Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018)

Directed by: Larysa Kondracki, Michael Rymer, Amanda Brotchie | 360 minutes | drama | Actors: Natalie Dormer, Lily Sullivan, Lola Bessis, Harrison Gilbertson, Samara Weaving, Madeleine Madden, Inez Currõ, Ruby Rees, Yael Stone, Philip Quast, Marcus Graham, James Hoare, Mark Coles Smith, Don Hany, Anna McGahan, Bethany Whitmore Maya Fredes, Alyssa Tuddenham, Kate Bradford, Markella Kavenagh

We live in an age of remakes; films from sometimes only a few decades ago are reappearing, often in a digital guise. Sometimes due to a lack of imagination and often completely unnecessary because the original has not lost any of its value. And sometimes understandable, because, as in the case of the miniseries ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ (2018), the zeitgeist justifies a slightly different view on the subject.

Peter Weir’s original 1975 film is based on Joan Lindsay’s 1967 book, an instant classic in Australian literature. The story is about the mysterious disappearance of three boarding school girls and their teacher during a picnic at the foot of Mount Diogenes (Hanging Rock) in the year 1900. The mysterious ending of the book and the film has continued to tickle the public’s imagination; for example, the location of Hanging Rock has become a tourist attraction. It was not until 1986, shortly after Joan Lindsay’s death, that the last chapter, which was omitted from the original, was published. That extra chapter sheds a little more light on what happened to the women.

The miniseries benefits from this extra information, but more interestingly, the miniseries has the space to expand on the original story. For example, various characters get a bit more baggage, such as the head of the boarding school Mrs. Appleyard (played by Natalie Dormer) who has fled to Australia from London, carrying a dark secret. Scriptwriter Alice Addison has also, in her own words, tried to approach the story with a more feminine perspective. In the 1975 film, Peter Weir has the girls frolic through the woods in soft focus and sky-white dresses. This is no different in the miniseries, but without the soft focus and more emphasis on the grim sides of their oppressive Victorian world. A world in which women were not only restricted in their freedom of movement by their corsets, but also by a worldview in which women were made completely dependent on men. And as a result, both sexes are opposed as two extreme poles, and are secretly hostile to each other. The forbidden love for one’s own sex is the common thread in this version of ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’. And not only the ladies struggle with this, the gentlemen would also prefer to escape into their own ideal world.

This extra layer and elaboration of the characters does not work out equally well in all six episodes. After a strong start, the makers lose focus a bit, perhaps because they stick to the visual language of Weir’s film. That magical approach gets in the way of all those different storylines and more outspoken themes.