Picnic at Hanging Rock is a mystery best left unsolved. That way the solution can be anything. The movie is, in many ways, more of a projective psychological test than a motion picture. Yet, this doesn’t make it any less a cinematic gem of the Australian New Wave. Picnic at Hanging Rock is a dream that allows people to reflect in ways most modern movies don’t.
The film is adapted from a 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay. Much like Fargo (1996) both versions of the story lean into implications of it being a true story. Perhaps that’s partly fueled the lingering success of this enigmatic tale.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is about a group of young ladies attending Appleyard College, a private school in Victoria, Australia. On February 14th, 1900, they visit the titular rock. Several of the women disappear and despite comprehensive searches almost no clues are discovered. Nothing alludes to their fate in any way. Even when one of the vanished resurfaces, she can’t recall what occurred.
The movie as well as the novel is then primarily about the effect this vanishing has on the community. In that respect the story is one “whose fictive ‘truth’ evolves from the confusing yet purposeful conflation of class sensibilities with a developing post-colonial social milieu in which the settler does not feel wholly settled.” For instance, the event unravels the strict, decorum driven headmistress, who soon openly displays zero interest in the missing women. Her only concern is how these disappearances will inevitably lead to the closing of Appleyard College. It shows how quickly people don’t matter to others, especially those who act refined.
Directed by Peter Weir, Picnic at Hanging Rock is a film full of implications. Metaphorically it can be dissected in numerous ways. Consider the missing young ladies as symbolic of lost youth, never to be recovered by the adults desperately searching for them. Perhaps then, it’s also a death of innocence narrative. Observe the character Sara (Margaret Nelson), a role laden with lesbian overtones, but because she’s being punished and cannot attend the outing, she’s essentially spared from vanishing alongside her good friend Miranda; Picnic at Hanging Rock suggests that those who follow the rules are doomed to, in a sense, disappear — erased by societal standards.

Yet, the film could easily be a mysterious tale of the occult. After all, there are several eerie, inexplicable instances. Characters hallucinate or perhaps actually see the missing as ghosts — visions which themselves invite speculation.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is widely open to interpretation. However, there isn’t enough evidence to form a concrete conclusion. As such, what people propose tends to say more about them than the story. Still, there’s a definite sexual subtext to several exchanges and other subtle implications abound. In one instance, Miss Greta McCraw, played by Vivean Gray (The Last Wave), talks about how mountains made of volcanic rock grow, though it sounds more like she’s wistfully recounting sexual erections rather than geological ones. Meanwhile, depictions of the search parties feature background details like people drinking copious amounts of beer, suggesting these may not be the most attentive searchers.
Brilliantly done, Peter Weir keeps several things from being obvious, leaving specifics up to the audience to notice. There’s a lot conveyed by body language and tone of voice. Consider the oddly gleeful speculations of ordinary citizens wondering if the young ladies fell down a hole and are slowly expiring. The routine juxtaposition of civilization against the natural world. The dirty uniforms of police officers sweating themselves senseless as they search the mountainside. Picnic at Hanging Rock constantly suggests humanity is intruding in places it does not belong.

It calls to mind the poem “My Country” by Dorothea Mackellar who called Australia “the sunburnt country.” Like the poet, Peter Weir depicts a landscape that is beautiful but terrifying. Part of the movie’s mystery is why Hanging Rock is even chosen for a picnic. It’s a hostile place full of poisonous ants, dangerous reptiles, and treacherous labyrinthine mountain passages. Fortunately, the film never explains the chosen destination, the filmmakers preferring instead to let, as Mackellar might say, the sapphire-misted mountain under pitiless blue sky speak with its own beauty and terror.
According to interviews on the Criterion Collection DVD, Peter Weir and cinematographer Russell Boyd exchanged notes early on, doing their best to determine how to conjure the right atmosphere. The story is straightforward until the vanishing occurs. From that point on the wrong feel would upend the film. To capture the proper atmosphere, they discussed paintings from the Heidelberg School as well as the photography of Jacques Henri Lartigue.
They settled on a diffused backlit style which can be seen in several Australian impressionist paintings. One can easily glean the influence of Tom Roberts, David Davies, and Frederick McCubbin. Picnic at Hanging Rock then becomes a haunting impressionistic mystery wholly inspired by Australian art.

Weir often adds to this otherworldly quality with a clever camera trick. On occasion, the film essentially goes into slow-motion. The director carefully chose which moments to allow this to happen so that there would be the least number of visual clues to give it away. The subconscious, though, picks up on these temporal shifts causing audiences to feel something is off. Even if one can’t readily explain it, people and nature aren’t moving properly.
And it’s entirely possible some viewers may never notice or even remotely register such choices. The point is Peter Weir took the risk. Instead of telling the tale plainly, he added a little cinematic spice. It’s there for those who can taste it. To hell with anyone else.
That’s an attitude marking this period of moviemaking in the land down under. Known as the Australian New Wave, it started around 1971. Stork (1971) began it all by delivering the first in a deluge of Ocker comedies. Based on a play by David Williamson, the film lampooned various aspects of Australian life. The commercial success of Stork would then pave the way for The Adventures of Barry MacKenzie (1972). Written by Barry Humphries, it continued the Ocker comedy habit of grotesque parody, playing on stereotypes about Australians as well as the British. However, as Humphries observed in the documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation (2008), many mistook the satire for celebration.

Partly fueled by that mistake, the commercial success of these bawdy comedies inspired a variety of similar flicks. These would feature copious amounts of beer consumption, urban settings, overt sexuality, nudity, and lowbrow humor of all sorts, especially anything featuring bodily fluids. Ocker comedies are essentially social lampoons about vulgar buffoonish Aussie stereotypes who speak in Strine, get unapologetically inebriated, stumble into sex, and vomit on people.
As such films took off, it didn’t matter how financially successful they were, many critics decried the rise of these indie genre flicks. Sex-farces like Alvin Purple (1973) may have claimed to be movies about sexual liberation and feminist freedom, but critics like Sandra Hall saw nothing more than “flesh everywhere… the motivations are made of cardboard, and the women are universally stupid.” See, the success of these initial Ocker comedies and the copycats who followed has to do with burgeoning national pride.
Prior to the 1970s, Australia had no real film industry. Then the Holt and Gordon Liberal government created the Australian Council for the Arts, relaxed censorship restraints, and started funding filmmaking to increase the importance and reach of Australian movies. Consequently, although “just 17 feature films were made in Australia in the 1960s, more than 150 were made in the 1970s.”

Most importantly, these films tended to feature elements that were strictly Australian in nature. That means stories that could only be told through an Aussie lens. The blood drenched genre films of this era such as Razorback (1984) utilized the infamous outback. The thriller Roadgames (1981) employed the vast empty highways of the immense continent. So did George Miller’s Mad Max (1979) which also embraced the “tribal landscape” of Australian car culture.
Again, even if meant satirically at first, the pronounced Australian nature of characters made people oddly proud; they saw themselves on screen for the first time. However, many critics of these Ozploitation pictures craved what they considered more artistic pictures. In some ways, that means the Australian New Waves is almost at odds with itself. Movies like Picnic at Hanging Rock are a reaction to the low budget, do it dirty DIY, indie flicks, yet they contain many of the same cinematic elements, Australian flavors, and metaphorical observations which made for commercial successes.
Alvin Purple may be overtly sexual, but its themes of sexual identity and liberation are no less present than similar subtle implications in Picnic at Hanging Rock. Consider that Peter Weir even began directing with the horror comedy The Cars That Ate Paris (1974). Understanding both ends of the spectrum, he knew how to compose a picture that kept the right parts quiet to satisfy the snobs.

Movies that are part of the Australian New Wave deal with society trying to thrive in situations it shouldn’t be able to, perhaps even can’t. Whether that’s because of inhospitable nature or social restrictions, maybe a combination of the two, there’s a uniqueness to the perspective while remaining oddly universal. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) is a great example of this.
It’s the tale of a mixed-race indigenous person who just can’t catch a break and his life spirals out of control. Rarely is the slip into outlaw status so well portrayed, especially as it shows how anyone could suffer the same indignities. And that every-person quality is inherent in a lot of the Australian New Wave. Picnic at Hanging Rock may be about a group of missing young ladies, but its themes are broad enough to include all kinds of people.
And whether overt or subtle, certain issues — sexuality, racism, feminism, humanity versus nature, etc. — are a component of the Australian New Wave. Those movies presented notions to audiences in myriad ways that spanned a spectrum of artistic quality. Yet, they never shied away from topics that could cause discomfort. Especially when it comes to movies like Wake in Fright (1971) which showed how society and human decency are fragile illusions.

Hollywood has become increasingly risk averse in the last few decades. Mammoth budgets get dumped in remakes, sequels, and reboots because they have preexisting audiences so are easier to pitch as guaranteed moneymakers. However, original stories, especially those that may challenge the status quo, aren’t just risking cash. In an egregious obvious attack on freedom of expression, Florida governor Ron DeSantis sued Disney to punish the corporation for having a political opinion contrary to the Sunshine State’s aspiring authoritarian. Since there is a growing real likelihood of punitive, politically motivated attacks on creatives who dare to say things like gay people exist or that racism is bad, producers are less likely to risk financing cinema that will get banned or instantaneous bad press, regardless of how disingenuous criticisms are.
For better or worse, the Australian New Wave was never afraid to cross the line. That may be why the Ocker comedies haven’t aged well to put it kindly. Yet, oddly enough, the horrifying tales of that era linger. Picnic at Hanging Rock may not be as bloody as other horror movies from the same period, but it no less represents how easily people slip out of existence.

Technically, there is an answer to what happened that day. Joan Lindsay wrote a final chapter that was excluded from her novel. Posthumously published, the details ruin the story’s strengths.
It’s best that the mystery never gets solved because it keeps the audience asking questions. Ambiguity pulls viewers back, perhaps to see something different on a second watch. Peter Weir expertly delivered a dreamlike nightmare that is distinctly Australian, yet hauntingly universal in its humanity. Picnic at Hanging Rock informs immensely, while accepting we can’t always know.