Picnic at Hanging Rock: Official Squee Post
This evening, I watched Picnic at Hanging Rock for the fourth time, and loved it just as much as the first three times if not even more so.
Picnic at Hanging Rock, for the unfamiliar, is a 1975 Australian film directed by Peter Weir before he made it big with such pictures as Dead Poets Society and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. It's kind of a suspense/murder mystery/fantasy/lesbian movie set in the year 1900 at an all-girls' school in the Bush. Without spoiling too much (let's just say that Aboriginal crab gods are involved), I will give you a picspam.
This is Miranda, who seres as our main character despite not appearing in most of the film, kind of like Dr Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The difference, of course, is that Miranda is the OBJECT of most of the strange happenings in the film, and also an innocent teenaged girl (though it's the sort of sultry innocence that in real life drives boys and some girls mad and in this movie drive boys and ALL girls mad).
With a few of her girlfriends, Miranda takes advantage of a school outing to illicitly explore the upper flanks of Hanging Rock, also known as Mt Diogenes. What happens up there takes the rest of the movie to puzzle out (SPOILER ALERT: not even then is it entirely clear).
The important thing to note about Miranda is that everybody loves her. She's one of the most universally wanted and desired characters in film, and for good reason. Girl is, as I said, the avatar of the sort of sultry innocence that...look, just...here are some other characters, okay?
This is Sara, the deuteragonist (second most important sympathetic character) of Picnic at Hanging Rock. She makes no secret of wanting Miranda bad. It's obvious even by modern standards and outright self-destructively blatant in 1900 when the movie is set. Sara and Miranda write each other love letters, help each other in and out of corsets even when they're wearing corsets that don't take much trouble really, and seem to share some sort of weird telepathic link carried by ambient didgeridoo music.
That's Miranda at the bottom and Irma (brunette) and Edith (glasses) above. Irma and Edith, like Sara, worship the ground Miranda walks on and are fairly blatantly coded as desiring her both bodily and spiritually. Unlike Sara, they get caught up along with Miranda in the strange supernatural, 'Boeotian' (to use that lovely concept of Australian poet Les Murray) happenings on the rock.
In summary (I couldn't find as many good images as I would have liked to) this is a wondrously languid, bright-yet-creepy film, the sort of film where when you're watching it you get the sneaking feeling that you're watching something that you shouldn't, something almost pornographic while yet fully-clothed, while at the same time unable to look away from the hallucinogenic cinematography and strange and disturbing images and happenings.
Picnic at Hanging Rock, for the unfamiliar, is a 1975 Australian film directed by Peter Weir before he made it big with such pictures as Dead Poets Society and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. It's kind of a suspense/murder mystery/fantasy/lesbian movie set in the year 1900 at an all-girls' school in the Bush. Without spoiling too much (let's just say that Aboriginal crab gods are involved), I will give you a picspam.
This is Miranda, who seres as our main character despite not appearing in most of the film, kind of like Dr Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The difference, of course, is that Miranda is the OBJECT of most of the strange happenings in the film, and also an innocent teenaged girl (though it's the sort of sultry innocence that in real life drives boys and some girls mad and in this movie drive boys and ALL girls mad).
With a few of her girlfriends, Miranda takes advantage of a school outing to illicitly explore the upper flanks of Hanging Rock, also known as Mt Diogenes. What happens up there takes the rest of the movie to puzzle out (SPOILER ALERT: not even then is it entirely clear).
The important thing to note about Miranda is that everybody loves her. She's one of the most universally wanted and desired characters in film, and for good reason. Girl is, as I said, the avatar of the sort of sultry innocence that...look, just...here are some other characters, okay?
This is Sara, the deuteragonist (second most important sympathetic character) of Picnic at Hanging Rock. She makes no secret of wanting Miranda bad. It's obvious even by modern standards and outright self-destructively blatant in 1900 when the movie is set. Sara and Miranda write each other love letters, help each other in and out of corsets even when they're wearing corsets that don't take much trouble really, and seem to share some sort of weird telepathic link carried by ambient didgeridoo music.
That's Miranda at the bottom and Irma (brunette) and Edith (glasses) above. Irma and Edith, like Sara, worship the ground Miranda walks on and are fairly blatantly coded as desiring her both bodily and spiritually. Unlike Sara, they get caught up along with Miranda in the strange supernatural, 'Boeotian' (to use that lovely concept of Australian poet Les Murray) happenings on the rock.
In summary (I couldn't find as many good images as I would have liked to) this is a wondrously languid, bright-yet-creepy film, the sort of film where when you're watching it you get the sneaking feeling that you're watching something that you shouldn't, something almost pornographic while yet fully-clothed, while at the same time unable to look away from the hallucinogenic cinematography and strange and disturbing images and happenings.