Good Film Hunting was such an unexpected success it has put a bit of a pause on my posts here, so this week I have a repost on one of my analysis for the club over on Substack!
It has been such a joy over the past few days seeing everyone contribute to discussions on this week’s pick: Picnic at Hanging Rock. Whether or not people resonated with the film, there were so many nuanced discussions that introduced new angles to Picnic that I hadn’t considered before, so I want to thank everyone who contributed, hopefully everyone else also got something out of the film, and the discussions too.
My own introduction to this film was in my curriculum for my first high school literature class; the first place that really opened my mind to writing, film theory and consequently, writing about film. I happen to be from the state of Victoria in Australia where the film is set, and gothic literature is my favourite book genre, so all of the stars sort of aligned for me. It was also Valentine’s Day this past weekend, when the film is set, making it feel like everything had fallen into place once again, for the beginning of the film club.
Peter Weir when interviewed about the film describes this feeling of movies almost being akin to a memory best: ‘I think they’re like little worlds that you lived in, like a period you lived in, another country.’ Rewatching the film has let me revisit an old period of my life and more conveniently for this review, that was a time when I had to think ad nauseum about the colonial fear, sexual repression and the force of nature that forms Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Hanging Rock Reserve The titular setting, Hanging Rock (a name that has only been coined in recent decades) is a volcanic formation in regional Victoria. For tens of thousands of years it was a sacred ceremonial spot for Aboriginal Australians, until its original occupants were forced from it. The myth of Picnic at Hanging Rock has often clouded the real disappearances of Indigenous peoples as a result of the occupation. The novel tackles this idea, as Hanging Rock is known as a sacred place, and yet the girls have a desire to discover it all, as if to claim the experience of discovering it for themselves, as the British did. The small mystery that has been construed around it by what they have been told by their teachers, gives them this impulse, like the larger mystery of the novel seems to do to the visitors at Hanging Rock in real life. This is the first way that Joan Lindsay represented suppression in the novel and Peter Weir injected this directly into the film.
Shots of the top of Hanging Rock are always accompanied by a drone that has become synonymous with the overall murky ambience of the film, and the blaring Australian sun is equally stimulating. The camera is always looking up at the rocks and it all emphasises the feeling of being suppressed and the fear that the place evokes in the colonists. Weir’s lens is able to build on the suppression of sexuality too, in a way that the novel is unable to. Much like other gothic literature, the fate of the girls and in particular, Miss McCraw is blamed on their inability to control their hormonal urges, “How could she allow herself to be spirited away? Lost. Raped.” Mrs. Appleyard delivers this in her final hours in contrast to her usually subdued demeanour, displaying the effect Miss McCraws display of sexuality, and subsequent displays from the girls, have had on her psyche. She wears a large collar around her neck, much like the girls’ uniforms, exhibiting how stifled they are by Victorian traditions, but conversely a low cut dress, showing her emotional descent as a result of confronting her preconceived notions of sexuality
Miranda is the only image included in the newspaper report on the girls Miranda is the figure of myth that befogs the narrative of Picnic and perhaps Australia itself. She haunts the narrative, and even after Irma’s return all her fellow classmates want to know is where Miranda is. She is much less a person than a projection of ideals from everyone who encounters her, and she is equally directed in this dreamlike way. Her appearances are most often accompanied by a lilting and whistling score, in between crossfades, coupled with her governess’ description of her as a ‘Botticelli Angel’, it is made to seem like she has certainly just descended from the heavens. The opening scene establishes this, as Miranda reads the poetry that her classmate Sara has written for Valentines, no doubt inspired by her.
“I love thee not because thou art fair,
softer than down, smoother than air,
nor for the cupids that do lie
in either corner of thine eye.
Wouldst thou then know what it might be?
‘Tis I love thee ‘cause thou lovest me.”
Sara experiences a love from Miranda that feels utterly protective, and in this way she suggests her feelings for Miranda stem from Miranda’s affections to her. This is also yet another way in which the story explores subjugation, with strong queer themes. She is not permitted to visit the rock with Miranda, once again showing punishment for innate sexuality.
Miranda subsequently became an obsession of the Australian public, and eventually became the face of the #MirandaMustGo campaign, calling for the aforementioned acknowledgment that the obsessive retelling of the white vanishing myth must be removed, and the real troubled past should instead be remembered.
This finally ties into the idea that nature dominates all of these ideas, showing the intersection of suppression and colonialism. Appleyard College is located regionally and yet the girls are extremely disconnected from the land they live on. As shown at the beginning of the film, the trip to Hanging Rock is a complete rarity, and is deeply exciting for all of the inhabitants of the college and so as they attempt to act on their natural impulses, the landscape swallows the girls, and eventually, the fear of it consumes the whole school entirely. It appears as though colonialism has gotten to them at last, the endless drive for exploration has grasped them away from the world in which they lived. Lindsay and Weir go even further to illicit that the constant theme of suppression in the girls lives has doomed everyone to repeat their mistakes, particularly for Sara and Mrs. Appleyard, in their untimely deaths.
The legacy of Picnic at Hanging Rock fuels its own critiques of colonialism, and remains relevant in Australia to this day, making a stark point that without acknowledgment of the land we live on, we are rightfully, at its mercy.