MUBI

This mesmerizing, entirely enigmatic picture, which is rendered all the more mysterious by filtered cinematography,
a pan-pipes score, and the drone of insects humming in the summer heat,
does not concern itself with the fate of the four missing women.
Weir focuses instead on what it is like NOT to know, while at the same time offering the vaguest suggestions
of the mystical, the erotic, and even the malevolent.
He immerses viewers in an ethereal atmosphere of hints and slight notions,
offering no scrap of evidence or logical deduction.

All of Weir’s pictures, to various extents, make identical attempts to instigate a flight of fancy,
but this is the director’s most subtle conjuring trick.
For Weir, a clash of cultures makes the human mind most susceptible to flights of fancy, especially during encounters with the unknown.
The religious and social restrictions of late Victorians, juxtaposed with the supernatural ambience
of a largely unsettled Australia, may be the most extreme clash of cultures.
With no bodies, no motives, and no clues, the mysterious set of circumstances becomes rich material
for the disturbed imagination of Victorians, who, to borrow Edith Wharton’s wry characterization,
don’t believe in ghosts but are certainly afraid of them.

Indeed, it was Wharton who suggested that we cannot ever see a ghost,
but sometimes we can learn later that we’ve seen one.
That’s worth considering as this story progresses, even if there’s no reason to suspect
that the bizarre turn of events is any kind of ghost story to begin with.
The answers might lie instead in a loosely defined aura of fin de siècle occultism,
or they may instead harken back to William Blake’s ominous realm of innocence and experience.

From the soft, hazy photography to the eerie score and pace, it’s clear that Weir’s intent is to hypnotize the audience. And this film is nothing if not spellbinding. The uniquely Australian themes were lost on me initially, but the exploration of sexual repression and hysteria was very clear. I see a lot of this movie in Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, although I’m sure that’s an oft-made comparison. They’re both equally beautiful and haunting.

There are two scenes in PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK that give it a dated 70s horror punch that pulls me out of the film’s artful mood. It’s something in the editing and the sound and yet I’m easily lulled back into the movie. When I saw the movie again I smiled like if I’d met up once more with someone who can’t help but burp in the middle of conversation. I warn you that these scenes are jarring and remind you that you’re watching an older film and I’d like to clarify that it’s okay.

Everything else about it is thoroughly modern.

In my personal experience I’ve met a few girls (one of them looking just like Miranda) who’ve wandered into my life like ghosts and then mysteriously disappeared. Whenever I watch this film I’m reminded of them, of how they came and went, and how inside I felt that they’d made that clear to me as if in dreams. My friends and I ask each other what happened to these girls and don’t we wonder.

Another movie that makes me feel that way is THE VIRGIN SUICIDES- a movie I bet Sofia Coppola made with “the rock” in mind. The world simply opens up and swallows some people whole and we’re left with nothing but our own curious minds to figure it all out. I can never forget the people that caught my eye and then vanished. Even the most beautiful angels can haunt us.