"Picnic at Hanging Rock," a mystery about members of a school party who disappear on a class trip, is adapted from a 1967 novel of the same name by Australian author Joan Lindsay. While some of the settings in the film, including Hanging Rock itself, are real, myths that the novel/film are based on actual incidents have been discredited. The author herself has been circumspect about the truth to the storyline and whether any of it could be based on fact, but no historical or media reports support the tale, and as Mrs. Appleyard says herself during the film, such sensational disappearances would be widely reported in the press.
The book and film's unresolved ending was the inspiration for a book published in 1980 titled "The Murders at Hanging Rock," which posed some possible solutions to the mystery.
There actually is an "answer" about what happened to the girls and their teacher, an 18th chapter that Lindsay withheld from her novel, that was released in 1987. Wikipedia links to a page that presumably has the "solution." I suggest that for those of us who want to read the novel (I do, for one), if you want to discuss Lindsay's ending, you preface it with a spoiler alert.
In a 1994 interview, film director Peter Weir recounts the author's reluctance to even confirm for him whether "Picnic at Hanging Rock" was based on a true story, and that she did not tell him the answer to her mystery, so no definite ending can be discerned within the framework of the film.
When "Picnic at Hanging Rock" was released on DVD, Weir actually cut minutes from the original film rather than add more scenes. This Web site has screen shots of the deleted scenes, sound files and other information.
There also is a documentary about the making of the film that came out in 1994. There's more information about it at imdb.com.
6 comments:
Well, I read the Wikipedia "answer," and I won't give it away, but I will say that I found it rather disappointing and far less interesting than the mystery. I think the author was wise to withhold the solution.
I plan to read it as soon as I've read the book. Unlike a story like Henry James' "Turn of the Screw," which made me want to tear my hair out in frustration, I thought this was a good story despite the lack of resolution.
I agree. I think it worked even without a resolution. In some ways, the story was more about the survivors and the aftermath than the disappearance.
Since we are now on our third DVD player in as many months, we have become a bit less enthused about the drive over to the store for another exchange. So during my digital downtime I watched this movie on a VHS tape. I’m curious to look up what Weir cut for the DVD release because while watching the tape, I found myself more than once cutting scenes in my occasional role as a kind of backseat director. The bits that didn’t work were all because of the dialogue. Some of it seemed to be leaden either in the writing or the delivery—it can be hard to tell which. Cl mentioned in another thread a spot where Miranda’s lines didn’t quite come off.
As to the ending of the movie, I cannot imagine any ending that resolved the question working as well as the “hanging” ending. It didn’t feel like the solution was withheld so much as that there intrinsically was no solution. They could keep investigating, but there was no further evidence that would ever come to light. There had been a break in physical causality. Unexplainable.
I agree, dw, and if you read what the intended explanation was, you would still come to the same conclusion.
Of the deleted scenes, I would have liked to have seen the Michael-Irma interaction, because I thought he was dealing with some internal conflict: His search eventually led to Irma's rescue, yet she wasn't the girl he wanted to save.
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