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From Amazon.co.uk
Situated somewhere between supernatural horror and lush Victorian melodrama, director Peter Weir's lyrical, enigmatic masterpiece is an imaginative tease. The setting is a proper turn-of-the century Australian boarding school for girls, a suffocating institution built on strict moral codes, repressed sexuality, and a subtle but enforced class structure. As the film opens, girls draped in immaculate white dress prepare for a picnic at the nearby volcanic formation, Hanging Rock, and Weir hangs an air of dark foreboding over the proceeding. "You'll have to love someone else, because I won't be here very long," says one virginal girl, Miranda, to her friend. Her words are prophetic: during the picnic, Miranda, along with two other girls and an uptight schoolmistress, vanish into the rocks. While a search party repeatedly returns to the rock to look for either the girls or the reasons for their disappearance, Weir leaves the mystery unsolved. Like Antonioni's L'Avventura, the vanishing is open to numerous interpretations--both rational and illusory--but Weir drops enough allegorical clues that it feels like a parable. He transforms the landscape and weather into menacing and eerie images; outlines of faces can be seen in the rocks, while the oppressive heat beating down on the picnic doubles as an atmospheric metaphor for the girls' unbearable social and sexual confinement. These images and other plot twists toward the end hint that this mysterious vanishing, on some level, was actually a form of spiritual escape--the only out, other than death, from the film's bleak, tightly structured community. Regardless of how you see it, though, this hypnotic puzzle remains the highlight of the '70s Australian New Wave. --Dave McCoy
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful
By james-Arundel
VINE™ VOICE
Format:DVD
This landmark in Australian Cinema is certainly amongst my very favourite films. Ordinarily, I would score this film 5 stars, but as another reveiwer points out, key scenes, in my opinion vital to fleshing out the characters and plotlines, have been cut. Oddly, a totally irrelevant and superfluous scene of a reporter photographing the school has been inserted. Several scenes involving Michael, Irma, Albert and Mrs Appleyard have been edited out, and their loss is pointless and certainly diminishes the film as a whole.
My view is one of a languid, sensual dreamlike film, suffused with mystery, focusing on the reactions and feelings of the characters to the tragedy/mystery on the rock. To cut approximately six minutes from the film, is not to add to the mystery surrounding the girls disappearance, but to simply disrupt continuity, and to make scenes and developments seem unconnected and senseless, for example, the cutting of both the crash sound as sarah plummets through the conservatory roof, and the scene of Mrs Appleyard gathering her things together, the viewer could be understandably confused, and not connect the unrecognisable corpe amid the pansies with the vanished Sarah.
I for one will be digging my neglected video of this film out of my loft to watch in preference to this edit-fest of a dvd version.
My view is one of a languid, sensual dreamlike film, suffused with mystery, focusing on the reactions and feelings of the characters to the tragedy/mystery on the rock. To cut approximately six minutes from the film, is not to add to the mystery surrounding the girls disappearance, but to simply disrupt continuity, and to make scenes and developments seem unconnected and senseless, for example, the cutting of both the crash sound as sarah plummets through the conservatory roof, and the scene of Mrs Appleyard gathering her things together, the viewer could be understandably confused, and not connect the unrecognisable corpe amid the pansies with the vanished Sarah.
I for one will be digging my neglected video of this film out of my loft to watch in preference to this edit-fest of a dvd version.
28 of 29 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:VHS Tape
This is a beautiful film, enchanting and haunting. I first saw this film in 1980 and although the images have stayed with me for 20 years the film still has the power to instil a strange sense of loss. We are told at the outset that some of those who set out for the picnic are never to return and the film does not attempt to solve the mystery although various clues are shared with us. The film could be a simple detective tale involving disappearing schoolgirls but the tone is set at the start of the film by Miranda (Anne Louise Lambert) who provides a voice over based on an Edgar Allan Poe poem, "What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream" The film concerns itself with the aftermath of the disappearance and the impact on those involved with the missing girls. It shows how an apparently idyllic way of life is not what it first seems, how this false paradise is fragile and how it is shattered by the breakdown of established order. Hysteria and tensions all surface revealing the claustrophobic atmosphere of the affluent Victorian European way of life in an alien land, and exposing the suppressed passions that are the reality of life. This theme is further expressed by the virginal white dresses the girls wear for the picnic, which seem out of place in this environment and represent the stifling restrictions placed on the young girls. The layers of corset and dresses the girls have to wear also mirror the film's many layers.
The cinematography is stunning being incredibly bright and sunny so that the film actively encourages you to feel the warmth of the sun. The film seduces you with the sounds of the Australian bush and the beauty of the girls, so that you will more feel a sense of the horror, as one of the girls, Edith (Christine Schuler), does. The flashback at the end of the film, poignantly coupled with the Adagio from Beethoven's 5th piano concerto (Emperor), leaves you with a sense of loss of youth and innocence. ...
The film is faithful to Joan Lindsay's novel, though dialogue is often replaced with visual impressions and unnecessary details are excluded to maintain the sense of mystery the author intended. The film is beautifully shot with haunting music, well cast and acted and tightly directed, for me it is a masterpiece of its time, and still rates as one of my favourite films today.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
The main merit of this picture is of an ultimately aesthetic nature. All through the film you are drawn into a dreamlike, hazy and fantastic world, full of angelic faces and repeatedly whispered phrases that float about rather than stick to what you are watching. The subject matter - which could easily be turned into a typical holywood thriller - is treated in an artistic manner, full of half-mentioned allusions and references that only hint at various solutions to the initial mistery. And, at the end, you are left clinging to these unsatisfactory threads, wanting to rationally understand something that is of an alltogether different nature. If you let yourself be swept away by the oneiric enchantment - as the girls do, as a matter of fact - you will experience something truly wonderful, just don't expect to solve any misteries. That would be quite beside the point!
Likewise, there is very little psychological depth to be found in the characters. Towards the end, one admitedly tries to understand the background of a few of them - namely Mrs Appleyard and Sarah - but the others are left in the hazy mist of soft images and dreamy portraits.
I should not be surprised if some find this film a little slow however, as this is not your normal suspense thriller. But if you are looking for an aesthetic experience and are easily touched by images, music and vague (and often beautiful) words, this is for you.
Finally (and one should bear in mind that this is strictly my personal opinion) I think that this film succeeds in everything that "The Virgin Suicides" (which is similar in many ways) lacks. I wonder whether Ms Coppola ever saw this film...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
As if a dream was captured on film.
This almost legendary film has a predominantly female cast, and the action takes place in 1900.
Made in 1975 by Peter Weir, who went on to direct many critically acclaimed... Read more
Made in 1975 by Peter Weir, who went on to direct many critically acclaimed... Read more
Published 27 days ago by Mr. P. Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant
One of my favourite movies of all time. Was great to be able to get it on DVD as I had owned it on VHS previously
Published 1 month ago by freya
5.0 out of 5 stars
I love it
Picnic at Hanging Rock is my favorite movie since I was a teen.
I am fascinated by the interplay between the images and the music. Read more
I am fascinated by the interplay between the images and the music. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Uwe Heiermann
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great
The film was as good as I remembered it and the music is fantastic, one I will watch again and again
Published 3 months ago by Claire Onions
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Australian classic
I first saw this film in the cinema as a teenager and was spellbound. I love every minute of it.
Published 3 months ago by Rita Bogna
5.0 out of 5 stars
picnic
for me this is the best picture i have ever seen and 3 discs to view it in all its dimensions. theproduct was in perfect condition.
Published 3 months ago by alan
2.0 out of 5 stars
Deeply pretentious and over acted
There are plenty of truly beautiful Antipodean productions from that era. This is not one of them. The 'creative' camera angles are intrusive and studied. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Shahriar
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very creepy, if truncated, dark fairy tale
Before Peter Weir became a well-known Hollywood director he started out with a series of short Australian movies and smaller feature films. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Inspector Gadget
5.0 out of 5 stars
picnic at hanging rock delux edition
i watched hanging rock many years ago and it stuck in my mind as being one of the most haunting and visualy stunning movies i have ever seen,the story and the realness of it all... Read more
Published 5 months ago by keith rennoldson
4.0 out of 5 stars
Picnic at Hanging Rock is an enigmatic film experience like no other
Peter Weir made this unsettling, atmospheric film early in his career, and it is still one of his most successful films to date.
On a drowsy St. Read more
On a drowsy St. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Pyke Bishop
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