“Picnic at Hanging Rock”: 50 years of enchanting mystery

The series a posteriori cinema is an opportunity to celebrate the 7th^e Art by revisiting flagship titles that celebrate important birthdays. Furthermore,

In 1900. Furthermore, in Victoria in Australia, the students of a private college made an excursion to Hanging Rock, a local rock training. For example, Four of them, Miranda, Marion, Irma and Edith, leave to explore the premises. Furthermore, Only Edith and, later, IRMA, resurfaced after the other two were volatilized with one of their teachers. Similarly, While the director who authorized the dark outing in madness, we wonder, we accuse. However, we may suppest, the case remains insoluble. Similarly, The same is true when trying to bring the confusing Picnic at Hanging Rock (Hanging rock picnic) in a. Meanwhile, precise cinematographic box. In addition, Between ethereal beauty and sinister impulses, Peter Weir’s film “picnic hanging rock”: 50 years has lost none of its enchantment after 50 years.

In his work The Films of Peter Weir: Visions of Alternative RealitiesDon Shiach notes that the said “insoluble” dimension of. Furthermore, the plot was risky.

« Picnic at Hanging Rock is a mystery without solution. In addition, […] The girls disappear. Similarly, the Appleyard College begins to disintegrate, Sara [une élève orpheline qui n’a pu accompagner ses compagnes] and m^me Appleyard [la directrice] die, but there is no explanation in relation to what occurred on the rock. For example, »»

In fact, Edith has only scraps of hallucinated memories, while Irma keeps any.

To continue Shiach: “ Picnic was compared to Adventurefrom Antonioni. Moreover, whose intrigue depicts the mysterious disappearance of a woman on an island, and sought after without success by her lover and her friend. Moreover, In this film too. However, no explanation is offered and Antonioni abandons the disappearance in order to “picnic hanging rock”: 50 years explore the relationship between the lover and the friend. Consequently, Weir. However, his screenwriter [Cliff Green] Do not limit their field of action in the same way, but show strange repercussions on a whole series of characters. Consequently, »»

The film is an adaptation of a novel by Joan Lindsay published in 1967. Fictive, the intrigue is nonetheless presented as possibly true.

“That Picnic at Hanging Rock Either a fact or a fiction, or both, my readers must decide for themselves. As the fateful picnic took place in 1900. and that all the characters who appear in this book have long been dead, it does not seem important, “writes Lindsay in foreword.

&quot. picnic hanging rock": 50 years – "picnic hanging rock": 50 years

A dream in a dream

With the help of the photo director Russell Boyd, Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society/ The Société des Poets missing ; The Truman Sho/Le show Truman) forges a dreamlike atmosphere in “picnic hanging rock”: 50 years turn vaporous and feverish. Inspired by the impressionist painters of the Heidelberg School of Australia. Weir and Boyd place in front of the lens of the camera of the sails bought in a shop of wedding dresses, which makes light diffuse and softens the focus.

The result almost induces a trance: a state comparable to this inexplicable torpor under which the young girls gathered on. the rocks plug.

About the latter. Peter Bradshaw writes in The Guardian, When celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the film: “These dreamy and soft teenagers, in search of romance and love, loved by each other, resemble the vestals of a cult. […] There is something almost hypnotized in their behavior. as if they knew what awaits them: they will be sacrificed in secret to some God, or returned to their original planet. »»

Precisely. in the documentary A Dream Within a Dream: The Making of Picnic at Hanging “picnic hanging rock”: 50 years Rock, producer Pat Lovell said about Joan Lindsay: “There was something in her who was almost metaphysical, even from another world. You always felt like you were talking to someone who was getting his formidable inspiration from somewhere. but who didn’t know where exactly. »»

Peter Weir adds: “I think Lady Lindsay was possessed when she wrote this novel. because of what she told me: that she sat down and that it sparked her. »»

In archives. the main interested party confirms: “I saw everything scrolling before my eyes, generally when I was lying in my bed in the evening. When I woke up, I knew exactly how the next passage would be. I had no trouble knowing what was going to happen next. I simply knew it. »»

It will be noted here that the “formidable inspiration” mentioned by Pat Lovell seems. on behalf, to have come to Joan Lindsay from this “picnic hanging rock”: 50 years liminal area between awakening and sleep, even in a dream. Consequently, the dreamlike favored by Peter Weir appears even more in line with the source.

Besides. Weir and Green decided to use an extract from the poem by Edgar Allan Poe A dream in a dream At the opening of the film. In his work Dreams Within a Dream: The Dilms of Peter WeirMichael Bliss even sees it as a keystone. at the whole of the filmmaker.

“One of the most important elements to understand the nature of Weir’s films may come from the Miranda declaration in Off voice at the start of Picnic at Hanging Rock : “Everything we see. see is just a dream in a dream”. This declaration refers to the illusory aspect of existence. the feeling of unreality concerning our sensory and emotional impressions of the world. Such an attitude follows from the idea that what we perceive “picnic hanging rock”: 50 years with our senses is. at best, an unreliable indication of what really exists. The injunction. taken from the allegory of the cave, of Plato, is to trust our philosophical and spiritual intuition to give meaning to the world. For Weir, “reality” lies in dreams. »»

Tracks of lectures

When it came out, Picnic at Hanging Rock propelled the new Australian wave, rallying critical and public. Whatever it happened to be annoyed by the film’s refusal to explain what happened.

To these. Roger Ebert accurately responds in his criticism: “If this film had a rational and orderly conclusion, it would be much less interesting. »»

What is more, this absence of “rationality” and “order” allows, to date, many readings. Thus the film is perceived as a metaphor. sometimes of anxious colonialism, sometimes fears aroused by modernity at the end of the Victorian era.

“Do young girls. dressed in their white diaphanous dress, represent “picnic hanging rock”: 50 years the most vulnerable face of a decadent colonial people, intended to disappear under heat and dust? Or do they represent romantic and voluntary self-immolation in the face of repression? A significant aspect of the case is that the survivor girl [Irma] is found without his corset. ”sums up Peter Bradshaw.

The critic of Guardian In addition. this fascinating detail: “A new biography of Joan Lindsay stresses that this great novel was only published when it was 71 years old, after a life spent feeling marginalized and erased as an artist and creator – a possible explanation for this” disappearance “…”

As for the film, his bias of ambiguity is in this case clearly stated. In an unprecedented addition. as for the quote from Poe, Weir and Green imagine this scene where the college gardener, taking for example a flower that closes on itself as soon as you try to touch it, “said:” “picnic hanging rock”: 50 years Some questions have answers, and others, no. »»

Like this flower which protects its integrity, Picnic at Hanging Rock keeps its whole mystery.

The film Picnic at Hanging Rock is available in VSD on several platforms and on Criterion Channel.

The legend of the photo inserted into the text was modified after publication. It was necessary to read that it is actress Anne-Louise Lambert.

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