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"What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream"
Don't be fooled by appearances; this film is not for young ladies who love to immerse themselves in romantic adventures nor for old aunts passionate about period fiction who live among dusty lace.
This film is brutal, unforgettable, and based on a true story. It dates back to 1975 and introduced the world to the Australian director Peter Weir, perhaps best known to many for "The Truman Show" and "Dead Poets Society".
We are in an Australian girls' boarding school, it's Valentine's Day of the year 1900. The schoolgirls are in a frenzy, exchanging love and friendship notes and eagerly awaiting the long-anticipated picnic at Hanging Rock.
Hanging Rock is a volcanic mountain where the stones seem to depict threatening faces and where the unspoiled and wild nature clashes with the discipline and rationality typical of Victorian England, which is also very present in the distant Australian colony.
During the picnic, the clock hands stop at 12:00, four girls ask and receive permission from the teachers to go on an excursion on the rocks, the pan flute (played with enviable, metaphysical emotion by the great Gheorghe Zamfir) naturally and lightly marks the succession of dark and terrible events. From this point on, the atmosphere becomes unreal, dreamlike, suspended in time and space, and nothing will be the same again.
What happened to the girls?
No other film has managed to create such apprehension, tension, and anguish in the viewer. There will be no one to explain how the events unfolded, the sense of alienation is absolute, with no escape route.
Nature, for better or worse, has prevailed in its struggle against rationalism and progress.
"Picnic at Hanging Rock" is not just a beautiful, unsurpassed milestone in the history of cinema; it is a film out of time, or, even better, a snapshot of cinema outside any spatial-temporal context.
...Yes, a film and a story alien to any spatial-temporal placement, just like that Valentine's Day of 1900 at Hanging Rock.
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