Unlike ordinary horror movies, "Picnic on the Cliff" does not have violent, bloody scenes, and there are no evil spirits such as "The Grudge" and "Calling the Soul". On the contrary, it is very poetic ~
The first scene is a picture of a slender girl waking up.
She is one of the protagonists of the film, Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert).
The Apuliad Women’s College in Australia where Miranda is studying continues to use British education, pays great attention to women’s words and deeds, and is committed to cultivating every girl into a Victorian lady.
The girls usually live in the college, and their contact with the outside world is strictly controlled. In this atmosphere, the girls only have each other.
At the beginning of the movie, the daily life of the girls is shown.
Reading poems in the morning, the poems are romantic and intricate love~
The girls are intoxicated in the verse, but the longing and pious expression is so strange that it is unclear ...
Especially Miranda's friend, Sarah, the relationship between them seems to extend beyond friendship .
Sarah looked at Miranda as if she was looking at her lover.
When she handed Miranda the poem, her eyes were ambiguous.
Miranda also said to Sara: "One day you will definitely come home with me and meet my lovely and interesting family in person."
When she said this, Miranda's eyes were intoxicated.
The girls also helped each other wear corsets, the picture was too beautiful.
Can you imagine these girls in white dresses picnicking in the picturesque countryside?
It was really a group of angels descending to the earth.
"Picnic on the Cliff" won the 1977 British Film Academy Award for Best Photography . During the picnic at Haiyin Overhang, the light and the surrounding trees are perfectly combined, giving the film an oily texture .
The light scatters from the forest and coats the picture with a layer of energetic light. This classical poetry makes the picture so beautiful that it is unreal. It seems that the girls and teachers of the Japuliad Women's College have drifted away from the world .
The time in the film is 1900, which is the year before Britain gave up its direct rule of Australia. The Apriliad Women’s College, which pursued Victorian British education, is about to become a relic of the era.
The more beautiful the front, the more terrifying what happens in the back.
This picnic, there are three girls mysterious disappearance of a -
Miranda went to measure the rock with the other three girls and never came back.
No one was born, no corpse was seen, there were no traces of landslides, and no signs of girls being killed.
It's as if the world has evaporated.
Until the end, the puzzle was not solved, which obviously made many netizens feel uncomfortable, so various speculations came.
On the other hand, looking at the picnic at the time after knowing the end, there are so many insightful details that make people shudder the more they think about it~
For example, Miranda looked back when she left.
At that time, I didn't think there was anything, but when I observed carefully again, the change in Miranda's expression was quite obvious.
It seemed that she knew what was about to happen, or she had already decided to defect in her heart.
Miranda's expression is quite a kind of feeling that people are about to die, and the words are kind. Turning and leaving is so determined and decisive, without any muddling.
In conjunction with the beginning of the film, Miranda said to the mirror "I won't stay here long", with a look of disgust, as if she had made a lot of determination, which made the suspicion of defecting intensified.
When Sarah heard these words, her smile disappeared in an instant. Maybe, Sarah realized something.
Look again, when the four girls walk through the jungle below the mountain, the picture is poetic and the soundtrack is also melodious.
After entering the desolate rocky area on the mountain, the painting style became cold and the music gradually turned strange...
The camera looks up at the girls from below, and the towering rocks close at hand.
The camera turned to look down when the girls shuttled through the rugged rocks.
The close-ups of the many strange rocks interspersed and the rotating pictures all give people bad psychological hints.
And the dance on the stone, the act of fading off the black stockings, made the mystery gradually thicker.
The fading in and out of the picture adds to the psychedelic feeling.
The girls also said some weird things, such as predicting Sara's death.
At the time in the mountains, the girl Emma said that Sara reminded her of a fawn her father had bought for her. She took good care of it, but it was still dead, and her mother said that it was destined.
It's like a boy standing on a burning deck, with nowhere to escape.
Later, Sarah did commit suicide.
Another girl saw the classmates resting at the foot of the mountain and said, "What are those people doing down there, like many ants."
"Strange people, many people have no purpose, although it is possible that they are performing some kind of ritual that they don't know themselves."
These babbling words also show that the girls have been alienated unknowingly...
The girl Edith also kept saying that she was uncomfortable, whether it was physically or psychologically uncomfortable, the movie did not say clearly.
Until the end, when the girls walked into the depths of the rock like a wicked one, Edith suddenly screamed.
At this point, I’ve got a hairy heart. It can be said that this movie is well versed in the audience’s psychology in creating a horror atmosphere, and many psychological cues have been used quite skillfully .
Now that I look back at the poetry and picturesqueness in front of me, in fact, weird factors have already been embedded.
For example, the aforementioned Miranda's confession, Sara's discoloration.
Another example is the introduction of Miss Mike Law on the road, Haiyin Xuanyan has a history of one million years, and the girl Emma said: "One million years is to wait for us." It is unavoidable.
Miss Mcrawl was always preoccupied. When the girls were about to climb to the top, she suddenly looked up at the towering hanging rock at the bottom of the mountain, with a worried look on her face.
Did she already know what would happen? Or is it purely worrying about the outliers of the girls?
Are the girls defecting collectively, or have they met a gangster, or a landslide, some mysterious force?
In fact, no matter what kind of speculation, this mysterious disappearance cannot be perfectly explained, and the director's intention is obviously not to solve the mystery .
Peter Weir once said that he has tried his best to keep the audience from worrying about the answer.
Then another question comes, what does the director want to express through the mysterious disappearance of the girls?
This has set off another conjecture of different opinions.
Some people say that it symbolizes resistance to British education, the pursuit of the liberation of human nature, and it has a strong feminist color.
For example, girls once took off their shoes and black stockings in the mountains.
Some people believe that this implies Australia's resistance to British rule. The director Peter Weir is Australian, and one year after the film was released, Britain gave up its direct rule of Australia.
In fact, I don't care about these, and a movie doesn't have to have an answer to be a good movie.
What I like is the movie-watching experience brought to me by the film "Picnic on the Cliff" , which is extremely beautiful and extremely weird . There is no doubt that this is a rare attempt.
As for other things, you should know from "The World of Trumen" and "Death Poetry Society", how good Peter Weir is a director who plays suggestion and promotes human nature~
(First published in Toutiao: Tianya Xiaoniao movie)
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