Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

          Although Australian director Peter Weir had been working steadily on feature and TV projects in his homeland since the late ’60s, he first scored worldwide acclaim with this evocative story about an obscure historical incident. In 1900, three girls from a private college and one of their adult caretakers disappeared while exploring Hanging Rock, a massive geological formation in South Australia. Based on a novel by Joan Lindsay and written for the screen by Cliff Green, Picnic at Hanging Rock avoids the obvious fictionalization route of suggesting an explanation for this real-life unsolved mystery. Instead, the movie explores the multilayered psychological impact of the disappearance on people throughout the area containing both the college and Hanging Rock.

          Stern headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (Rachel Roberts) frays when the careful order of her school dissipates; fragile orphan Sara (Margaret Nelson) crumbles after the loss of a fellow student with whom she was infatuated; and a wealthy young man, Tom (Tony Llewellyn-Jones), becomes obsessed with finding the missing girls. Lingering over all of these characters is the specter of Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert), the leader of the group that went missing—an ethereal beauty, she represents a life force whose loss the world cannot abide.

          This is all very heady stuff, and Picnic at Hanging Rock is perhaps most successful as a conversation piece, since it raises all sorts of provocative questions about what happens when the lives we build for ourselves get shaken by unforeseeable events. Furthermore, Weir’s filmmaking is unassailably tasteful, with eerie pan-flute melodies floating over gossamer images of beautiful girls in white-linen dresses wandering through the volcanic outcroppings of Hanging Rock. Yet after the memorable first half-hour, which depicts the prelude to the disappearances and the actual Hanging Rock excursion, the narrative becomes muddy. Weir and his collaborators seem indecisive about which characters should be most prominent, and Weir vacillates between flights of dreamlike fancy and hard-edged vignettes of character-driven realism. The movie is also painfully humorless, so the middle stretch of the picture is tough going. Things cohere bit more during the finale, when we finally see the lasting impact of the disappearances, although it’s frustrating that certain climactic events are dismissed in a closing voiceover instead of being depicted onscreen.

          All in all, Picnic at Hanging Rock is filled with interesting insights, moments, and textures, but its restraint is stifling. Still, the picture helped Weir get noticed as a filmmaker of unusual sensitivity, so just a few years later, he directed his first Hollywood movie, the similarly moody The Year of Living Dangerously(1982). Six Oscar nominations later (so far), Weir is firmly entrenched as one of the world’s most respected cinematic storytellers.

Picnic at Hanging Rock: FUNKY

My Brilliant Career (1979)

          “I can’t lose myself in somebody else’s life when I haven’t lived my own yet,” remarks spirited Aussie lass Sybylla Melvyn in My Brilliant Career, a sensitive exploration of feminist themes set in Australia circa the late 1800s. When we first meet her, Sybylla (Judy Davis) lives on a farm with her working-class parents, but she improbably envisions a “brilliant career” as a writer. Sybylla believes her situation has improved when her parents, unable to support her any longer, send her to live with a wealthy relative, Grandma Bossier (Aileen Britton), but Grandma is an imperious snob with little tolerance for Sybylla’s artistic aspirations. The two clash regularly because Grandma wants Sybylla to become a proper young lady, whereas Sybylla insists on speaking her mind, no matter whom she offends.

          Meanwhile, Sybylla meets Harry Beecham (Sam Neill), a member of the upper class, and the two embark on a sort of romance—Harry expresses his admiration for Sybylla’s iconoclastic nature, but Sybylla articulates myriad reasons why she’s not ready to marry. One of her hang-ups is a belief that she’s ugly, which causes her to doubt the sincerity of Harry’s affections, and another is her narcissistic assumption that she’s too “clever” (her word) for the rest of the world to understand. Throughout My Brilliant Career, Sybylla makes reckless choices that feed her thirst for experience but complicate every other aspect of her life. For instance, after Sybylla lingers outside during a rainstorm and catches a cold, she gets a scolding from her grandmother: “Now you see the consequences of wild and extravagant behavior.” And yet wild and extravagant behavior is all the heroine craves, even if that means sacrificing traditional notions of happiness, i.e. marriage.

          Adapted from a popular 1901 novel by Miles Franklin and directed by Aussie filmmaker Gillian Armstrong (this was her first feature-length fictional project), My Brilliant Career is consistently insightful, restrained, and tasteful, so Sybylla’s stridency never carries over into the tone of the movie itself; rather, Armstrong observes the protagonist with admiring detachment. To its credit, the movie avoids reducing supporting characters to stereotypes, which would have put Sybylla on a pedestal, and as a result, Sybylla emerges as the most interesting kind of feminist icon—a complicated woman who sometimes works at cross-purposes with herself as she struggles to blaze a new path.

          Davis, in her first major film role, presents her character’s fierceness without playing for sympathy, and Neill, who already had several films to his credit by the time he made My Brilliant Career, comfortably essays the role of a forward-thinking man unwilling to make demands of a woman. Like so many costume dramas about subtle shifts in social structures, My Brilliant Career will be too dry and slow for many viewers, with lots of scenes of people in evening dress speaking politely to each other. Yet in terms of thematic content and the movie’s place in the history of female-directed cinema, My Brilliant Career is a work of minor but indisputable importance.

My Brilliant Career: GROOVY

Mad Dog Morgan (1976)

          A low-budget Australian effort noteworthy for the presence of Hollywood leading man Dennis Hopper, Mad Dog Morgan offers an Ozzie spin on the cliché of the antihero outlaw. Based on the real-life exploits of John Fuller, a criminal who operated under aliases including “Daniel Morgan” in mid-19th-century Australia, the picture romanticizes certain elements of the protagonist while still depicting his violence in a vivid way. Morgan was a “bushranger,” living in the wild and subsisting on loot from robberies. He also developed a fierce reputation for the savagery of which he was capable when inebriated.

          Director/cowriter Philippe Mora elicits early sympathy for Morgan by featuring a prologue in which the character is brutalized while imprisoned. The image of Morgan getting branded is hard to shake, and the abuse he suffers behind bars goes a long way toward explaining why he subsequently shuns law and order. Whether this portrayal accurately reflects the real Morgan’s character is open to debate, but the strategy works on a narrative level: Even as Morgan becomes more and more dangerous, we recall why he resents authority and values his freedom.

          Hopper was ingenious casting, since his work in Easy Rider (1969) made him an icon for the rebel spirit of the counterculture era, and he gives one of his most disciplined ’70s performances here. It’s possible that having to maintain a pidgin Irish/Australian accent forced Hopper to concentrate on his dialogue instead of tumbling off into formless improvisation, but whatever the case, he’s ferocious and focused from start to finish.

          The movie’s plotting is rather ordinary, the usual business of a crook forming unexpected alliances and outsmarting pursuers until an inevitable showdown, so what makes Mad Dog Morgan arresting, aside from Hopper’s performance, is the movie’s rich Australian texture. Shot on location by cinematographer Mike Molloy, the film’s widescreen images present untamed regions of the land down under as a striking alternative to the familiar settings of Hollywood-made outlaw pictures. Lit naturalistically and shot on grainy film, Molloy’s frames feel like vintage photographs come to life. Furthermore, an ominous soundtrack featuring the eerie aboriginal wind instrument called the didgeridoo gives Mad Dog Morgan an otherworldly air.

          The supporting cast is fine but not spectacular, though Ozzie stalwart Jack Thompson contributes his usual commanding presence in the small role of Morgan’s main pursuer, and Aboriginal actor David Gulpill (Walkabout) is amiably enigmatic as Morgan’s outback sidekick. (Gulpill also performs the soundtrack’s didgeridoo music.) Thanks to strong execution elevating potentially humdrum material, Mad Dog Morgan offers an exotic new spin on a durable genre.

Mad Dog Morgan: GROOVY