Natalie Dormer—Margaery Tyrell from “Game of Thrones”—stars as Hester Appleyard, the headmistress of a school of manners for young ladies in Australia at around the turn of the century. This is a time when people say, in all seriousness, “Your worth will be set by your future husband.” The show leans into the antiquated view of womanhood in this time and place, even comparing the young ladies to horses being groomed for auction, but there’s an unmistakable undercurrent of rebellion against this viewpoint. It’s there in Dormer’s confident, strident performance, as her take on Appleyard is a woman who has a dark past with violent men. And it’s there in the way the show allows its female characters to explore their sexuality in ways the etiquette of the time would never allow.
The plot of “Picnic at Hanging Rock” centers on a Valentine’s Day picnic for some the young ladies. After some eating and talking in the woods, three students and a teacher head off to the titular Hanging Rock, and simply disappear. Much of the series takes place after the disappearance, which happens at the end of episode one, although that day is revisited later in flashbacks. The search for the girls, the public response to their disappearance, questions about people around the girls that day—much of “Picnic at Hanging Rock” plays like a mystery series. Call it “Law & Order: Australia.”
But the brilliance of Weir’s film is its refusal to play like a traditional mystery. The book notoriously was released with its final chapter excised, creating an open mystery around what actually happened. That’s what Weir understood so completely—that it was more about mood and atmosphere than facts. As Roger said when he inducted the film into the Great Movies pantheon, “For us, as for them, the characters who disappeared remain always frozen in time, walking out of view, never to be seen again.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmrKyimq6utc2gZpqlka%2B8r3nRnq2iq5mpwG6vy5qqrKGTYsGiuMRmpp9loJ6wr7XCZpitZZiWu6i1zaBkq6eToA%3D%3D