Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock is the sapphic, David Lynch-influenced mystery-thriller that you didn’t know you needed.

The mystical elements of Lindsay’s book remain, but Mrs. Appleyard’s more detailed biography adds more tangible, flesh-and-blood danger to the mix. ... The question in the series becomes less about how the girls disappeared than why. Whether they’re vaporized by a shift in the magnetic field, transformed into animals, or something more mundane, their vanishing feels deliberate--a way to reject their prescribed futures for a different, freer path.

The new version is far more satisfying, albeit in a far more conventional fashion.

Dormer is the best thing about Picnic at Hanging Rock, which was also an indelible 1975 Australian movie by Peter Weir. But she’s not the only worthwhile aspect of the miniseries, even if the story may be a bit overextended at six hours.

The base premise is familiar to fans of crime series, but this is no ordinary drama; it’s eerie and haunting. It’s less dreamy (a quality frequently ascribed to the film) and more of a nightmare that you’ll be eager to dive into.

This new Picnic has the expensive trappings of a prestige project, but it also isn't afraid to embrace a wild, salacious, even trashy (in a good way) side that spices up the entertainment.

It’s a lot, but it’s the right kind of a lot, and like Dormer’s performance, these choices skirt right up to the line of the ridiculous without ever crossing over. Had the writers and directors of this series been better at walking that line, Picnic At Hanging Rock might be more than a decent series with rich production values and a performance that blows the doors down.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a project that works better at the length of a feature film than a six-hour series. In the mid-section of the season, scenes start to feel overheated, as if the producers are worried that you’re starting to get bored (you probably are). Memorable performances and solid production values just don’t matter if a narrative sags.

In the end, neither the lush looks nor committed performances are enough to overcome the balance issues and general bloat.

To someone raised on music videos and the movies of Baz Luhrmann--another proud product of Australia--this might seem a perfectly reasonable way through the material, even a necessary one. But it still looks like a music video a lot of the time, modern in a way that will seem dated sooner than later. For some of us, sooner will already be now.

While the secret longings of these missing young women make for a tantalizing puzzle, navigating this tiresome new Rock is no picnic. [14 - 27 May 2018, p.11]

Ms. Christian and Ms. Addison have taken every latent idea, every veiled suggestion, in the material and made it explicit. Every piece of subtext has been dredged up so that it can be turned into banal commentary on the benighted attitudes of the provincial patriarchy toward gender, race, class and sexuality. ... All that’s left is a fairly threadbare, clichéd melodrama.

It’s gorgeous and often visually stunning, but emotionally hollow. There’s no feeling of connection to the girls, or a reason to like them.