PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
Gone Girls
RELEASED OUT NOW! 1975 | PG | Blu-ray (4K/standard) Director Peter Weir Cast Anne-louise Lambert, Rachel Roberts, Dominic Guard, Helen Morse
Peter Weir’s lush, oblique masterpiece of Australian New Wave cinema is upfront from the start. A title card frames what we are about to see as historical fact: the tale of a party of schoolgirls who “disappeared without trace…”
Preserving and deepening the ambiguities of Joan Lindsay’s novel, the screen version rejects the traditional puzzle-box structure of a mystery tale to deliver something more elusive and intriguing. You can see it as an exercise in exquisitely photographed Antipodean folk horror – Weir finds dread in the land itself, sun-beaten and ancient as time – but such genre-boxing diminishes this remarkable hymn to the queasy beauty of mystery.
Extras An intelligent and thorough 2004 documentary (118 minutes) contains insights from cast and crew. There are new interviews with director of photography Russell Boyd
(11 minutes), actress Karen Robson (11 minutes) and camera operator John Seale (seven minutes), while Australian film critic Thomas Caldwell illuminates Picnic’s historical context and cultural impact, particularly on the work of David Lynch (23 minutes).
A 1975 interview with Joan Lindsay (15 minutes) reveals a characterful, fascinating individual, while an archive documentary includes precious behind-the-scenes footage. Also included is an audio commentary by film critics Alexandra Hellernicholas and Josh Nelson, eerily silent outtakes of an ending we never saw, an extended trailer, and a restoration of the original, theatrical cut; Weir’s Director’s Cut, presented as the main feature, also stunningly restored, actually shortens the movie. The Limited Edition 4K set comes with six art cards, a book of essays and the original novel.
Joan Lindsay claimed she had the entirely involuntary ability to stop people’s watches just by being next to them.