it's a film that demands repeated viewings, not just to pick up "clues" as to the girls whereabouts but also to enjoy the finely crafted experience Weir and his talented cast created.