Picnic at Hanging Rock is almost revolutionary in terms of what director Peter Weir did for the Australian Film Industry. The film was the awakening of a small film society soon to be on the map internationally. The movie is based on a 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay and is not, as many think, based on true events. The story takes place just as the 20th century is beginning and deals with the sudden disappearance of a number of girls out on a field trip of sorts, as we would say today. But PICNIC is not a thriller whose main task is finding out exactly what has happened though that should be on the front burner, as it were. The film goes much deeper in putting questions to the audience about societal matters such as an Australian class system, the whole ridiculous notion of sexual repression even as the Victorian Age was at its end, a repression that did so much harm not only in Australia but almost everywhere under Dominion rule. Those were not easy days, and Peter Weir's film is anything but an easy film. The look of the film is positively beautiful in total antithesis to the horrendous event that has occurred. Weir is somehow able to create quite a disturbing film, a film not only of mystery but one with a sense of horror as it appears clandestine matters and secrets will remain long after the film is over. It is not a film that is going to let us off the hook easily by answering neatly the many questions posed in the film. What Peter Weir does is quite masterful as he leaves us with a haunting emptiness that is pretty unusual in film.
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