Picnic at Hanging Rock, book and film -- classic or claptrap?

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One of these days I will finally see the film, doubtless -- but I've just finished the novel (sans that final chapter that allegedly explains everything, though I've read some quick summations of it and conclude it was better left out, as originally published). I liked it, though I'm trying to put my finger on it as to why...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 28 September 2002 01:35 (twenty-three years ago)

i saw the film years ago not long after it came out. memory fails me as to details but i recall long dreamy sequences of girls in nice flowing dresses etc etc.......i liked it at the time, no idea what i might make of it now. possibly claptrap i suspect, the movie anyway.

― donna (donna), Saturday, 28 September 2002 05:38 (twenty-three years ago)

It really annoyed me when I saw it, but that was a few years ago. I suspect I'd really like it if I saw it now. I like the fact that the mystery is never solved.

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 28 September 2002 06:52 (twenty-three years ago)

I saw it on TV years ago... it's very striking, very good at capturing a mood of Fortean strangeness, and also this mood of weird sexual tension and suppression.

the thing I remember most about it were all the rocks with human faces in them. They were scary.

I was very annoyed when I discovered that it wasn't based on a true story.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Saturday, 28 September 2002 07:54 (twenty-three years ago)

i remembered the film being brilliant, although its a while since i've zeen it. the cars that ate paris is a very good film too

― gareth (gareth), Saturday, 28 September 2002 08:54 (twenty-three years ago)

I have a very high opinion of both book and film, the film is better than the book though. What I liked about the book is that you could *hear* the same sounds as in the film, or so I thought at the time. Best example of landscape as a character in a film?

― PJ Miller (PJ Miller), Saturday, 28 September 2002 11:46 (twenty-three years ago)

No, that's 'Zabriske Point'. Oh who am I kidding...

I often find that Peter Weir's 'good taste' suffocates the life out of the trashy/generic/weird story stuff that he seems to be drawn to again and again. He comes over all hard and aesthetic but he's a bit of a softie underneath it all.

― Andrew L (Andrew L), Saturday, 28 September 2002 12:16 (twenty-three years ago)

never read the book but the film is an old favorite. if the source material is really a "trashy/generic/weird story" then i would think Weir's good taste breathed a certain life INTO it in this case Andrew, though i see your point with respect to some of his other stuff.

― the actual mr. jones (actual), Saturday, 28 September 2002 19:51 (twenty-three years ago)

There's amazing Magic Dirt clip for "She Riff" where Adalita plays up the whole sexy vibe of the whole thing, taking off her stockings very seductively, etc. (My grandmother went to the same school, some 20 years later, too.)

― OCP (OCP), Sunday, 29 September 2002 04:10 (twenty-three years ago)

two months pass...

One of my all-time favorites, this is not a movie for just everybody. Those who are willing to see no more then the "outward" picture- Victorian schoolgirls, repressed sexuality, menacing landscape and outstanding camera work- will probably lable the movie as "slow," or "old fashioned". But those who exert themselves a little, to become immersed in the picture, will discover the reasons why "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is such a masterpiece.
From the story behind Venus (the picture of a "Botticelli angel") to the significance of the clocks pictured everywhere, the thousand and one pieces of a mystery that does not add up to an explanation;
Put simply, every shot in the film is symbolic.
And every shot in the film is fantastic.

Well done, Mr Weir. Very well done..

― Kyria, Sunday, 22 December 2002 09:21 (twenty-two years ago)

absolute fuckknuckling booring bollox almost as bad as the paino

― Queen G (Queeng), Sunday, 22 December 2002 20:12 (twenty-two years ago)

It's beautiful. I saw the film for the first time a year or two ago, and became obsessed with it for weeks.

― Dickon Edwards (Dickon Edwards), Monday, 23 December 2002 14:49 (twenty-two years ago)

P.S. It'd work well on a double-bill with The Virgin Suicides.

― Dickon Edwards (Dickon Edwards), Monday, 23 December 2002 14:50 (twenty-two years ago)

the v Suicides - claptrap for sure have only seen a snippet of Picnic - and sure enough it was a girl outside in a Victorian dress

― Vic (Vic), Monday, 23 December 2002 14:53 (twenty-two years ago)

five months pass...

Magnificent film, in all truth. A while since I've seen it, but it still haunts.

― Tom May (Tom May), Thursday, 29 May 2003 11:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I loved this film too. One of the many ideas I had about it was that it was sort of symbolically illustrating a shift from the Victorian era to the twentieth century (I think the story is set on Valentine's Day of 1901, yes?) ... And then I went out and rented a bunch of Peter Weir's movies and decided "Picnic" was the rare case of a director perfectly suited to the material ... In his other films (oh, the one with Richard Burton about aborigines -- "The Last Wave" I think) and "Dead Poet's Society" and -- God -- especially "Dead Poet's Society" and "The Truman Show," he takes what could have been perfectly good stories and fucks them all up with his pretensions and his attempts to make a STATEMENT. "Picnic at Hanging Rock" benefited from his love of symbolism and mysterious subtexts, but the other films of his I've seen have been insufferable because of it.

― jewelly (jewelly), Thursday, 29 May 2003 22:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Oops, said Dead Poet's Society twice. Oh, now I've said it three times. Somebody stop me!

― jewelly (jewelly), Thursday, 29 May 2003 22:20 (twenty-two years ago)

eleven months pass...

I love Hanging Rock, but I just watched The Last Wave and I agree 100% with jewelly. The overwrought symbolism and unsubtlety make the movie pretty hard to enjoy and detract from the meaning (although David Guilpilil looks oddly like Rick James thoughout the movie, which is awesome) . Weir is worst with is in Mosquito Coast though, I think. Although Theroux's Allie Fox is even more unbearable than Weir's, the movie is so heavyhanded that everything captivating about Theroux's character withers away and the movie is just hard to watch.

Has anybody seen The Cars That Ate Paris? It doesn't sound at all like Weir.

― C0L1N B3CK3TT (Colin Beckett), Monday, 10 May 2004 02:23 (twenty-one years ago)

o man colin. when you get here you will see that it is an entirely accurate film.

― mullygrubber (gaz), Monday, 10 May 2004 02:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Cars That Ate..., Hanging Rock or Last Wave?

― C0L1N B3CK3TT (Colin Beckett), Monday, 10 May 2004 03:08 (twenty-one years ago)

cars that ate

― mullygrubber (gaz), Monday, 10 May 2004 03:09 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm glad it's not Hanging Rock.

― C0L1N B3CK3TT (Colin Beckett), Monday, 10 May 2004 03:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Cars That Ate Paris is mentalism of the highest order. Haha proto-weedy-Mad-Maxism.

― Liz :x (Liz :x), Monday, 10 May 2004 08:14 (twenty-one years ago)

cars that ate paris is a great film

― gareth (gareth), Monday, 10 May 2004 09:23 (twenty-one years ago)

never read the book but the film is an old favorite. if the source material is really a "trashy/generic/weird story" then i would think Weir's good taste breathed a certain life INTO it

But the source material very much is NOT thus.
It was many years ago I saw the film so I'd need to see it again to comment but I read the novel a few months ago and loved it.
The main theme I came away with was that of time.

― cuspidorian (cuspidorian), Monday, 10 May 2004 10:40 (twenty-one years ago)

If you're after strange, weird, creepy oz films try The Long Weekend. It used to turn up regularly on TV but I haven't seen it for years. Very disturbing.

― holojames (holojames), Monday, 10 May 2004 17:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Classic and if you dare disagree, may you be dragged into a dark cave and beaten black'n'blue into toothless, blubbering, sense-depleted submission.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 10 May 2004 18:02 (twenty-one years ago)

I quite like the Mosquito Coast. I saw it when I was very young and it made a big impression on me, but I'm not sure why. Picnic is more classic though obviously.

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 10 May 2004 18:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Also, if you're on a creepy Aussie movie bender, you might like 'Bad Boy Bubby'.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Monday, 10 May 2004 20:44 (twenty-one years ago)

I tried to watch the Criterion DVD of this, but the image is screwed. The picture pulses in spots, shaking up and down. It's especially bad on reds.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Sunday, 16 May 2004 05:48 (twenty-one years ago)

It's an ancient aboriginal curse that's infected your dvd player.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Sunday, 16 May 2004 14:04 (twenty-one years ago)

thirteen years pass...

https://instagram.com/p/BR6XhIuDkLt/

― c (calstars), Sunday, 21 May 2017 01:27 (eight years ago)

wow. gorgeous!

― Yoni Loves Chocha (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 21 May 2017 01:50 (eight years ago)

two years pass...

Does anyone else find this film wantonly inscrutable?

So much so that it undercuts the creepiness

― The World According To.... (Michael B), Friday, 15 November 2019 10:18 (five years ago)

three years pass...

Never seen this film before but it's on right now and is reminding me a lot of "Concluding" by Henry Green.

― Maggot Bairn (Tom D.), Saturday, 3 June 2023 21:24 (two years ago)

The central mystery is alluring, but also the consequences and the aftermath

I just watched Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), and they were both really good I thought. Mel Gibson, as ogre-ish as he seems now, was once a charming and handsome leading man

― Dan S, Saturday, 3 June 2023 23:55 (two years ago)

i love the movie so much, especially the way Weir makes the landscape a character; one that devours strangers

and the juxtaposition of them in their ethereal white dresses surrounded with these looming formations

ugh so classic

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 4 June 2023 01:09 (two years ago)

Mel Gibson, as ogre-ish as he seems now, was once a charming and handsome leading man

OTM. How can you not fall in love with him in Gallipoli?

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Sunday, 4 June 2023 01:29 (two years ago)

this is a Weir'd movie haha

― ꙮ (map), Sunday, 4 June 2023 01:44 (two years ago)

there’s a box in my brain-attic filled with early Mel Gibson movies. Gallipoli is so excellent, I loved him in that.

― werewolves of laudanum (VegemiteGrrl), Sunday, 4 June 2023 01:50 (two years ago)

Does anyone else find this film wantonly inscrutable?
So much so that it undercuts the creepiness

Yeah, but by the end, the inscrutability is the point, the creepiness was just a stop on the way.

― Halfway there but for you, Sunday, 4 June 2023 02:47 (two years ago)

From what I remember this is a good film

― Do I look like I know what a jpeg is? (dog latin), Sunday, 4 June 2023 03:05 (two years ago)

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