January 3 - Picnic at Hanging Rock

 

            In the year 1900, a group of English schoolgirls in Australia enjoy a Valentine’s Day picnic at a local geological marvel. A sacred site of the Aborigine locals, it’s become a picnic grounds for the leisure classes. “It waited a million years just for us,” muses one girl. Four girls, led by the beautiful Miranda, head off to explore the Rock – only one returns.

            A simple set-up, Picnic at Hanging Rock, though it features investigations and witnesses bent on discovering the lost girls, is not a mystery film. Rather, it is one of those moody, abstract films that uses its simple structure as a gateway to larger themes. Knowing that the mystery is all the more powerful for being unsolved, the film focuses on the fallout of the disappearance – on the girls who are found or who remain, on the two men who saw the girls just before they disappeared, on the girls’ teachers and the prestigious but strict school they attend. For all its gauzy cinematography and soft-focus shots of romping virginal teens, there is much more to this movie than its pretty visuals or sensational mystery.

            A cornerstone of Australian cinema and of arthouse film in general, this may be the most prestigious film I’ll watch all month. And its prestige is well-deserved. A dense and mesmerizing film as captivating as the monolith at its center, Picnic at Hanging Rock is a must-see.

 The Talent: The second film of Australian director Peter Weir, who would go on to completely sell out direct Dead Poets Society. It’s based on the most famous novel of Australian author Joan Lindsay, making this our second literary adaptation of January, but not our last.

 Subgenre: Psychological drama/mystery, Australian New Wave, Films that Feel Like Dreams

 Story Type/Archetypes: You’ve got your missing white girls and your haunting landscape, but this film treads its own course.

 Sense of Place: To the max, of course! The only figure filmed more lovingly than the missing girls is Hanging Rock itself, a looming monolith that seems to exert an irresistible pull on those who explore it. The girls’ school itself is a lush Victorian island amongst the Australian bush, drawing a visual contrast between the buttoned-up English and the land they’ve colonized.

 Mood: Dreamy and haunted.

 Are there heroes?: A movie like this is more a study of a situation than a struggle of good and evil, but once “Botticelli angel” Miranda vanishes with her big protagonist energy, we have a whole collection of characters to root for – heartbroken orphan schoolgirl Sara, the nobleman Michael and his rough-and-tumble valet pal Albert who last saw the girls, and the sweet-tempered Mademoiselle who does her best to comfort the girls left behind.

Who are the monsters (and why are they scary)?: We may have an ominous landscape in the Rock and a despicable schoolmistress in Mrs. Appleyard, but this is a film without villains. The Rock feels more unknowable than malevolent; it’s up to something we can’t grasp, and to which people may be only incidental.

 This movie will freak you out of you’re creeped out by…: Unsolved mysteries, big rocks.

 Is it a metaphor for something?: Oh, I’m glad you asked! Like any meditative arthouse movie, Picnic at Hanging Rock has much more on its mind than sending a chill up your spine. The brilliant women at Faculty of Horror do a great job breaking down the film’s commentary on colonialism, as the colonizers must cope with a landscape they claim to have conquered but do not truly understand. There’s some stuff about class, what with Sara’s precarity and Albert and Michael’s different reactions to the disappearance. And, of course, this film has much to do with the restrictiveness of Victorian gender roles. The girls may be living fantasy bow girl lives in their frilly frocks but they’re not even allowed to remove their gloves without Mrs. Appleyard’s permission. When Miranda and company make their way up the rock, they are breaking all the rules against “tomboy foolishness,” so it’s no surprise they also shed their shoes, stockings, and corsets. Maybe the girls who disappear are the lucky ones. And that’s without even getting into the rock’s phallic plunge into the sky and many yonic passageways and caverns.

 Is there a twist?: Not that kind of movie, bucko.

 What kind of ending is it?: It’s no spoiler to say that this movie wisely leaves its mystery unsolved. Even the characters whose fates we learn feel obscure.

 The girlfriend’s rating (i.e. how much would this upset my girlfriend?): PG-13, for cosmic creepies

 But how gay is it?: Extremely. A girl’s school has been the literary territory of homoeroticism since at least the nineteenth century. The girls enjoy casual intimacy, while Sara feels a more than casual attachment to Miranda. And you simply cannot tell me that Michael and Albert aren’t boyfriends. The way Michael seeks out Albert’s company. Albert’s rescue of Michael. Their smoldering glances.

 And did it fit the daily theme?: I mean, the theme was designed around this movie, so

 Watch this if you enjoy: Gorgeous cinematography, languorous pacing, the inexplicable

 Other things it reminds me of: It’s a direct inspiration to The Virgin Suicides, but it especially reminded me of a recent release, Knives and Skin, which also deals with the fallout of a missing white girl. The Witch, while more overt horror, has similar treatment of a terrifying landscape and implicit reflections on colonialism.

 Musical Accompaniment: The score consists of preexisting classical tracks – the ones on panflute are especially transfixing.

 Girlfriend’s Corner: this is, without exaggeration, my favorite horror film made before the current auteur horror boom. For one thing, it’s tailor made to the specific things that frighten me – I’m very afraid of aliens (as Sara can tell you) and there are some not-subtle implications that Hanging Rock may be connected to things beyond this world, I find slow-building tension without catharsis or explanation far more terrifying than any gruesome image, and there’s something about the contrast of profound and inexplicable darkness and a sunny aesthetic that gets under my skin. I’m also blown away by the way that this movie manages to balance knotty themes with some of the best character work I’ve ever seen in a horror movie. I’d recommend this movie to literally anyone. It’s an all-timer.