“Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.”

May 27, 2018 7:03 PM

Why the lost daughters of Picnic at Hanging Rock still haunt us [The University of Melbourne] As the new TV adaption of Picnic at Hanging Rock premieres, the story still draws us in with enduring themes of female empowerment, lost children and the deep mystery of Australia’s brutal landscape.

• The extraordinary story behind Picnic at Hanging Rock [The Sydney Morning Herald]

“A sinister midnight gale had whipped the few remaining leaves off the old roses in Joan and her husband Daryl's side garden and a huddle of voluminous dark clouds had also moved in, crossing the countryside like black-coated villains in a Victorian Gothic novel. In the grim midwinter light, the landscape looked thoroughly dispiriting. It was, Joan mused to Rae Clements, their long-term, live-in housekeeper, the perfect day to stay inside and write. Joan had woken that morning with the flecked remnants of a peculiar dream imprinted on the edges of her conscious. She knew immediately, she told Rae later that day, that it would make a good book. The dream had centred on a summer picnic at a place called Hanging Rock, which Joan knew well from her childhood holidays. Joan told Rae that the dream had felt so real that when she awoke at 7.30am, she could still feel the hot summer breeze blowing through the gum trees and she could still hear the peals of laughter and conversation of the people she'd imagined, and their gaiety and lightness of spirit as they set out on their joyful picnic expedition.”

• What Really Happened to the Girls at Hanging Rock? [Literary Hub]

“The mystery of what happened to the girls goes unsolved in the novel, which includes a biographical note about Lindsay’s own Australian boarding school and her childhood in the district where the novel takes place, and an author’s note suggesting that it might be a true story. When director Peter Weir went to discuss the film rights for his 1975 adaptation, he was warned not to ask if something had really happened, but he did anyway. Lindsay said she hoped he wouldn’t ask again. So Weir asked if the question of what occurred was open-ended. Could they have fallen down a hole or been abducted by aliens? She said yes, it could have been any of the above. Others had the same two oddly linked questions: was it a true story, and what happened to the characters? People searched old local newspapers in vain for mention of missing girls. In 1980, Yvonne Rousseau published The Murders at Hanging Rock, examining all the competing theories, including a parallel universe, UFO abduction, and a gruesome murder committed by two young men, leaving no trace. Australians read the book in school and became obsessed with the mystery.”

• Hypnotic thriller that haunted a nation inspires remakes for a new generation [The Guardian]

“In the searing heat of an Australian Valentine’s Day, a small party of schoolgirls set out for a local beauty spot, Hanging Rock. Some were never to return. The shocking incident, whether imagined or real, as some still believe, has haunted the national psyche ever since the publication of Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock in 1967. Regarded as a key work of modern Australian literature, Lindsay’s hypnotic puzzle soon spawned a classic film version that was to beguile and disturb audiences around the world. Now the mystery at the heart of both the novel and Peter Weir’s award-winning film – the disappearance of three schoolgirls and a teacher from the fictional Appleyard College that hazy Valentine’s Day in 1900 – is to be looked at anew. An Australian television series starring British actress Natalie Dormer in the role of boarding school headmistress Hester Appleyard is re-telling the fable over six episodes and will be broadcast by the BBC later this year.”

• How Does Amazon’s Picnic at Hanging Rock Compare to the Movie and the Book? [Vulture]

“When you stretch a narrative once contained in a film across six episodes of a mini-series, you end up with more. That’s obvious, of course, but it’s also a fundamentally different way of approaching Lindsay’s novel. In Weir’s film, the story about four women who disappear on a huge rock formation in the Australian bush is ambiguous; your eye spends nearly as much time just watching the young women slowly climb up the rock formation as it does following the detective’s investigation into their disappearance afterward. It’s a movie made up of arresting, unreal moments, and it’s much less interested in digging into quotidian details like witnesses or alibis. The new mini-series is just as interested in the surreal, unexplained, and potentially otherworldly sensations as both previous versions of Picnic at Hanging Rock. But like Lindsay’s novel, the mini-series anchors the events on the Rock to a lot more stuff.”

• Lost Girls: Can a new adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock capture its mystery? [The New Republic]

“Like the novel and film that preceded it, Picnic at Hanging Rock is defined by lacunae and not gore, absence instead of presence. And yet the new television version gestures toward dark backstories of abuse and deceit, the suggestion of bodily mutilation. Blood is all over the show. In one scene, Mrs. Appleyard commands that Miranda’s hands be beaten with a switch until they are oozing and raw; in another, the three main girls make a blood oath in a rose garden, running their palms over thorns until they’ve turned the pink flowers scarlet. When Edith gets her first period on the morning of the picnic, Mrs. Appleyard tells her “bad timing will define your life” with a sneer; the idea being that all women bleed, some just do it more inconveniently than others. The series feels lush, the lawns neon green. The creators have infused it with modern rhythms, as techno beats wind their way into Victorian dances. These little touches make the show feel vibrant and, yes, relevant.”

• Peter Weir on Picnic at Hanging Rock [YouTube]

“The mysteries of Picnic at Hanging Rock live on, even for the director himself. In this excerpt from a 2003 interview on a new special edition of the film, Peter Weir reminisces about how the project first came to him and reveals that Picnic novelist Joan Lindsay wouldn’t even tell him what “really” happened to the girls in the story—no matter how much he asked.”

• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) [Trailer][YouTube]
• Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018) [Amazon Series][Trailer][YouTube]

posted by Fizz (25 comments total)

Aw man I love this film. That's all I have to say right now, gonna check out the links.
posted by glonous keming at 7:06 PM on May 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

The Weir film is really something. Not my usual thing, but very effective.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:24 PM on May 27, 2018 [3 favorites]

I haven’t seen Weir’s film in forever, and I’ve never forgotten it. Not sure I need to see the new series.
posted by rtha at 7:52 PM on May 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Review by Matt Zoller Seitz, a fan of the Weir film.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 8:22 PM on May 27, 2018

Don't miss the section in the first link, that discusses the overwriting of Aboriginal lore about the Rock with the colonial story. Noting, that its true name was never really recorded ("Anneyelong" or "Ngannelong" is the best guess). Actually, I think it is now my headcanon that the girls were displaced by a being of Ngannelong for some unknown tresspass.

I see the part where they almost filmed it in the Blue Mountains, and dismissed that as missing the spirit of the country. It would've, but the Blue Mountains has its own spirits. It does remind me actually of a real encounter between white explorers and Aboriginals on Mt Monundilla, a similar spooky volcanic remnant peak in the Wollemi, also a boundary between Aboriginal nations and site of ceremonies. Ben Singleton and his party were attempting an early crossing the Blue Mountains through the Wollemi region (yes the town of Singleton is named after him; yes the same Wollemi where they found the Wollemi Pine "living dinosaur" tree). They were surrounded on the peak at night, by a party of 200 Aboriginals in full ceremonial dress, who had never seen white people before. They had interrupted an important ritual and meeting. The aboriginal guide with the party was completely terrified and convinced they would all be killed, or worse...

In addition, in the 21st century, an aboriginal art site was discovered in a cave near Monundilla, but collapsed and was swallowed up by the ground soon after they were first seen by white people!

I love the Australian landscape.
posted by other barry at 8:46 PM on May 27, 2018 [10 favorites]

Joan Lindsay’s original novel is presented as a pseudo-historical story (so convincing to some, that they thought it was based on a true story)

Yes! In pre-internet days, I took it for granted that it was a true story. I can't exactly put my finger on what makes it seem so real, but maybe it's that there's no tidy explanation or resolution, as is so often the case IRL.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:16 PM on May 27, 2018 [6 favorites]

I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation like this:

Them: Did they ever find them?
Me: No, they couldn't, because it isn't true.
Them: Not even any bodies?
Me: No, etc.
Them: Ooh, what if they're still up there!!!1!
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:50 PM on May 27, 2018 [11 favorites]

Yes! In pre-internet days, I took it for granted that it was a true story. I can't exactly put my finger on what makes it seem so real

Exactly. It was all gauzily ambiguous enough to maybe be true, as far as I remember, and the pre-internettiness of things helped people keep their disbelief suspended. There was no convenient Snopes or whatever to say it was all a story. You could doubt, of course, but you couldn't duck out of the party, take the T to the Boston public library before it closed, get a photocopy of a Phoenix review that said "an entirely fictional but convincing account of..." or whatever, take the T back, and wave it under their noses. Well, you could, but you didn't.
posted by pracowity at 1:25 AM on May 28, 2018 [12 favorites]

There’s something about the (fake) lore that Joan Lindsey tapped into that just makes the whole thing seem organic and real. And fucking spooky. It reminds me very much of the lore created for the Blair Witch. Something about it convinces people there’s some kernel of truth to it. Very well done. I’m looking forward to watching the series.
posted by supercrayon at 1:31 AM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

That book fucking terrified me as a teen. It's amazingly well done and yes, we had no way of fact checking it to be certain it wasn't real. And you couldn't get any sense out of adults either since they were telling other porky pies (see: drop bears)

Supercrayon, yes, very much like the Blair Witch which had me so scared of the dark I couldn't collect my laundry after night fell.

I'm not watching the series, just writing this comment has brought up too many memories.
posted by kitten magic at 2:57 AM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

According to this article on the website of Australian author Kate Forsyth, Joan Lindsay's novel originally ended with an explanation (in an early draft).
Lindsay's original draft had a final chapter in which the mystery was resolved. At her editor's suggestion, Lindsay removed it before publication, but it eventually appeared as The Secret of Hanging Rock in 1987, three years after Lindsay’s death. The lost chapter suggests that the girls encountered... ...explanation dedacted, I highly recommend the whole thing if you are interested.
posted by Coaticass at 3:08 AM on May 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

The lost chapter suggests that the girls encountered...

I hope they don't go down that route in this tv thing.

What really happened is that we don't know and aren't ever supposed to know what really happened.
posted by pracowity at 3:22 AM on May 28, 2018 [1 favorite]

I wasn't going to comment on this, because I've not seen the film, read the book, or in any way been familiar with these texts, but when I went to do my uni readings instead, I found that Weir was cited.
"The once-dominant view of Australia’s non-coastal interior is that depicted in
the film Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir 1975), ominous and harsh. In contrast, Indigenous
attachment to and identification with ‘country’ resignifies this desert
landscape as inextricable from the personhood of its custodians. No longer
threatening, the features re-presented in paintings are revelatory of knowledge,
culture-sustaining, even life-giving [??]."
- Fred Myers, Emplacement and Displacement: Perceiving the
Landscape Through Aboriginal Australian Acrylic Painting, p459.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 3:23 AM on May 28, 2018 [5 favorites]

At her editor's suggestion, Lindsay removed it before publication

I knew I liked editors for a reason.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:41 AM on May 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

They found a staircase. They were puzzled. What, just a simple wooden staircase, five steps, like someone might build to get to a house that was built on pilings? Out here, in the deep wild where no settlers had lived and no construction ever built? What are they here for? Leading to nowhere, just thin air, no foundation, undisturbed undergrowth both behind the steps, and before them. And naturally, being Victorian girls in clean white dresses they didn't want to rest on the ground so they sat down on the steps...

They climbed the stairs.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:18 AM on May 28, 2018 [10 favorites]

The once-dominant view of Australia’s non-coastal interior is that depicted in
the film Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir 1975), ominous and harsh

What’s the novel where an American kid gets lost in Australia and keeps walking, expecting to find a road in due course, and it says if he’d been brought up in Australia he would have had it drummed into him that when you’re lost you retrace your steps, because if you carry on you’re probably going to die?
posted by Segundus at 4:24 AM on May 28, 2018

The saddest part of the original movie for me, still haunts me to this day, is the brother, telling someone that he was visited by his long list sister in a dream... the sister that had just committed suicide:

I had a funny dream last night.
There was this smell. Real strong.
It was like, like I was wide awake. Dead quiet.
Pansies. That's what it smelt like.
And the whole place was all lit up, bright as day.
Pitch black outside.
And there she is.
My kid sister. Haven't seen her since the orphanage.
She always liked pansies.
And she went all sort of...misty-like.
I calls out, "Sara, don't go yet”.
"Good-bye, Bertie," she says.
"I've come a long way to see ya, and now I must go”.
And she went.

posted by greenhornet at 4:26 AM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure what the novel was, Segundus, but I recall a discussion, I believe here on MeFi about how the Blair Witch project is theoretically absurd to US viewers because it's highly unlikely one could wander for all that long in Maryland.
I however, did not pick up at all on that, as of course the bush is big, and people go missing all the time.
posted by AnhydrousLove at 4:44 AM on May 28, 2018

God I'm fed up with caring about 'fragile' rich white women in Australia. This movie resonated at the time because they're so damn elevated in it and they were all wearing white and pan pipes are creepy as fnck. This didn't need a remake, beautiful as the scenery is.

/grump
posted by taff at 5:39 AM on May 28, 2018 [3 favorites]

Segundus - is the novel Walkabout? From AnhydrousLove's comment above, perhaps you could see Walkabout as an opposite to Picnic at Hanging Rock; in Walkabout an environment which appears alien, harsh and inimicable to life is shown to be the opposite through indigenous knowledge, while Picnic has the environment becoming more and more threatening. However it is years since I have read either book so I am happy to be corrected!
posted by Vortisaur at 8:03 AM on May 28, 2018

Thanks, that’s interesting - but not that one. It’s a very minor incident in the book I remember. He doesn’t in fact get lost. At the risk of derailing, the plot is that the MC is about to take up a coveted academic post, but agrees to covertly take the boy, living with his rich grandmother, to see his ‘delinquent’ mother. Mother dies, MC ends up inadvertently kidnapping the boy and going on the run with him in Australia.
posted by Segundus at 8:29 AM on May 28, 2018

When I think of the word "erotic" (as a general sense, not as a specific driver of lust, so to speak) I think of Wier's film. (Perhaps that comes from seeing the film when I was the age of the students in the film, and being a dude.)
posted by maxwelton at 9:47 AM on May 28, 2018

Maxwelton, that’s an interesting observation- Weir’s Gallipoli always struck me as the male equivalent of Hanging Rock’s exploration of female youth and beauty.
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 11:07 AM on May 28, 2018 [5 favorites]

If you like spooky rocks, Australia has loads. One of my favourites is Queensland's Kalkajaka - "Black Mountain" - which is a Dreaming place that has a lot of unnerving lore and mystery around it. I've been there and can confirm that there's something quite off-putting about the place.

There is also the Devil's Pool, another ephemerally scary place. There is a lot of good Dreamtime mythology that is really accentuated by visiting the places, and vice versa. Need help getting around? Just use the songlines.

Another fun modern mystery is the Marree man (Warning: NSFW as it mentions genitals, and also is a great big PDF.)
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:12 PM on May 28, 2018 [4 favorites]

The original is one of my favourite films.

I feel sorry for the poor sod who has the unenviable task of creating the music score for the TV series, given the stunning mood-setting score used for the original film.
posted by Pouteria at 6:24 PM on May 29, 2018 [1 favorite]