Picnic At Hanging Rock
Film classic by Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show) about three schoolgirls and a teacher who disappear without a trace during a mountain hike in the Australian countryside. classic, based on a play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.
Valentine’s Day in the year 1900. A number of students from Appleyard College, an Australian private school for girls, take a trip to Hanging Rock accompanied by their teachers. Four girls go on a mountain hike, but only one returns, and then a teacher also disappears during the search.
Peter Weir sets this dreamy, unclassifiable film in 1900, a year before the end of the Victorian era. This allows the film to be seen as a critique of the colonial system, with the schoolgirls representing an imported British system that does not fit into the Australian landscape. Another interpretation of the film is that the disappearance of the girls symbolises the suppression of female sexuality in Victorian society. And there are also critics who see the film as a clash between Western rationality and the mystical, unknowable nature of Australia. The film is now fifty years old, but its mystery remains intact.