“On Saturday 14^th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without a trace.”

After this mesmerizing title card, we’re introduced to several teenage girls who live a pastoral, 19^th century existence in the Australian bush. Miranda (Anne Lambert) is the class beauty, so beguiling that the school’s young teacher of deportment (Helen Morse) compares her to a Botticelli angel.

Orphaned Sara (Margaret Nelson) has developed an attachment to Miranda, but the school’s dry headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) has decided to keep Sara from participating in a class field trip to the mysterious Hanging Rock.

Though warned that the area is dangerous – with its snakes and biting ants – it doesn’t seem that way at first. An English family, their teenage nephew and their young valet enjoy the afternoon lazing nearby. The schoolgirls nap on the rocks, read poetry and the only thing out of the ordinary is the watch of their chaperone, which has stopped.

Sara and her friends Edith, Irma and Marion set off to explore Hanging Rock. They wind higher and move through tight passages, and the rock seems to breathe as a living thing. Marion complains that she’s tired, but the others remove their shoes and without saying a word, disappear deeper into the rock. Marion starts screaming and takes off running.

This is the last anyone sees of the three girls, as well as their chaperone. Police and citizens of the nearby town mount a search, but no trace of the missing girls is found. Marion later remembers their chaperone passing her on the trail without her dress on, but everyone at Hanging Rock appears at a loss to remember or clearly explain what happened.

Police suspect the Englishman after he gives contradictory statements to authorities about when he last saw the girls. Haunted by the disappearance, he and the valet go back up onto the rock to look for them. Back at the school, Mrs. Appleyard and Sara also spiral into depression after the disappearances.

Directed by Peter Weir and adapted by Cliff Green from the 1970 novel by Joan Lindsay, Picnic At Hanging Rock is entirely fictional, though many readers and viewers have assumed the disappearances actually happened. Neither Lindsay nor the filmmakers did much to dispel the myth, and the movie version became the first Australian film to reach an international audience.

This reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Both are extremely uneasy films that defy categorization or patience. Anyone who hated the Cruise-Kidman film will not stand for this either, although the 103 minute running time makes it much easier to sit through. After I thought about this later, I liked it, as opposed to when I had to sit down and actually watch it.

The movie starts off with Miranda quoting Edgar Allan Poe, and with a strange Alice In Wonderland feel, the film drifts further and further away from reality. Director of photography Russell Boyd – who later won an Academy Award for Weir’s Master and Commander – is architect of the film’s ethereal look, which is so superlative, it looks like it could have been shot last year.

The problem is that by going down the road of art film, Picnic At Hanging Rock didn’t have characters I cared about. There is no clear point of view here. Weir seems to want us to be vested in Miranda, Sara and Mrs. Appleby at various points, but since this is all a dream, I never cared. I spent the time admiring the lighting and trying to figure out what was going on.

Weir went on to direct Gallipoli, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, Green Card and The Truman Show, films about outcasts venturing to places where they are not welcomed. This one shares that theme and could spearhead a thick term paper on the subject. I also recommend it for fans of Peter Weir, or people who don’t mind the absence of a coherent narrative.