Opening Shots: 'Picnic at Hanging Rock'
"But I do want to say something about imagination purely as a tool in the art and science of scaring the crap out of people... You approach the door in the old, deserted house, and you hear something scratching at it. The audience holds its breath along with the protagonist as she/he (more often she) approaches that door. The protagonist throws it open, and there is a ten-foot-tall bug. The audience screams, but this particular scream has an oddly relieved sound to it. "A bug ten feet tall is pretty horrible," the audience thinks, "but I can deal with a ten-foot-tall bug. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall."
-- Stephen King, "Danse Macabre" (1987)
Peter Weir's 1975 "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is masterpiece of horror, but not in the way you might think. There are no monstrous bugs of any sort -- except for the usual (tiny) ants that plague just about any picnic. "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is a perfect thriller because (like "Twin Peaks," another symphony of anguish over Not Knowing) it's about effect of Mystery on the human imagination -- not just the ache of the Unknown, but the terror, and torture, of the Unknowable. Is there anything more horrible for the mind to contemplate than a mystery with no satisfactory solution? It's more than the psyche can bear...
And it's all set up right here, in what is undoubtedly a series of nearly imperceptible dissolves (perhaps combined with optical work): A rock in the outback remote wilderness (premonitions of Ayers' Rock and Fred Schepisi's "A Cry in the Dark"?) that stays utterly still, yet shifts and changes. First, we see the black trees in the red foreground. Then the rock appears, hovering over the landscape. Next, fog obscures the foreground and the rock appears to be floating (hanging?) on a cushion of mist. How much time has elapsed between each of these views? Minutes? Hours? Days? Just when you think you know what you're seeing, it becomes something slightly different. You can't quite pin it down. It's ... unsettling, disorienting...
Zamfir's primitive-sounding pan flute reverberates in the air. It's an ominous beginning and we're tempted to feel, like Roy Neary would about another rock formation in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" a few years later, that this means something. But what if it doesn't?
Comments
Just a correction - Hanging Rock isn't in the outback - it's in rural Victoria. It's actually only a 45 minute drive from Melbourne (although in the days the film was set, the area was a lot more remote).
JE: Thanks! I'll fix it.
Posted by: CNWB | August 31, 2006 08:17 PM
God, but Hanging Rock scared the hell out of me; sexual tension, weird faces in the rocks that you could only half see
Posted by: Joseph J. Finn | September 1, 2006 07:14 PM
Picnic at Hanging Rock is one of my favorite films. I discovered it only a few years ago and was blown away. There is so much you can read into the story, but - like the landscape in the fog in that opening shot - no theory holds up enough to clear up the mystery forever. And so it grows and grows in your mind, even long after the end credits have faded.
Posted by: Peet | September 2, 2006 02:10 AM
yes, one of the creepiest movies. if we could only have one like it every year.
Posted by: MoovyBoovy | September 3, 2006 01:24 AM
Hi,Have just watched the film for the umpteenth time - am absolutely addicted to it! The eeerie atmosphere is chilling and gobsmacking and this film has more vibes in one second than most films contain in 2 hours!
The music, too, is superb - eerie, moody pan-pipes, Beethoven, and minor-key Mellotrons + Piano which sound like Rick Wakeman meets Genesis. The last time I saw the film I woke in the middle of the night screaming, 'They're still there!' (meaning the girls in the Rock). Maybe they are still there!
Today, the one phrase I keep feeling is 'Loss of Innocence' - the girls impeding adolescence (man-attention) will destroy the beauty and innocence of youth, perhaps corrupt it, even.
The last year of Victoria's reign also seems to mean something here, but I can't quite put my finger on it yet. But this is inextricably linked with Rachel Roberts brooding Mrs Appleyard, who seems to represent both the last dying rays of Victoria's Empire and a destructive Black Widow spider (or perhaps, an Australian Funnel spider?). But why kill the girl? Towards the end of the film there is a low frequency electronic throbbing, which I feel is the Rock spreading out to the girls' school, so maybe this caused Mrs Appleyard to 'freak out'?
Because the film itself contains no solution to the mystery, I believe makes me continue to watch it - I hope and pray that nobody ever attempts a sequel, as this would kill the vibe stone dead! Strange also, how all the clocks stopped working in reality on the film-set! Life really is stranger than fiction. All the best,Mick White, UK.
Posted by: mick white | October 5, 2006 07:15 AM
A truly wonderful film! If anything this work improves with age, given the thirty-one year time span since its making (I was 22 in 1975!). So many possible solutions, but best to keep guessing I think. The very final frame of the lovely Anne Lambert who played Miranda flicking her head away from the viewer is almost iconic. Definately one of my favorite films of all time.
Posted by: Hugh Hazelton | October 21, 2006 02:28 PM
My son had the scariest experience there this week (Nov.06) at 1a.m. while pulled over in a rest bay. There is not enough space here to describe what happened. They didn't even know where they were until they left in a huge hurry and saw the sign "Hanging Rock"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He rang me as soon as they were far enough away and felt safe.
Posted by: shekinah | November 18, 2006 12:32 AM