The best Australian film ever?

If you like films with a “proper ending”, then Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) is not for you. It is 1900 and a party of young women from Appleyard College in Victoria, dressed in white gloves, crinolines and trussed up in corsets, set out for a picnic at nearby Hanging Rock, an eerie, spooky place. The atmosphere is enhanced by the film’s sound track which included Romanian Pan pipes.

Four of the young women leave the picnic area to explore the Rock. Three of them wander into the crevices in the Rock and get lost. Their teacher, Miss McCraw, also goes missing. A search party eventually goes out looking for them and one of the students, Irma, is found but has no recollection of what has happened. The missing persons are never found and the film offers no explanation as to their fate.

Interpretations

Given the nature of the mystery surrounding the disappearances, any number of interpretations have arisen about the film. One critic offered the following, the film “… employs two of the hallmarks of modern Australian films: beautiful cinematography and the clash between settlers from Europe and the mysteries of their ancient new home”. In 1996 it was voted best Australian film of all time (though more recently some have challenged devotees to “rethink the stories we tell at Hanging Rock and remember Aboriginal suffering in that (real) location: mirandamustgo.com.au)

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