Peter Weir's Cinematic Vision: Picnic at Hanging Rock

You're listening to Monster Kid Podcast. It's 1900 in Australia. A group of students from a girls boarding school, brimming with the enthusiasm of youth, embark on what's supposed to be a carefree Valentine's Day outing at the iconic hanging rock. The ambience is idyllic and the laughter is contagious. But as the day unfolds, this innocent trip takes a dark turn. Four girls, drawn inexplicably to the rocks embrace, venture deeper. By sunset only one returns, her memory erased, and a teacher is mysteriously gone.

Behind this masterpiece is director Peter Weir who, fresh from his first full-length feature film, the Cars of Eight Paris, crafts an atmosphere that is seen and felt. The cast, led by talents like Ann Louise Lambert as the ethereal Miranda and Rachel Roberts as the stern Mrs Appell Yard, breathed life into Joan Lindsay's iconic novel. But this film isn't just about the mystery of the missing. At its core, picnic and hanging rock delves into the themes of nature versus civilization. The untouched beauty of the Australian wilderness stands in stark contrast to the Victorian era restraints and social expectations. The girls grapple with Themes of time. Both its palpable passage on that faithful day and the metaphysical aspects play heavily into the film. It challenges us to consider sexuality, the mysteries of adolescence and the clash between the known and the unknown. This isn't just a movie, it's a mood, an atmosphere, it's a dreamlike state that lingers, asking viewers to grapple with the line between reality and the ethereal, the known and the unknowable, the haunting soundtrack and the Australian landscape. Cinematic beauty, craft, a visceral and cerebral experience. And today, as we traverse this intricate cinematic landscape, we're joined by Tab with her unique insights and deep appreciation for film.

Were set to embark on a deep dive into this masterpiece. So, listeners, join us as we explore, analyze and celebrate the intricacies and enigmas of picnic and hanging rock. G'day and welcome to a didn't go ate my movie, a podcast that celebrates the weird and wonderful world of Australian film from the 70s, 80s and beyond. As ever, I'm your host, pete. Today I'm joined by tab from the stiletto badges podcast to discuss picnic and hanging rock. How are you tab?

Thank you so much. I'm great. I'm excited to talk about this movie because I I feel like I try to talk to people about it and they've never seen it before.

Isn't it funny? It's interesting, even just talking to like friends of mine. We had some friends over last night and they were just asking what we're going to coming up is it on doing a podcast recording tomorrow? And we're doing picnic from hanging rock and they're like oh, we haven't watched that for years, I haven't seen that for a long time and even myself I hadn't seen it for years. Like I saw this. The first time I ever saw this film I was. It came out in 75. I saw it I think in 77 or 76 on a school excursion and I think at that age I was probably 13, 14, something like that. It just went right over her head. So I think for that age group they're not really gonna not really gonna understand a lot of it, right?

it's vibes. The movie is how I described it to my friend Micah, because it is very visual first of all, and it's about the atmosphere of it.

It has a loose plot, but it's not super dependent on that no, I know, and much has been said about it, it has no ending. Nothing wraps up and there's a wrap up but there's no clear in.

I don't think we're spoiling anything, because I think at the very start you pretty much know that's gonna happen yeah, I don't think you can really spoil this movie, other than some girls on a school trip disappear, but that happens at the beginning that's right.

There's no spoiling this movie. So anyway, picnic at Hang Rock was released in 1975 and was directed by Peter Weir, film stars and Louise Lambert, rachel Roberts, dominic Guard and Helen Morse. It also features again in my podcast a very young John Jarrett yeah what was his second film role?

she's so young in this I think the youngest I had seen him prior to this was next of kitten and he's probably in his early 30s and that yeah, he's really young.

I can't remember. I was looking yesterday and I thought I've got to write down the name of the first film and I forgot. I'm sorry about that. It's his second feature film and he said he's so young. But you can see, he can see the talent in him in this movie. He's not yeah, billing but he's he's quite good in this film, I think and I think he's.

His character is supposed to stick out this way, but everyone else is so like posh and upper-crust, and that's really sets him apart from yeah from everyone else, and I think it's supposed to, because yeah like a servant or a worker for one of the rich families he's the larrican Aussie guy in the movie.

So the movie was based on the book of the same name written by Joan Lindsay, and it was first published in 1967. I've not read it. I actually just bought it on Apple Books last week and I try and read it and I knew I wouldn't get through it before this, so I started to read it.

It's very similar, it's very have you read it?

have you read it?

yeah, a small copy came with my criterion, dvd so I read it several years ago so.

I'm looking forward to reading it and I think, if I think about the start of the book, even I think she writes at the start of the book that she says because the big thing about this movie is, they kept asking her all the time is this a true story or is? This something you made up and she never really answered the question and she was told she used to tell people. I think when Pb we first went to meet her, he was told by her publicist or publisher not to ask her whether it was a true story or not.

But he couldn't help himself and did, and at first she said to him I hope you're not gonna ask that question again. But then she said it's she didn't really. Say she didn't really answer it straight and the start of the start of the book. It actually basically says it doesn't matter whether this is true or not, because so much time has passed.

The people in this book are dead yeah, it's presented almost like a true crime book in the way that it's written. It's written as if it is a real thing that people talk about, at least yeah not everything in, it, is true, but urban legend kind of.

Thing so I'm looking forward to getting into it and reading it. It'll be really good. So where to watch it? So it's a weird one, because in Australia I didn't find it on any streaming service for such a seminal Australian film. Yeah it's almost it's really. I looked on places where I looked in all the regular places, but then I looked in places where I thought I'll absolutely be on ABC I view, but no it's not there and then I thought I'll be on the SPS one. So ABC is like our national broadcast and.

SPS is like a. It used to be mostly always foreign films and foreign TV and stuff like that, and it's still like that. But they have a lot of Australian content as well and I thought it'd be on their streaming service for sure because they have a lot to Australian stuff and so does the ABC and I thought I'll be on there for sure. So I don't know if there's a rights thing in Australia at the moment, but it's not an any streaming service. You can buy it, like on Apple I think, and things like that, or rent it right there's.

I ended up having to order a DVD from a cellar on eBay and wow, because I was gonna order it through Amazon. But it might have been a bit, might not have made it in time and I know there's a 4k on Amazon, I think that's second site released which looks interesting, and there's a couple of other few versions. Funnily enough, I only found out the second viewing and watching a documentary, because the DVD I got is Super Bear Bones. It's the movie, it's the trailer and that's it and there's nothing else on it.

So I found a documentary on YouTube that's split into two parts, which I think is off one of the later umbrella releases, and I found out that the version I watched that I got on DVD was a director's cut when he had a second go at the movie a few years later.

Oh, wow, okay and took some scenes out and things like that. So, yeah, so it's. There's not really much there. There's a rumor that umbrella are releasing a new, fully restored 4k before the end of the year. There was a an interview I watched with one of the guys from umbrella it was last week and he mentioned that they're working on a 4k of a beloved Australian film. So I'm thinking maybe it's that. So if that comes to fruition, I'll definitely pick that up as well so where have you been?

able to watch it so I noticed that it is currently in the US at least on max, which would be HBO max. So, yeah, I saw that it was on max or HBO max. When I was trying to, I was actually trying to find the mini series to look at and then I have it as a criterion DVD and I checked the criterion website and they do have a blu-ray available, but that may only be. I think it would be region A for the US so it would probably be region locked, unfortunately yeah, yeah but if you're a US listener, there's a couple different ways you can get it, which is surprising.

Usually it's the other way around. Usually.

Europe or.

Australia has it when we don't.

Yeah, if you're an Australian listener and you do want to get something from Europe. So if you get something, I think anything from Britain uses the same region as we do, so you can safely buy stuff, I think that's from the UK. So if you get it off the Amazon UK store or something like, that. So, yeah, it's funny because, as an aside, when I was looking for this movie I was looking on ABC I found this Nick Cave and Warren Ellis concert at Hanging Rock.

Oh nice.

And it was really cool, and so I ended up getting totally sidetracked for 30 minutes.

It's watching that we just went and saw Nick Cave in Milwaukee a week ago. I know.

I saw Micah mention. That Was it great.

Oh, he was awesome. It was on the level of I imagine seeing somebody like David Bowie or.

Tom.

Weitz or Leonard Cohen, and unfortunately, like Leonard Cohen and David Bowie, I wouldn't be able to see them because they're from now.

But Nick Cave was amazing.

It was just him and a piano, and then the bass player from Radiohead was accompanying him.

Oh wow, that would have been good. Yeah, it would have been excellent. So the movie had a budget I think I missed. I mistyped this. I put $443 million to get it. It was $443,000. And its box offers. It made $5.12 million in the show. It's actually not too bad theatrically. Yeah, I don't think it cost $443 million. Imagine a copy.

Yeah.

It'd be quite extravagant. On Rotten Tomatoes it's 91% and the audience score is 83, which is really high, which is great, and the IMDB rating is 7.4. So I forgot the letter box, but I'm assuming it's pretty high, so it's a very well loved film. I even watched a Siskel and Ebert review of it yesterday and I can't tell them apart which ones were, but one of them really loved it. The bigger guy Is that Siskel. That's Ebert Ebert right, he really loved it and Siskel didn't really. He liked cinematography, loved everything else about it, but he hated the fact and I guess we'll probably come back to this again that there was no ending to the movie.

Yeah.

He described it as like having somebody give him a present in a beautifully wrapped box, and when he opens the box up, there's nothing in it, and yeah, I feel like Americans are very literal and so if you don't have a set, three act, story structure and an unambiguous ending.

They're like what is this?

Yeah, well, if you look at the documentary on YouTube or on one of the DVDs or Blu-ray releases which I'm sure it's on I think it's one of the McElroy's one of the producers basically says when they sold it into the US, a lot of the reaction they got was what the hell's is? It doesn't have an ending? Yeah, and so, yeah, it's very interesting.

I think that's what really makes the movie, though, is the fact that it's so open-ended, because you end up watching the movie and again and I've said this before on this podcast there's you watch this movie and then for the next few days it's actually milling around in your head.

Oh yeah.

And you're sort of going, oh, what did happen, what actually did happen to these people?

So and it's not that it's a realistic movie, because I don't think that's the intention, but in real life there are just things that don't have an ending or don't get solved. It's super common, so why wouldn't you have a story that doesn't? It's a mystery that it's not solved. Yeah, that's more realistic than mysteries that are solved in some respect.

True, and the only logical ending this movie could have is they find the bodies, or they come back, or something like one of them did right, but you know they're going to happen.

I think I like it. For that reason it's good. The novel was originally published in 1967. And after reading the book four years after it's released, pat Lovell who at the time was an actress she did daytime TV and other sorts of things and soapies and stuff she thought it would be great, would make a great movie and eventually secure the rights for a total of $300 in 1973. I think she paid. I think I read that she paid $100 a month for three months or something and that got her the rights to the book. And then she hired Peter Weir to direct it and he bought with him Jim McElroy to help produce the film.

That team.

I think one of them in particular has produced a lot of these films in Australia, Like I think Razorback was one that they produced as well, so they've got a long history with these sort of movies.

So Pat Lovell originally wanted David Williamson screenwriter David Williamson, very well known in Australia as a writer of screen and stage to write the adaptation. However, he could never get his schedule to sort of match up, so he suggested Cliff Green, who was a noted TV writer, and he ended up writing the screenplay, and I think it's a good screenplay, yeah would have been interesting trying to adapt the book right.

Exactly. I read an interview with Pat Lovell where she talks about how she had to go to Hanging Rock for the shooting of the film and she said it was so eerie that she hated being there. And I think she said she wouldn't one other time. And it was. She felt the same and she's never been back and she's actually very scared to be there.

That's really interesting. I'd love to go there one day, I think, next time I get on. Melbourne for a holiday or something. It'd be really good to go check it out, Because it looks fantastic, like just the rocks itself.

Yeah, I think it's the perfect place for something that feels otherworldly, because it does.

It's beautiful, but the rock is very imposing yeah yeah, they started filming in February 1975 and principal photography last around six weeks. The locations for the film included Hanging Rock in Victoria, Martindale Hall near Mentaro in South Australia and the studio of the South Australian Film Corporation in Adelaide. So bits here and bits there, and because South Australia is a different state to Victoria, obviously and so they moved between the two.

But yeah, it's an interesting shoot. The part of Miranda was originally given to Ingrid Mason. However, after a few weeks of rehearsal we decided that it wasn't working out, so he cast Anne Louise Lambert in the pivotal role.

From what I recall, from the documentary as well, he mentioned that he originally was going to hire Anne Louise Lambert to play the part, but he felt she was a bit too worldly and he wanted them all to be very innocent and when they started rehearsals and whatnot, he was thinking back to her and actually thought that she would be a better fit in the way that she was that worldly sort of person. And because when you look at that character with the other girls on the college she is completely different in a way in regards to she seems more worldly and she seems she's almost like the I don't know the probably the wrong word to say, but the alpha woman, alpha girl of the whole group sort of thing. She's someone they all look up to, someone they all like and that sort of thing.

Yeah, even the French teacher seems to be sort of fascinated.

Yeah, yeah, exactly Right, and so she ended up getting the role. When I think about the film, it often looks like an impressionist painting. It is certainly a lot of scenes, especially that scene with the girls all just sitting, that long shot with the girls all just sitting around the rock, the base rock. That reminds me of a few pieces of art I've seen over the years, and Peter Weir and cinematographer Russell Boyd achieved this kind of dream like look by just draping very thicknesses of bridal veil fabric over the camera lens, which is quite I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it certainly makes a difference.

Yeah, I've read that as well and I was like I. They must have just been able to focus the right, where we were creates almost like an interglow for everything, and not actually see the lace. But I was really impressed by that.

Yes, great. What are your general thoughts on the film?

So this movie is so beautiful I'm a big fan of Anne of Green Gables and particularly there was a Canadian miniseries that they did several of the books and smashed them together, and the way everyone was dressed really reminded me of that. So I was instantly on board because, oh, I know this time period through other things that I've watched. But it was just beautiful and the way that they were all sort of reading poetry to each other I think it was from Valentine's Day cards that really set the atmosphere right away. It was very dreamlike and I think it sets it up to be like there's something off about what's happening right away before they even get to the rock. So I felt like the atmosphere and the setting were really well established.

I think there's also a lot of themes in this movie, like there's this sort of overarching, almost not sense of dread, but there's that bit of putting, there's it feels a bit strange. There's also a lot of reaching forwards here, like looking at relationships between the girls. Sarah's relationship or infatuation with Miranda is really interesting part of the movie as well. There's a lot of that going on in the film and I think it's quite interesting. And the teachers that are there and then, of course, the what would she call like the headmistress.

Oh, mrs.

Avilio, yes, it's really interesting watching her character go from very uptight, upright sort of in control headmistress at the start of the movie and just watching her descent into kind of not madness, but just like this massive descent into, just like disrepair. She's out of control and doesn't really know what's going on by the end of the movie. It's just amazing, and she's really well played as well.

Yeah, and her relationship with Sarah too. Just the almost like sadistic kind of relationship she has to Sarah, where she's punishing for her for things, but it seems more like she is offended by the fact that she's lower class than the other girls.

Yeah, that's what I took from it. That's really what's motivating it. Yeah, I took that as well because I think all the other girls seem to come from fairly well to do families and she's a, you know, an orphan. And I think the sadness, one of the sadnesses in this movie that I never picked up until my second viewing, is that her brother is actually close by and neither of them know.

Yeah, neither of them know.

They just never cross paths.

I thought that was so cool because basically it seems like she comes to him in a dream after she's died, yeah, and that was really heartbreaking. And they are so close. If she had gone to the picnic she would have been within like feet of him.

Yeah.

But also I loved the way that they distinguished her from the other girls using an Australian accent, because the other girls have more English sounding accent, at least to me. And then she was really the only girl that had an actual Australian accent and that sort of seemed like the way they were indicating that she was possibly of a lower class or separate from that.

So I thought that was really interesting. She's such a tragic figure too, through the whole thing yeah, it's so sunny. So there's a whole lot going on in this film that's good of like in parallel with the main storyline. To me, that really struck and I couldn't believe it. I didn't pick it up at first viewing. I obviously didn't pick it up when I was a 14 year old kid.

Right.

Back in, whatever. I was back in 1976 or whatever it was. And even the first time I watched it, I didn't really pick it up and I was like, hang on, what's going on here? Oh, it's his sister. And I was like, oh my God, this is so sad and tragic.

And it's really sad. What was sad to me also was that she was so defiant and clearly wanted to be an individual and she was just being like squashed down and they indicate that she may have died by suicide. But I also read that there's a theory that Mrs Appley Yard killed her because she clearly didn't go away with her guardian the way that Mrs Appley Yard said.

I'm not sure about that, because I thought, because to me what I took from it is she was so infatuated with Miranda and Miranda goes missing. When Mrs Appley Yard says to her that we're basically kicking you out of here and you have to go back to the orphanage, there was almost like to me, almost like a little smile.

Yes, yeah.

From her when she was told and I was like, okay, this is where she made the decision that she was going to kill herself to be with Miranda, and that was where she got the smile and I think that's my take. But this is a great thing about this film is you can see it so many different ways.

Yeah, it's open to interpretation, for sure.

Yeah, like I said, such a tragic figure. The other character I really liked was the French teacher played by Helen Morse. She was a great character and where Mrs Applebee was firm with the kids that were there, the girls that were there, she was almost like their friend more than anything, and she was very close to them and nurtured them and was a really good sort of character.

I felt like that. A lot of that was because she was so much closer and aged to them. And then she's also. She looks right Like she looks like she should be sitting with them, where they even have Miss McCraw in a dress that is very richly colored, so it sets her apart from everyone wearing white. She looks like she's in the wrong picture. Yeah. When they're moving the camera across everyone, like she really stands out because she's wearing red. And isn't this beautiful young girl?

And it's also interesting that she goes missing as well. But you mostly just concentrate on the three girls that are missing. There's a couple of times in the movie where you forget that she went missing as well.

Oh yeah, I did laugh when they were. When Edith says, oh, I saw her, but something was wrong, and then she can't say to the police directly that she was only wearing her underclothes.

Yeah, it's quite the whole thing's very strange.

Yeah, yeah.

I guess we start talking about this. One of the features of the movies that's very open-ended, the theories and the was it supernatural or logical, like I think. In the movie, one of the characters I think one of the gardeners or groundsmen says oh, maybe they just fell down a hole or something like that. And you don't know what happened. I'm like, well, did they just pass into some other realm? Or was it as simple as there was some big hole there that they fell down, or something like that? But one of them came back?

Yeah, to me, I think, especially like the first time I watched it, I just assumed that it was sort of a like a gateway place to maybe another dimension or some kind of supernatural realm, and the way that they were sort of in a trance walking to it, and then the humming that the rocks made, and then the way that they reacted when they got to that circular area where they all fell asleep and then walked up into the crevice and that Edith is the only one that's like what are you doing? We can't go up there. So I felt like it was Definitely. Yes, there was some sort of supernatural element, but it seems to be something. It's tied to Miranda too, because she, where they leave, she's I'm not coming back.

Yeah, there's a few times where she says things in the film and it's almost like foreshadowing.

Yes, yeah.

I think early. I'm trying to remember what she says. She says something very early in the film. I think she says to Sarah that she's not gonna be here for long. There's one thing.

Yeah, yeah. She says you're gonna have to find a new love because I won't be here much longer.

Yeah, and does that mean she's leaving the school or does that mean she knows that she's about to pass into something? And Then the way that she waves when they're leaving to go on?

the walk.

It's all very it's all very interesting and, yeah, it's great how it's open for that interpretation.

Yeah, even the thing that she says about all things begin and end at the right time, or something like that, that felt very tied to some sort of unconscious knowledge of what they were going into and then when Michael's searching for her later which is was a really good scene as well he almost gets taken as well, I think, because he does the same thing.

he comes to the circular area and falls asleep, and he gets found eventually by what's the guy? What's John Jarrett's character's name?

Is it?

No, I forgot the name.

He gets Albert.

Albert, that's right, yeah, I think that's right and he gets found by John Jarrett or Albert and he looks like he's in some sort of comatose state. Right, he's had a very close in-game encounter with this thing, whatever it is. Yeah, but it's shown that he's got a piece of one of the the dresses in his hand and so he got very close and obviously we find out later that when Albert goes back and Finds one of the girls and brings her out and they don't know what happened to her, she doesn't remember anything.

She's really interesting. And then the connection with Miranda and the swans. All the time, did you remember that bit? You see, when Michael's looking at different times and he'll see Miranda, we'll have a thought of Miranda and then he'll see a swan. I'm like, is there some sort of connection here, or I?

thought maybe it was just because swans are considered really beautiful and sort of regal and aloof birds. I don't know. I guess it fit that way. I don't like birds, so I I don't like swans, and swans are mean.

So, I never think of them as being really graceful things, but I think that's the way they're viewed by everybody else with those scenes as well, I believe, because the version I saw there's scenes. Is there scenes existing when Michael is interacting with Miranda, because it seems like he knows her more than just infatuated with her, just seeing her on the day, because in the version I watched all he's doing is sitting with Albert having a drink and he sees the girls crossing the little bit of river.

That's yeah, that's the version that I watched and he, like imagines her being at his house Looking over her shoulder. Yeah she's not really there, obviously any sort of has these Almost, as if he is in touch with her telepathically, where he has these memories of things that were said the day that she was at the rock, but that's more when he's in that circular area. So there's some sort of supernatural Connection there.

I just know that, like Sophia Coppola was inspired by this movie to make virgin suicides and there's a the big plot point of that is that there's these boys that watch a group of sisters that live across the street and they've never talked to them, but they create this fantasy version of them and their heads based on the little bit that they do see, and I almost think he's doing that. I think he's he's creating this fantasy version of her based on seeing her that for that brief period of time.

So he's, he's actually looking for her at the rock, obviously, and he's obsessed with that kind of thing, or Fractuated, probably a better word, obsessed is probably a pro word. But yeah, and the same way they're crossing the river is quite funny because it's got that line From John Jarrett where they're crossing over and John Jarrett says something about their legs going right up to their butt or something Like that, and Michael says zoom, oh, I wish you wouldn't talk like that. And he says I talk if you just think it, or something like right.

Yeah, and the other thing, when there's a lot of themes of femininity in this film, yeah, which I think is really interesting, which obviously as a as a older bloke, I probably don't really understand as much, but from this I see there's Themes that run through it. They're quite interesting in the whole femininity side of things. There's a first, obviously there's that Infatuation Sarah has with Miranda and then, and the way the girls Turn on one of their own when she comes back and sees them again.

Yeah, there's some interesting stuff there, because I think that the hanging rock location itself represents a sense of freedom for them, literal freedom from the school, because they're in a different location and their headmistress isn't there. And Then also, like she makes a comment like once you get past this point, you can take off your gloves.

You're having, where these are, heavy white cotton gloves in the middle of summer, I imagine and they get to take those gloves off once they're away from society, which they're very excited about, and I would be too, because that doesn't look fun. And then, when the girls go up to the actual rock once they are sort of In the trance that they're going to go through the crevice, they take off their stockings and shoes, yeah, and tie them around their waist, and Edith is horrified by this. But it is like this sense of freedom, like where we're going, we don't need this stuff, and we can also just be ourselves and we don't have to cover up.

So yeah.

I think there's elements of that. I also think that somehow the the rock represents this Lack of oppression that they've been feeling at the school or just in society in general. When Irma comes back and To say goodbye to everyone, she is dressed like a grown-up, like she has her hair pinned up and she's wearing very grown-up clothes and they're in a very rich red. And the rest of the girls are wearing their school uniforms and look much younger. So that struck me when they were. What happened? Where are they? And they attack her.

Yeah she is, she physically looks separate from them too.

That scene is amazing because like she comes back and I think she's half expecting them to just be happy that she's back. Yeah to fauna over her and yeah, and really what happens is they kind of Sounds like they blame her for what happened or they just want to know what happened and there's like this hysteria, yeah there's like the shot of one of the girls screaming and shaking her head like in a real hysterical way.

I Think it is the not knowing. I think they're like we have to know. You can't you were there tell us what happened?

Yeah yeah, it's great. And then there's that whole scene once again, that that scene is topped off With seeing Sarah basically tied to this apparatus that's supposed to help us stand straight, or something, it's just so terrible the whole.

thing, yeah, oh yeah, and I think we get a glimpse that maybe she's been other eyes from the other girls the whole time yeah because clearly this is not the first time she's been tied to that thing.

Yeah, yeah.

And she also. She's one of the few girls that have dark hair. Most of the other girls are blonde or have lighter hair and she has very dark hair, and so that really sets her apart visually as well the music in this movie is fantastic. Yes, yeah, it was beautiful score.

Oh yeah, the score that the George Sanfair Pan-Pied piece. It's so tied to this film in Australia, If you hear that piece of music in Australia the first thing you think of most people, especially my generation the first thing they think of is this movie and Because it's just was it's so Connected to this film. But the music is fantastic. There's bits of music where the girls are climbing the rock. And some of the music to me is almost goblin.

Yeah.

Dawn of the dead. This there's that string that's kind of string sound that do and the boob that goes underneath. All that I was like yeah just like goblin right.

It reminded me almost a come of a combination of that. And then the score for haunting of Julia is a really early synth score I can so it sounds very otherworldly because it's not quite the synth that you're used to, you from the 80s. Yeah but it's got elements of that.

Yeah, it's fantastic. The sounds just amazing and the music's night. The piano pieces are really nice and there is a lot of stock music. There's some some classical music in there that they use, but it's. The soundtrack to this film is great. I really like it. I've been. Actually there's no soundtrack for this film officially. There's a playlist on Spotify that's called picnic of man rock and it's got most of the pieces in it. And it's really no. It's really nice to listen to where you're working actually.

I watched a movie again last night and I had it on the surround sound and turned up really loud and I'm like man, this score rule. Yeah, the score is great, it's really good. I love the score. It's just a really good film.

Yeah, what else was I gonna talk about? Like I said, it just the whole movie is just so open for interpretation, the whole thing, there's so many questions in this movie it's actually, in a way, almost not difficult to talk about. It's easy to have this conversation, but it's difficult because you there is no end to the movie, and I think that's the big thing, right.

Yeah, and the story structure is very loose too, like beyond the girls going to the rock and then going missing, everything else is sort of just Like what is happening to to the people at the school and, yeah, the folks and yeah the fallout from that, but it's very nebulous, I think. I think it is hard to talk about because so much of the storytelling is really visual. Do you have an idea of what you think happened at the end?

I don't really know. And then there's the whole bit with Mrs Appleby right. What happened? Because there's a whole ending that isn't in the version I watch, which was in the original, where she actually walks up the up to the the rock as well. Did you have that ending in yours?

The ending that I had ends with her sort of in what looks like morning clothes, yeah, and then a voiceover comes over and that's what I had as well, but yeah, original apparently had her going up the rock Herself, like you see her going up the rock and oh wow, top, and then they have the voice over.

At the end there's like a free swing. But I think the ending on obviously what's like the director's cart is much better, because that look on her face Is just just amazing and because it's and this is where I think you get the idea of did Sarah jump or was she pushed, kind of thing- because, she knows what's about to happen and she got all the bags packed and everything, because obviously everyone yeah.

And all the bags are packed, she knows that Sarah is dead. She must know, right, because she was she told everyone she saw her go off and she obviously didn't go off right.

Yeah and she's just sitting there in these morning clothes and it's just, and it's a great last scene and I can see why, peter, we Changed it to that and because it looks I don't know it's just like in the voice over, where it explains what happened to her, and it's a really good ending. And there's a screaming outside the door before yes, yeah the guy comes in. I'm wondering who that screaming is, whether it's I.

I assumed it was one of the teachers. Yeah, he came and said hey, I just found this girl outside and it's her reaction.

Yeah, and that whole lead up to that scene where the guy the, the green keeper. Goes into his greenhouse and sees the broken glass first and then sees the bit of wood. Eventually they just see her body there and it's really well put together. But that last scene is great. It's really good, love it. Yeah, there's really I don't know. You just got to see the movie. I think if you haven't seen this movie, it's definitely worth checking out.

Yeah, I agree, and I think, especially for if you're in the US, it's on max and if you have a subscription it's right there for you. And then also the criterion Criterion also always package things beautifully. I think there is a little making a feature out on the second disc of the one I got and mine came with the book that that's a pretty good deal. It is a good.

Yeah, it's really good. I'm really liking it. I'm liking Looking at some of these films. When I think about where my podcast started, where I am now, I was like I would never have thought of doing picnic at here, right, because right at the start I was like, oh, I'm just gonna do all these hospitalization stuff and blah, blah, blah and all this Other stuff, and I'm like, yeah, you get to a point where you go, well, I would just want to expand things a little bit. Then you expand it a bit further and be further, and then we end up talking about young Einstein and we talk about, yeah, rock and what's next?

Crocodile and not at the moment I don't think. Yeah, it's a really interesting bit of the few ten. It's not ospoitation as such, but it's been that the style of that like new wave sort of.

Australian art house, which was definitely something that was a big deal in the 70s and 80s.

Like that's where Mad.

Max comes from and all.

Yeah, and they call this there's a lot of people that call this a strain gothic, this film.

Oh, really. Oh, that's good, yeah it feels, very much like a gothic story.

The other thing I didn't realize until I was having a look around just they looking at some different things is there was a stage production of this back in 1970.

Really I wonder how they would do that 27, 8, 20, 18, they showed bits of it. It was like a little promo thing of people's reaction to it. It looked really interesting how it was done. But most people they were interviewing when they were coming out of the play was saying that it was eerie and it was like quite scary and it wasn't what they expected. And I was like, oh, this would have been really good to see at the time yeah, that's cool, that sounds cool.

And that was back in 2017. So there must be a. There's obviously a treatment for stage for this hanging around.

It'd be interesting to see some revive it, or and there's also a mini series from 2018, although I think it has a very different feel, like I started watching it, just to compare.

Yeah.

And it's. I think what works about the movie is that it is this sort of brief snapshot, yeah, into this area and these girls' lives, and the mini series obviously because it's longer goes much more into Mrs Affleard's backstory and the backstory of some of the girls. I don't even know if you need that, I think the way that it works as a mystery is that you don't really know anything, and that's what makes it interesting, right, that's what makes it good.

And yeah, I think sometimes that's a scene of remaking or turning things into longer series.

Yes, yeah Is that you get too much information and you're like I don't need all this and it doesn't ruin it because the original movie is always there to return to, right, but it takes away something about the film. And to me, when you go too deep into these sort of things I know some do it well, like I remember seeing Bates Motel, which I thought was quite good, yeah, but because I think in that case the story of what happens with Norman Bates and this is the lead up to see how he got there, so there's always an interest to see, ok, how do we get to this point? But with and like I said, I haven't seen it, you've seen a bit of it but with a remake or a series for this movie and they're going to start looking deeply into each of the characters. To me that's a bit of a turn off.

Yeah, and especially the way that they present Mrs Afflehard she's. I don't want to give anything away in case people want to watch it, but she's almost presented like a con woman. She's not who she says she is.

Right yeah. And, and so the mystery becomes more about who she is than like the central mystery of the girls disappearing and once again I don't think it's a film that would be Worth remaking. I'm sure one day someone's going to go, let's remake Picnic and Hanging Rock. I don't know how you Get that the feeling and the atmosphere from the original and put it with. I don't know. Sometimes when I look at these older movies and they remake them, the biggest problem to me is the equipment they're using now versus what they're using then.

That's true, yeah, and that's what gives it a lot of the feel, especially those 70s movies and the 80s movies.

Yeah.

And they remake them and they're all made with digital cameras and digital this and digital that, and to me that just makes it Just like a plastic toy.

Yeah, it doesn't have the same atmosphere, for sure, but I think it's like Suspiria. I never thought they could remake Suspiria, because it's such a singular thing and really the only way they were able to remake it as successfully as they did is they changed. They kept the basic story and they changed almost everything else. Like it's not the same feel or the same atmosphere and they took it a different way and all this stuff. I think you almost have to do that, because with something as iconic as Suspiria or a picnic hanging rock, if you try to remake it exactly it's, you're always going to have it being compared to the original, because the original did it right the first time.

Exactly Like when they remade Psycho.

Yeah, exactly.

The summary makes it work and I know we're getting off the subject here, but you know, when I look at genre remakes, that for me worked. With things like Evil Dead worked because I think they tried, they took a slightly different bent and different look at it. But that really wasn't a remake.

That was definitely just like a reimagining or a Right or something like this might not be a popular opinion, but I thought the Fright Night remake did some interesting things with the Fright Night story. I don't think it was better, but at least it felt like a successful remake.

But back to this movie. For me it's definitely a must watch If you've got access to it. It's really worth watching. If you're expecting it to be like a scary movie, it's not a scary movie, definitely unsettling right.

There's lots of unsettling and there are sort of horror elements to it, but I would not say it's a horror movie. It's not even really a thriller. It's like an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. It's a drama right, it's a drama. Yeah, it's a drama, with supernatural overturned.

That's the way I'd put it, and it seems like people have been trying to figure out what's going on, figure out what is the ending.

Because there was a book in 1980 written by a woman named Yvonne Rousseau, called the Murders at Hanging Rock, where she explores the different theories people have put out about what happened to the girls and there's a parallel universe UFO abduction, the fact that they were murdered by two men and their bodies are still there somewhere. And then the actual author of Picnic at Hanging Rock wrote a book called the Secret of Hanging Rock.

It was actually the last chapter that her publishers made her cut off the end, and if you want to know what the ending would be some people just want to preserve the mystery you want to know what the ending would be. I would look that up because it explains how Joan Lindsey thought the book should end.

OK, that's interesting. I might have to check that out. Maybe, I don't know, some part of me doesn't want to know.

Yeah right.

That's what.

I had it written out. But I was like I don't know if I want to tell people because some people might not want to know.

Anyway. So that's Picnic at Hanging Rock. I hope you enjoyed listening to that. It was like I said, it's an interesting one to talk about. It's definitely not one of those movies we can sit here and talk beat by beat, because I think we just get really boring.

Oh yeah, and it would never do it justice, so you just got to watch it, you just got to watch it.

So tell me a little bit what's going on with you, Tab, and where people can find you.

Okay, if you want to listen to me talk about horror movies, I have a podcast called test pattern. That just ended last year, but there's tons and tons of episodes, so it's the back log of that.

And then I currently have a panel podcast with a bunch of other people where we talk about femme representation in media and we're a intersectional feminist podcast. So we have a lot of different viewpoints in that and that's called the stiletto banshees and it's been really fun. We only have a couple episodes out right now, but we're putting out more and we're also hosting monster kid marathon this year. So we're doing a lot of horror movie lists. But, yeah, you can find me at horror flick tab on Instagram and you can find the slido banshees at the stiletto banshees on Instagram and threads. And then we just got on blue sky, thanks to Pete, and I think we're just slido banshees on that.

So it's a bit quiet over there, but I'm hoping it'll pick up.

Yeah, I think, because it's invite, only it's hard, yeah, they haven't really opened it to everyone.

I only got in through an invite and it seems like once you've been it almost seems, once you start interacting and doing things, after a few weeks you usually get an invite to hand out to someone. But yeah, I hope it takes off or hope it works, because Twitter, or whatever it's called these days, is like a cesspool and I'm only on there because it's full day.

I'm only on there because you have to be in a way to do some promotion. I still do a favorite through Facebook with the page, but it's hard and all the monster kids have gone, or there's only a few left and there's not much conversation there anymore, like it used to be.

Right, it's sad.

So I think when I sent you the invite I was like I'd be great if we could eventually get everyone over there again and, yeah, if that community happening again, because yeah, exactly. It was really great. Yeah, I love the stiletto. Banshees is great. I'm probably most the way through the carry episode of the movie. Oh yeah, so that's really good. I'm really enjoying that.

Oh, good yeah.

So it's interesting because the way you position the podcast, it's almost you would think and don't take this the wrong way, please that it's just for women.

Right.

But it's not. If you're a bloke, you can get a lot out of this. And it's really good getting, like you said, this feminist perspective on things Right yeah. Which and this is part of the thing that's wrong with Twitter there's nothing wrong with having these perspectives that are not your own right.

I understand Exactly it's exactly how you learn. Yeah.

And all these people have put that stuff down and really bugged me. But yeah, it's really good and just listening to you guys talk about Carrie is really great.

So yeah, exactly, we are just talking about the films the way we would on test pattern to. We just all happen to be fun people or have an experience being perceived as a FM person. We also have a trans man on the show, so it's more just about like how we see these things as women within a conversation overall about whatever we're talking about.

It's really good. I really enjoy it. It's great fun, yeah, yeah.

I'm hoping we get a very large audience. So, like you said, it's not just for women, it's for anybody who wants to see things from a different perspective and hear a bunch of FM people talk about movies.

So what do you give you? Got anything interesting coming up that you can talk about?

Yeah, we just recorded an episode on the lesbian vampire trope, so we talked about Daughters of Darkness, the hunger, and a movie that came out more recently called bit. And so with our trope episodes we usually talk about the trope as a whole and then we do a deeper dive using a couple of examples, and so that was a really fun episode and we got to talk a lot about. A lot of it was just gushing about how beautiful the movies were, like picnic hanging rock. So, that was really fun.

Great, excellent. It's always great having you on. It's always so good having your perspective and I know you put a lot of. Even when I asked you to come on to this show, you put a lot of work in the background, so I really appreciate that. It's fantastic.

Oh, thank you.

I love talking about movies, so now not to say that all my other guests don't prepare. It's very obvious with you. I share the notes with you and there's always extra bits in there and things like that. It's really good, all right. So thanks so much for coming on.

Yes, thank you for having me.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. Thank you to all my guests who give their time to make this podcast possible. A special thanks to you for listening. Don't forget you can follow a dingo eight, my movie, on social media. We're a dingo movie on Twitter, dingo movie pod on Facebook and Instagram and we're on the web at dingo movie podcom. If you'd like to support the show, leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts or share the show with your friends. Of course, you can always buy me a coffee over at. Buy me a coffeecom slash dingo movie pod. Once again, thanks for listening, stay safe and I'll see you on the next episode of a dingo eight, my movie.