Everything Begins and Ends...

Last night I watched Picnic at Hanging Rock, an Australian period thriller from 1975. If slow, atmospheric, moody films are your cup of tea, this one should win your heart.

Director Peter Weir treats us to lush oddly-angled and layered shots of the outback landscape, a haunting pan-flute-and-organ-heavy soundtrack, and loads of simmering repressed Victorian adolescent girl sensuality (with a nod to the slightly-baggy-woolen-stocking fetishists... oh, such stockings will you see). You can almost feel the heat rising from the rocks... and the languid girls...

Fortunately the beauty of the cinematography and the charisma of the dewey actresses overshadows the Victorian costumes à la Gunne Sax that pin the look as mid-seventies.


But it was the open end that kept me thinking about the film long after the credits. The movie teased us with vague possible explanations, but gave no resolution to the central mystery. Why is our need to have stories tied up in neat little packages by the end so powerful?

I discovered the original book was written with eighteen chapters, and the final chapter solved the mystery, but the author decided to remove it at the last minute. The eighteenth chapter was published twenty years later in response to demand from the public for closure to the story.

Of course I was unable to resist searching for a spoiler, and of course I was disappointed in the resolution, which was silly and unlikely, and nowhere near as moving and evocative as the open end.

When will I learn? Some stories are better left unresolved. As Miranda, the central character in the film, says, "Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place..."