Any definition is a high-risk yet necessary thing because it helps us navigate the trajectories of daily life. The privacy of our "private" sphere is questionable, especially as it is shaped, limited, and condemned to definitions. Each definition seeks to understand and present a foundation. Thus, the movie "Picnic at Hanging Rock" can be analyzed through the prism of criticizing the existence of essence of any term we know. Setting aside the plot of the movie which is preoccupied with the mysterious disappearance of three female students and one professor in a private school in Australia, we will indulge in a celebration of Victorian and Renaissance aesthetic motifs framed in exterior and interior shots. In doing so, the character of Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), one of the tragically missing students, is explicitly compared to that of Botticelli's Venus. It seems that the first part of the film (which is thematically and soundly different from the second part of the film dedicated to the search for the missing) is celebrating the Renaissance principle of undercover hedonism. Literally, the first part of the film is wrapped in opaque layers of Victorian lace, which is an integral segment of almost every frame that contains cultural features. The scene when Miranda, Irma (Karen Robson), Marion (Jane Vallis) and Edith (Christine Schuler) jump across a stream is reminiscent of the scene of some Renaissance paintings of muses in the woods. The emphasis is on the layering of material and psychological states. To put it differently, the focal notion of film is fractality. It is present as the defining element of mystery, film photography, character characterization, and scenography design, where the main idea is that each character, as well as the space that they occupy, is one moment within a series of deposits of matter. From my perspective, the film is evidently about questioning the source of the difference between emphasized femininity and masculinity. This is where thanks to the concept of fractality a common ground is sought after, ie. matter as an undeniable fact.

During a trip to Hanging Rock, viewers can see large shots of insects that are either in their natural habitat or crawling over food. These shots are compared to scenes where the female students who walked towards the top of the rock lie at its base resting, while ants crawl along their bare feet. At that moment, there is no barrier between these tiny and human organisms. At the atomic level, they permeate each other and give a reflection of fractality. This proximate contact was made possible by the fact that the girls came into nature, deliberately set out to explore the rock, and left pieces of clothing behind to make their experience of searching less distracting. This view of the notion of fractality is related to a scene involving Marion’s short monologue, as she stands on the elevation she describes her colleagues and professors as ants, and rhetorically wonders whether the purpose of life for some organisms is mere functionality in nature. On top of that, a scene in a botanical garden attended by a gardener (Frank Gunnell) and Tom (Tony Llewellyn-Jones) is perhaps key in supporting the critique of the existence of a harmful and limiting difference between living organisms. Namely, the two of them gaze at a plant whose leaves bend to the touch. It could be said that this is a metaphor for the primordial dimension of the movie where Hanging Rock is central. This accumulation of matter is stereotypically addressed in the feminine gender, magnetically attracting visitors and hiding the secret of the disappearance of female students and professors. Regardless of being said to be millions of years old, it was interpreted in the Victorian era through a well-defined value system that differentiated between acceptable and unacceptable members of society (like orphans whose origins are often a mystery to themselves, represented through the characters of Sara (Margaret Nelson) and Michael (Dominic Guard)). The character of the school principal (Rachel Roberts), who is a symbol of discipline, rigor, and set rules, disagrees with the idea of ​​the students going to nature at the beginning of the film. According to her, nature is a dangerous place that warrants no necessity to spend too much time in. However, the character of Professor McCraw (Vivean Gray), who later becomes one of the missing persons, has a fondness for nature and explains all the small elements of Hanging Rock with great admiration. She analyzes creation by accepting the fact that nature is a layered accumulation of matter that is constantly being built upon. It is to be expected that the headmistress describes the professor as having a male brain.

One of the plausible claims regarding the idea of ​​this film is that the distinction between femininity and masculinity is overstated and almost caricatured to critique the stereotypes that underlie both concepts. For example, the opening scene of the film depicts female students waking up in Victorian kitsch rooms, washing with rose water, carefully combing their hair, tying their corsets, exchanging gossip, and reciting romantic poetry. In contrast, watching the girls as they cross the stream, the characters of the boys voyeuristically view the whole scene and sexually objectify the girls. Although the two boys attempt to find the missing characters by heading towards the top of the rock, their characters do not undergo a significant psychological transformation because their efforts in nature are seen as an expected and normal reaction of concern for the fates of the missing. Additionally, the other male characters in the film are also mostly portrayed as saviors. What is striking is that on at least two occasions the question is raised about the possible rape and murder of the missing girls by predatory men. I will also mention a scene of the search around the rock organized at the initiative of local male residents, where police officers lead a handcuffed prisoner who is not a white man, but belongs to one or more Indigenous peoples. This detail is crucial to understanding the author's attitude towards the pervasive imperialism over a space that will never be fully enslaved.

Sparks of anti-Victorian sentiment erupt from the choice of musical background in the scenes where the girls prepare to go out and climb towards the top of the rock. The sounds of crickets mix with the sounds of brass folk instruments, almost giving the impression of Slavic traditional music. The musical background of the search and the ultimate psychic collapse of the boarding school director is made up of canonical pieces of classical music that European culture boasts of. I should mention that the footage of the girls climbing to the top of the rock is intertwined with footage of the rocks. It can be argued that the rocks are compared to the characters of the girls because each of these individuals carries inherited genetic material and is an example of fractality. The physical journey to the top of the rock is fatal for the professor and each of the girls, except for one. After Irma is found, she greets her classmates dressed in a red dress and coat. In that scene, she wears a color that only then appears on one of the female students. Irma is no longer seen as a naive innocent girl dressed in white lace, but rather as an accomplice in the disappearance of the victims. Her classmates and music teacher first ignore her and then attack her. Irma's character has undergone a transformation following an initiative that meant experimenting with the limits of her will and strength while climbing Hanging Rock. On that occasion, together with the rest of the girls, she gradually took off her socks, shoes and corsets, ie. whatever limited their movement toward the truth and built an artificial barrier between her and the knowledge derived from personal experience. Thus, Miranda, Marion and Professor McCraw all suffered as they crossed the boundaries of social norm. A similar thing happens to Sara, a girl in love with Miranda who decides to commit a desperate act of suicide before her arrangement to move to an orphanage.

Author: Lemana Filandra
September 7, 2019