Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful, enchanting and haunting film, 14 Dec 2000
By A Customer
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.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A perfect piece of movie magic, 21 Jul 2002
MAGICAL & ENCHANTINGThis atmospheric film has been in my top 5 movies of all time for many years and will remain there forever. This film is about mood, and it is both beautifully entrancing and ominously mesmerizing.
Tension is created between the beautiful cinematography and the underlying sense of dread, at first subtly and then more intensely as the plot unfolds. I suppose it is a type of psychothriller if classifiable at all. The austere old headmistress is very impressive, as are the teachers and the young girls in their Victorian innocence. Tension mounts on the way to the rock and something happens there, of which small hints are given, but the mystery will never be revealed. The soundtrack by the Romanian pan-pipe master George Zamfir expertly enhances the different moods of the movie. Having once seen Hanging Rock, one can never forget it.
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31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Cut scenes diminish a film that was a work of art, 28 Jun 2006
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.
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