On St. Valentine's Day (Valentine's Day), the girls were given the opportunity to travel together by the grace of the saint. It was still the weirdly bright sunlight, and there seemed to be small nerves trembling uneasy in the light, the cake full of ants, the bright red jam on the cream, the ghostly clarinet soundtrack followed like a shadow... The sound of Satan's hoof quietly came. Several girls mysteriously disappeared on the cliff. The most beautiful of them looked back and smiled, then turned his head, and walked firmly to the deepest part of the cliff. The bright halo engulfed her.
Based on this text, director Peter Weir constructed "Picnic on the Cliff" full of mystery atmosphere and suppressed desire. The film exhibits two distinctive features of modern Australian films: 1. Pleasant sceneries; 2. The rift between British colonial culture and native indigenous civilization is everywhere.
"Picnic on the Cliff" was adapted from a novel by Joan Leslie in 1967, but it was later reported to be a real event. Australia even has a tourism boom caused by this novel and movie. Countless people have investigated this incident, but none of them succeeded.
The purpose of the film is obviously not to investigate the reasons for the disappearance of the girls. There are two versions of the film. What we can see now is the director's cut version. Unlike the original version, this version is seven minutes shorter. Peter Weir deleted the part explaining the reason for the disappearance. As a result, the film presents a wonderful meaning: free and fragmented plot, without any final explanation, the process of watching the film is like a dream experience, rather than listening to a story. Why do this treatment?
Let us return to the cliff to find the reason. The cliffs in the film have a very peculiar appearance: lizards, snakes, colorful birds and flowers are hidden and surrounded by huge stone pillars towering into the clouds, and the only clue left by the missing girl is the lace on the underwear. There are strong desires and reproductive colors. Some people (the audience and the characters in the film) thought of the rape case, but a week later, a girl was found. In addition to losing her memory, her whole body was "intact", eliminating the possibility of violence. Corresponding to the wild cliffs are the harsh dogma of the boarding school. The school teaches girls etiquette, poetry and mathematics, and absolutely prohibits and suppresses desire.
Let's look at the background of the film: 1900, which was the year before Britain gave up its direct rule of Australia. Australia has a very complicated sentiment towards the Victorian era. "Picnic on the Cliff" is actually a weird dream projected from that era to the present, and it is announcing the end of this glorious era with a disappearance case. Just like the decadence of the boarding girls' school, the halo disappeared suddenly, and the empty school building only left the gorgeousness without soul. The camera scanned the portraits of the previous principals, and the piano sounded, like a sad farewell to the old age.
After the halo disappeared, the suffering and long-buried desires of the bottom surface appeared: same-sex love, madness and confusion in the dark, a girl sheltered by a lost guardian was told to leave school, desperately committed suicide by jumping off the building, young corpse Break through the glass of the greenhouse. The western dream brought by the colonists died, and another dream—the primitive totem-like mysterious barbarity began on the cliff, "the end and the beginning of everything, at this moment, this place", on the edge of light and darkness. (Cliff), decline, death and rebirth converge at the two ends of a circle, and it is also a mysterious encounter between modern civilization and primitive wilderness.
The director of the film, Peter Weir, repeats the same theme repeatedly in his works ("Death Poetry Society", "Trumen's World", etc.): The desperate decliner has found it in another world he has never set foot in. The home of —— this is the warmth and comfort that transcends reality, just like the movie itself.
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