On Saint Valentine's day 1900 in the state of Victoria, Australia, schoolgirls from Appleyard College go picnicking at Hanging Rock led by teachers Miss Greta McCraw and young de Poitiers. Below them, Michael Fitzhubert is having lunch with his Colonel uncle, aunt, and valet Albert. Back at school, headmistress Mrs. Appleyard has kept Sara from going. At the picnic, buggy driver Ben Hussey notices his watch has stopped and Miss McCraw's watch has also stopped at noon. Miranda St. Clare, Marion Quade, Irma, and Edith go off to explore spied by Michael and Albert. After a nap, three girls walk off and Edith runs back in hysteria. Miss McCraw go in search for them as the rest return home with Edith. The locals set off to find the missing four. Appleyard fears losing students. She tells Sara that her benefactor has stopped sending money. Irma is found but she won't talk about the disappearances.There is a light dreamy sense of foreboding for the first part. It's a little slow at the beginning as one wonders what the story is going to be about. It has repressed sexuality. It's a moody, haunted mystery. It's a lot of things. The most daring of all is that it gives no obvious answers. That can very infuriating. It also leaves the audience with a haunted feeling. The scenes at the Rock are almost hypnotic. I would have liked more time at the Rock in the later parts. The Sara story hints at an even darker world at the school. Most of the actors are relative amateurs. For instance, Sara mumbles a lot of her lines but that fits her character. This is kinda floaty haunting mystery.

The schoolgirls of Appleyard College are led by the angelic Anne- Louise Lambert, and seem to be at a blossoming age where in the absence of boys furtive glances are cast all around, giggles and valentines litter their conversations, and their beauty already drawing the notice of older men. And if you did not spot these signs, what about the tremendous Hanging Rock, jutting out of the ground with a towering phallic presence, every curve and jagged edge suggestive to the teenage mind. But under the iron-fisted rule of headmistress Mrs. Appleyard this trembling sensuality has been repressed - the Victorian-era dress code and manner of speech take this a step further. They are well trained and versed in the arts, uttering Poe and Shakespeare dreamily and somehow, appropriately. The film is at its mesmerising and hallucinogenic best when it discourages reason and logic, and simply lets the girls wander wherever their young minds and bodies take them. Weir superimposes the erratic flight of the beasts of the air on the girl's faces, and dissolves barren landscape on barren landscape. Static closeups of leftover food teem with insect and scavenger life - in the soundtrack, their buzzes become an unshakable presence in the background, serenading the untamed wilderness. And when the girls arrange themselves on the top of Hanging Rock in a formation that suggests an otherworldly, supernatural influence, the screen shimmers visibly in the heat, sweaty and hazy with perspiration and mystery. But it loses its power after that initial encounter with Hanging Rock, where it switches back to the students and teachers remaining, all of whom are desperate to solve the puzzle. The soundtrack, consisting mostly of a piercing, ethereal pan flute and a section where it turns demonic and foreboding as they make their way up the cliffs, loses it potency with each subsequent visit. What Weir wants to achieve is an atmosphere that displaces all rational explanation, as if the Australian outback was beyond the reach or understanding of humans and is reclaiming those children for itself. But he cannot resist dangling clues that inevitably spur investigation and theory; Miranda's strangely prophetic "I won't be here much longer", the single corset found at the scene of the crime, the doctor outlining all the physical injuries on Irma's body in meticulous detail as if to say 'pay attention', and the strange, additional disappearance of Miss McCraw which does not amount to much. These details, which are spoken of plainly in that English dialect, and discussed not in the outback, but in the boring grey interiors of the school, are of course not given any closure. The audience is supposed to be hypnotised and transfixed by the Hanging Rock and its grasp, but every time we switch back to the edges of civilisation their power is suppressed once more. And then in the vague, unrewarding ending that has many viewers frustrated, Weir quite deliberately conceals. He places the camera within that uncanny crevasse, peering out at a hesitant Michael inching towards it. It tilts down agonisingly to reveal Irma's body, and zooms in to show the horror on his face - and she of course conveniently cannot remember a thing about what has transpired. It never even thinks of revealing the other side, and the film becomes bewildering rather than enigmatic.

The film seems to be a simple story of a group of students going to a rural picnic in Hanging Rock (a lava geological formation with rock pinnacles).But the movie goes far beyond.It's pure existentialismBehind the usual situations, seems to be a mysterious power operating on the girls (and on the viewer) whom are dragged into an eerie maze. The perceptions begin to experience relevant changes. Everything feels differently: comments and opinions do not seem to come from any teenager girl, but from an ancient wisdom knowledge related with spiritualism and non-dualism. For instance:-Marion:"A surprising number of human beings are without purpose, though it is probable that they are performing some function unknown to themselves".-Miranda: "What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream".-Miranda: "Everything begins and ends at the exactly right time and place".They seem to have entered into a dreamland dimension, suspended in time. An ethereal energy which makes all acts are led by a high level of awareness and absolute sense of freedom.However, according to Sara, Miranda predicted her own fate: she would not return. So she could have had a prior intuition about her predestination. Her ethereal mood, mystery and beauty are perfectly portrayed by Anne-Louise Lambert.We have a story in which fate and power of nature are intertwined. In the end, the most relevant fact is the feeling that remains in some viewers long after having seen the movie: the feeling of void, nothingness, the inexplicable, the beyond...10/10

Peter Weir's mystery drama Picnic At Hanging Rock is the very definition of haunting. It has an intangible, dreamlike atmosphere that is at once beautiful and eerie. Nothing quite like it has crossed my cinematic vision up until this point, and can't believe it took me this long to check it out. The setting s 1900, Australia, a land still very much wild and untamed, although partway colonized by the British. In the hypnotizing opening scene, several angelic young girls in a remote boarding school cast longing, lingering looks out the windows at the horizon, and lyrically recite verses of poetry in the early morning air. They are a naive young bunch, because of the times, and their age. They embark with some of their teachers for a picnic at a local landmark, a labyrinthine plateau called Hanging Rock. Four of the girls become curious in the warmth of the afternoon sun and venture into the maze of stone formations high up on the hill. Three of them are never seen again. The fourth is traumatized by a terror she can remember nothing of. It's a mystery that crawls up your spine and grips you with a need to know, yet left unrequited and empty as the unforgiving outback. Cinematographer Russell Boyd paints gauzy pictures worthy of renaissance art, and navigates the spooky rock formation until we think we see things, feel things, and are within the grasp of answers that the film remains obstinate in giving. He even laid bridal lace over the lens in some scenes to enhance the ethereal tone. A huge part of what makes the film work is the knockout pan flute score by Zhamfir that piles on the atmosphere. A classic of true originality and daring exploration.