Peter Weir is a master of taking the mysteries of human nature, combining them with the essence of humanity, then distilling those aspects through the inexplicable itself. This has been an earmark of his films Dead Poets Society, Fearless and even The Truman Show but nowhere is this more apparent than with Picnic At Hanging Rock.

The plot of Picnic At Hanging Rock is deceptively simple: students at an upper crust Victorian-era girls' school go on a field trip to Hanging Rock -- an unusual geographic site miles away from civilisation. On the trip, three of the girls and one of the teachers go missing.

A simple plot, right? Well, on the surface it is indeed simple, but the way Peter Weir deals with the subject matter will keep the viewer absolutely enthralled and at a loss as to the cause of the girls' inexplicable disappearance. What has frustrated many viewers is that the responsibility of the hypothesis lies solely with them: there are no conclusive answers, but rather a number of theories as seen through the eyes of second and third parties.

This is (sic) immaculate emotive filmmaking. -E. Shaun Russell


Peter Weir speaks:

To be “disappeared” is to be neither alive nor dead; a strange and disturbing idea.

For me, at that stage in my career, Picnic At Hanging Rock was a challenging film to make - a mystery by all means, but a mystery without a solution. I was aware that this could backfire; that upon reaching the ending an audience might feel 'cheated'.

But the ending was what I loved about the book, so I had to find a way to make it work on film. I had to give the film's audience a way to both realise the journey and be comfortable with an ending, one that would have them in a place where that 'idea' of 'disappeared' would be acceptable, even logical, no matter how uncomfortable.

I decided to create a strong, dreamlike mood; to take a conventional period setting and then imbue this with a sense of the 'other', of mystery. This, in the hope that the viewer would then not anticipate a conventional ending, but would in fact find themselves comfortable in an unresolved state.

No film works for everyone. There are no doubt those who will always be frustrated by films like Picnic At Hanging Rock, like the film buyer at an un-named festival who threw his coffee cup at the screen - “I sit through two goddamn hours, and still don't know who dit it ??!!”

The fact that most audiences generally don't hurl cups at the screen, and have not done so for 30 years, says to me that we succeeded in what we set out to do: to take Picnic's audience on a journey to an unsettling end, where the unacceptable has become acceptable. This is central to the enduring attachment Picnic At Hanging Rockhas to audiences; it is what has kept the film 'alive'.

- Peter Weir