"I have instructed Mademoiselle that the day is likely to be warm, you
may remove your gloves once the drag has passed through Wood End. We
will partake a luncheon at the picnic grounds near the rock. Once again
let me remind you the rock itself is extremely dangerous, you are
therefore forbidden of any tomboy foolishness in the matter of
exploration, even on the lowest slopes."
I asked Peter Weir if he'd been hesitant about filming a mystery without
a solution. "My only worry was whether an audience would accept such an
outrageous idea. Personally, I always found it the most satisfying and
fascinating aspect of the film. I usually find endings disappointing: they're
totally unnatural. You are creating life on the screen, and life
doesn't have endings. It's always moving on to something else and there
are always unexplained elements.
"What I attempted, somewhere towards the middle of the film, was gently
to shift emphasis off the mystery element which had been building in the
first half and to develop the oppressive atmosphere of something which
has no solution: to bring out a tension and claustrophobia in the locations
and the relationships. We worked very hard at creating an hallucinatory
mesmeric rhythm, so that you lost awareness of facts, you stopped adding
things up, and got into this enclosed atmosphere. I did everything in my
power to hypnotise the audience away from the possibility of solutions...
There are, after all, things within our own minds about which we know far
less than about disappearances at Hanging Rock. And it's within a lot of
those silences that I tell my side of the story."
—Interview with Peter Weir
Not the easiest film to watch, Picnic at Hanging Rock, but I meant it when I said "Wow" afterwards. For me, it is a beautifully composed and filmed film. It harkens to The Last Wave in its exploration of a dream world, but where the later film arguably gets bogged down in its need to explain itself, this film makes little effort to explain the obvious mystery, what happened to the girls. In life, dare we say, there are often very few answers: where those socks went that were in the washing machine; what happened to those children that used to be on the sides of milk cartons. Life is a mystery, and Weir does not back down from that in this film, to its credit, I think.
So, as we started to do in class today, make sense of this film. How do you make it coherent? Give it a shot—think about what was said in class and what you think. Picnic at Hanging Rock is about—...what? Finish the sentence and explain why you think this. What in the film, image, moment, action, conflict, best supports your idea. Write a couple hundred words.
Tomorrow we look at Weir's first real hit, Gallipoli, a 1981 film based on a factual event in World War I, the invasion of what was then the Ottoman Empire, now Turkey, by a combined British/New Zealand/Australian force in 1915. It stars an incredibly young Mel Gibson, who would appear in Weir's (and our) next film, The Year of Living Dangerously, and would soon become an international star. Gallipoli cost $2 million in Australian currency and grossed over $11 million. It made Weir a bankable director outside Australia.
That's enough. See you all tomorrow.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is about the difficulty institutions and the individuals involved have dealing with occurrences that disrupt the order of things. Everything about Appleyard College is highly structured--a stark contrast with the rest of wild, ancient Australia. The school epitomizes white civilization in the same way the Suprise does in Master and Commander, while Hanging Rock symbolizes nature. The teachers at the school see Hanging Rock as a dangerous and forbidden place only because it is foreign and unknown to them. The school is unnatural rather than the rock because everything is highly ordered. Therefore the school is unable to cope with an occurrence that disrupts the order; the school's finances, the relationships between pupils, and eventually Mrs. Appleyard herself all break down in the face of this intrusion of chaos. The film highlights the inadequacy of rules and reason through Sarah's story as well as that of the girls who disappeared; because Mrs. Appleyard's system of values strictly states that she has to kick anyone out who can't pay tuition, she forces herself to order Sarah back to the orphanage and compel her to kill herself. The film makes the point that it is impossible and dangerous to maintain control over a world of chaos and to try to fit the natural world into a structured order.
ReplyDeletePicnic at Hanging rock surely requires multiple viewings in order for one to grasp the film at a degree at which conversation can even commence. Nevertheless, I will approach the film with my limited experience.
ReplyDeleteI must say, I did love it, for all the reasons Weir mentions in his interview and more. One can not overlook the sheer artistry of this film. The incredible amount and time and care placed into it (which I did not feel in The Last Wave) make for a very immersive feel. This is all rather dull—my basking in the film's unique genius. So, to answer the question:
Weir, as we have noticed, tends to observe. He keeps a distance from his characters, letting the audience draw conclusions on their own. He insinuates little. I must diverge from my path of last night. Weir is not explicitly criticizing society. He simply gives us a slice of beautiful life, untouched and, of course, unfinished, for "life doesn't have endings." At this point, for the viewer, the process becomes less a matter of trying to determine Weir's desires, for he had none. Instead, we must look at this slice of life in an almost scientific fashion— addressing the facts, and drawing a personal conclusion. By this rubric, I say, the movie says to me the following: humans cannot be defined and structurelized in their entirety. It is not that we are instinctual animals with little control over ourselves. No, this could not be farther from the truth. Instead, I mean there is something bigger than us out there, and regardless of our futile attempts to control and understand it, we cannot. To embrace it would be much more proactive.
Picnic on Hanging Rock revisits Weir’s idea of tradition, I think. Like I said in my previous blog post, these girls are held up in a 20th century college that is teaching them all about how to be a delightful young wife. In the beginning, we see these girls longing to break from that tradition until they eventually do. The entire carriage screams with joy when they are allowed to take their GLOVES off. As soon as the three missing girls left their group, they took their shoes and stocking off. Based off of Edith’s response, this was a big deal. In the beginning, Miranda was speaking to Sarah about how she was going to go away soon. I think this implies that the disappearance was part of Miranda’s plan all along. We know that something is different about her, and that might be it. Simply breaking free from this strenuous need to be a polite young lady might be the reason the girls went missing. As for the mystery part, I liked it. A lot of mysteries have a forced explanation, but Weir just let that go. Not everything needs to be answered. The open ending leaves the watcher to imagine what happened to the girls him/herself. I like to think they just ran away, and no longer have to follow their plans of proper little lives.
ReplyDeleteBefore I tackle the question of what this film is about, I want to comment on the Peter Weir statement you have above. I get that the whole point of watching films and discussing them and dissecting is to try to make sense of them and find the meaning in the endings and the so-called “resolutions,” but as Weir says the endings that make us satisfied are “unnatural,” and “life doesn’t have endings,” so I think at some point we as the view have to step back from scrutinizing the ending and focus on the experience of the film itself. While endings are important, a film is more than just its conclusion and I have to remind myself that its the big picture that is telling us something important. To your question- I think this film is all about the images people project onto other people, particularly the images society projects onto women and girls. Miranda was compared to a Botticelli angel, a swan, and a very sage intellectual, when in actuality she was just a girl. Sure she quotes Edgar Allan Poe, but there’s little else in the film that leads me to believe she was an extraordinary person, I just viewed her as a typical teenage girl. And I think people overestimating who Miranda was put immense pressure on her because all these people had their ideas of who was, and we never hear her own ideas of who she is, and why wouldn’t you want to disappear if no one is willing to look past their own projections. I think Mrs. Appleyard projected something onto Sara that lead to Sara taking her own life because she was already confused as is and to have a powerful superior pick you out of all your peers and be treated as an outsider is scary.
ReplyDeleteI know many people were disappointed that there was no answer to what happened to the girls at the end of the movie, but to me, whether or not it can even be proved, I assumed they ran away. This seems unlikely because Erma was found unconscious--she wouldn't have been left behind by the other two-- and because of all the seemingly magical occurrences at Hanging Rock. To me, the movie is about tradition, as several of Weir's other movies are, and the oppression it forces the girls to live with. As someone said in class today and Weir touched on in his interview, society's expectations keep the college girls trapped in a box, making some of them "claustrophobic." This is why it seemed to me that the three girls tried to run away. They had a desire to explore the rock, and by taking off some of their clothes, as well as their shoes, it gave them some freedom as they engaged in their "tomfoolery." These scenes made it apparent that the girls are in fact "claustrophobic" and want to break free from these boxes they are placed into--a good reason to run away from their strict all-girls school. As to explain why Erma was left behind and the somewhat supernatural occurrences, I believe Erma was to let the college, as well as the viewers, know they weren't kidnapped by men. If they were, they would be more likely to be found together and Erma would not be found "intact," as the doctors mentioned three times. The fact that all time stops near the rock represents the start of the girls no longer going by this set thing. Time is strict, an hour occurs every 60 minutes and a minute occurs every 60 seconds. The stopping of time foreshadows the the girls breaking from these strict rules by running away--they no longer need a sense of time when out climbing the rock.
ReplyDeletePicnic at Hanging Rock is about the way people receive shocking or horrifying events. Edith’s initial reaction is to scream and run. I interpret Mrs. Appleyard’s reaction as immediately thinking how the incident will affect her and who’s responsible. She’s worried about losing customers to the school and also feels a little bit guilty for what happens. I think that explains why she dislikes Sara so much. She believes that Sara blames her for Miranda’s disappearance. Picnic at Hanging Rock is also about order and loss of order in the boarding school. We get a picture at the beginning of the film of the obedient, prim and proper girls piling into the carriage for their picnic. Later on, the girls are in a ballet class, the epitome of properness, though, like many other moments in the movie, there’s something very disturbing going on in the scene as well. Sarah is strapped to the wall. Then, havoc breaks loose as they scream at Irma. The disorder spreads from the students to the teachers. From the moment Mrs. Appleyard is introduced, we know that she is very strict and very together but after she starts losing students her front of sanity falls apart. She begins having rapid mood swings. In one scene Mrs. Appleyard is sobbing in a corner, then quickly there is a transition to eating dinner with Mademoiselle in which she is drunk and babbling.
ReplyDeleteI think that Picnic at Hanging Rock is about several issues. One of those issues is social change, since the movie takes place at the turn of the century. As someone said before, Sara seems to act like any other girl that we would see today, and in the movie, we see that her personality gets her into trouble. Especially when Sara refuses to follow traditions (I feel as though I’m using this word too much in this class…). Someone said in class that maybe Mrs. Appleyard sees a bit of herself in Sara, but I think that Mrs. Appleyard sees Sara as a threat to what her institution stands for. In addition, to social change, we see a lot of emphasis of gender roles and expectations. Like other people said, the college seems to serve the role of complete a young women’s training to become the wife to some man of similar class. For Mrs. Appleyard, and others, if the younger girls are violated in any way, then they are unable to pursue their social roles. I like idea that Weir presented nature is being something that transcends human control. Weir uses shot in the film that brings out this ominous nature in the rock, creating this sense that maybe there is something supernatural about this primeval piece of land. I personally found the image of the swan really unnerving, instead of beautiful. Maybe it was the fact that Michael turned Miranda into another image of beauty instead of searching for her as a person.
ReplyDeletePicnic at Hanging Rock isn't really my cup of tea, but I did like the over all theme of the movie which was that people cannot control everything. Unlike the Last Wave, Picnic at Hanging Rock was pretty up front with the meaning of the film. Mrs. Appleyard (the last name that no one seems to remember) represents the the institutions that try to place their control over everything they touch. The institutions that like to keep tradition, perhaps because tradition is "reliable". The girls school sees the large rock of mystery as a threat to tradition and the free spirited girls flock to it. Edith, the annoying one, represents the women that cannot handle the change. Meanwhile Meredith represents the change in the world and the changes made to women. Outside of the institution there are snakes and dangerous creatures, so the women stay in the college. To the surprise of the viewer, the women don't die to these creatures but for some unknown reason. The creatures represent the change in society as well. It may be that I may be looking for too much in this film but the evidence is all there. I came into this movie wanting answers and left with only more questions. As much as I wanted to like this movie I cant say i'm a fan.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that at first I was pretty disappointed that the film left us no explanation for what happened on the rock and why the girls had disappeared or what even happened to them, but, as I read the quote from Peter Weir that you posted above, I now understand how no answer or explanation is a more realistic ending to the mystery. Looking back on the film, I realize that I really enjoyed it and appreciated the artistry of it. As for the question of what this movie is about—I believe that it touches on Weir’s reoccurring theme of tradition. Appleyard College is practically the definition of the traditional intellectual 1900s lifestyle and the character Miranda manages to interrupt the traditional values. I agree with what Molly said in class today about Miranda representing girls’ personalities of the 70s, when Picnic at Hanging Rock came out, and now in 2014 because of how she is portrayed as kind of a free spirit in the little time she actually appears on screen. As Avik said, the institution really wishes to keep tradition because it’s “reliable”, while the rock breaks away from this tradition in the supernatural sense, or whatever it is that seems to captivate people about the place. I don’t think that there is just one way of interpreting Picnic at Hanging Rock, and pretty much agree with what everyone has already said in way. And, I think that Peter Weir intended for this film to be this way (and his others, too) so that the questions are left to the audience to make their own conclusions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with some of the other people that "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is about tradition. The college and Mrs. Appleyard are very strict and very close to tradition. They have lots of ridiculous rules that adhere to tradition but would seem ridiculous to us now, such as taking off your gloves being exciting or being taught to be a housewife in school. I think that the girls, when they walk away, are in a way breaking tradition and escaping the tedious and repetitive traditional lifestyle that they experience day after day at Appleyard College. Edith, on the other hand, is rather traditional, as she complains about moving around and climbing. She alone out of the four openly expresses that taking off their shoes and socks is crazy by traditional standards, and telling them they need to stop. Miranda is a free spirited and kind of rebellious girl. She seems to be a persona of her own that others look up to, as she isn't really too bound to the tradition that the school is so strict about. This may be an explanation for her disappearance - she may have run away to escape the stiffly traditional college, and her friends, who look up to her like a leader, follow her without question. This never crosses the mind of the college or the other girls as they are blinded by their traditions and cannot think that one of their own would break it. This is not a direct answer, though, and I think that was intentional, as in real life a lot of questions don't really have answers.
ReplyDeletePicnic at Hanging Rock is about traditions and control. The whole setting of the film really shows how much control adult men like(d) to have (women were confined to gloves and corsets and stockings all the time; they were at the mercy of men). The idea that Mrs. Appleyard must have so much control over the girls is unmistakable, but she is at the mercy of the girls' parents, mostly their fathers, the ones who made/spent the money on their girls becoming proper women. The girls are so trained that they wouldn't even think of taking off their gloves without permission (even though they don't like wearing them). However, something about the rock seems to either hypnotize them or give them the power to defy the traditions. They take off their shoes, stockings, and presumably their corsets (Irma is found wearing just her dress, so either she took it off it someone else did). The girls are confined to the traditional gender roles: women do housework. Except that they also aren't; they are learning more than how to sew and cook and clean. They learn how to dance and draw, along with more scholarly things, such as memorizing poetry. They are doing more than learning how to be good housewives; they are learning to be, basically, men. They learn how to do work for themselves, which only men would do at the time. This act of defying traditions is subtle, but nonetheless, present. It's what gives the girls the idea of revolutionary ideas. This is how they learn that they can run away, they can take off their shoes and stockings, they can even kills themselves, take action in response to their world. The college has given them the idea that they don't have to comply to traditions (they are learning random stuff that wouldn't be taught at finishing school), and this leads to troubles in their lives-death, disappearance, etc.The fact that it didn't end didn't really bother me that much. I would have liked for Sarah to meet Albert, yes, but other than that, it didn't seem that important that they be found. The point of the story was that chaos that ensues when anything happens, that their control was challenged and they couldn't handle it, not that a few girls disappeared. Overall, I really liked it. I would love to watch it again, especially with other people, and have a discussion about it, as there's so much to talk about.
ReplyDeleteAs Weir said in that interview, the first half of the film is really dedicated to the mystery. When we left on Friday I was really excited and curious to see what would happen. Funnily enough, it turned out that the mystery aspect ended at the exact moment the movie was paused for the weekend. Today in class I actually remember asking myself, what just happened? The period of intense mystery and plot development came to a halt. Then we came to the end of the film and nothing was really discovered. My initial reaction was to be annoyed with such an enormous anticlimax. As I said when I was talking about the Last Wave, there are types of films with no real resolution. They are some of my favorite, in fact. But usually these are not mysteries. It’s rare that a director will choose to set up a mystery and non conclude it. I’m beginning to accept Weir’s style though. Maybe the fact that the events were set up in such a compelling way that I was dying to know what was going on is simply a testament to how good the film is. The type of film that usually leaves us without resolution is the more realistic film. A film that shows an (often bleak) snapshot of real lives. I recently watched There Will Be Blood, and that film has a really strange ending. It’s not as if all of the plot points of the film have come together to realize the ending. It’s simply the end of the story that’s being told. That film isn’t a mystery though. It’s about the ride, not the reveal. So maybe what Weir is doing is combining those two types of movies. Setting up intriguing mysteries and adding the realistic aspect of not having a clear ending. The movie ends because the story is over. Nobody knows what happens, Miss Appleyard goes crazy, Sarah either commits suicide or is killed by Miss Appleyard, and Miss Appleyard dies on the rock that ruined her life. The lack of a solution may even make the film more chilling with its brutal and terrifying honesty. It’s an effective but frustrating horror tactic. Not knowing is scarier than knowing.
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ReplyDeleteI loved this movie. I thought it was beautifully done, and I thought that this movie really brought up a lot of issues that are still relevant today. Also, reading Jenny’s comment: I completely agree. I think that I got caught up in the movie’s romantic air and sort of pushed more onto Miranda than maybe I actually believe. (I tend to do this watching movies—I prefer to wait a while to discuss it so I can actually process it first). The movie is for sure about the image we, as people, project onto others and ourselves. We saw it in the movie, and afterwards, while we were discussing. I noticed myself quickly casting (positive) judgements on characters without thinking, which I think can be attributed to the magical air of the movie itself. It sucks you in, like the rock, and draws you close. I kind of got lost in the movie, as opposed to The Last Wave and Master and Commander, both of which I felt myself drifting away from. I think that in this film in particular, makes a good point of being realistic as well. The relationships between the girls are mostly realistic (minus the horrific screaming scene when Irma comes back), and the fact that there is no clear, “good” ending is what life is like, and maybe why Weir chose to put “based on a true story” at the beginning of the film.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is about finding answers. It's kind of ironic that I should say that this film is about finding answers when so many of the questions that come up are never actually answered. There are large and obvious questions that came up in class like "What the heck happened to the two other girls and Miss McCraw?" and "Was the rock magical?". There were questions that I had that were slightly random, but I think that is what makes the movie great. The fact that after I watched it, I was left questioning every little detail. Like when Miss McCraw is talking about how old the rock is she says it's millions of years old. Later in the film all of the girls attend a church service. So there is a contradiction of two beliefs of when the world was created. Another question that I had was as simple as, "How many times did the clock chime when Mrs. Appleyard was sitting in her office wearing all black?". With Peter Weir, the details are so important that sometimes I try to make something out of a random detail that might have no large significance.
ReplyDeleteOne could also go the regular route of explaining the plot: "The story is about a college for women. On Saint Valentine's day they all to have a Picnic at Hanging Rock and blah blah blah...". However, you didn't ask for the plot, you asked for what the movie was about. So, I say answers. I could also interoperate the movie to be about authority and power. We see a definite power control with Mrs. Appleyard and Alice. Another thing, the relationships of Mademoiselle and Mrs. Appleyard are indeed different. As I said in class, I don't think it's inappropriate and honestly, it makes sense to me that they should have such different relationships.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is about a mystery that is bot solved, therefore the viewers create their own ending. Most movies revolve around finding a solution to the problem, and when the answer is found everybody is happy and the movie is over, this is not a regular movie. The audience builds up an emotional attachment to Miranda, and really wants her to be found and not harmed. Unfortunately, Miranda is never found and the viewers are left thinking the worst happened to Miranda. Along with not having a solution to the mystery, Weir does another brilliant technique in allowing to audience to create their own opinion on what happened to Miranda. The viewers can explain her bot being found by saying she was abducted by aliens or even that she ran away and lived a happy life in a different country. Weir creates endless endings to the movie.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the movie i tried to find parallels between this movie and another Weir film about a boarding school, Dead Poets Society. The similarities stop at the fact that both films involve a boarding school. In Dead Poets Society the students are interesting characters and drive the movie; however in Picnic at Hanging Rock the students are boring and very one dimensional.
I would simply say that Picnic at Hanging Rock is about people and the various things that they do. The other two movies that we have watched (chiefly Master and Commander) have also been about people, but this one seemed to focus on that theme more than any of the other films. I say that it is about people because there seem to be so many different groups and factors in the movie that were not really necessary unless this theme is taken into account. For instance, there are relationships between people like the rich young man and his servant guy (I’m sorry I don’t know their names). The active roles that they both had in the movie could easily have been carried out by one of them. The fact that both of them were present in the film shows that this movie is trying to show the relationship between rich and poor and the contrast between their conflicting views on various subjects. To me, their relationship was the most interesting one because it seemed very well done and I liked both of them in some ways. Yes, they were both kind of annoying and/or overly concerned with the situation, but there was still something endearing about them. On the other hand, I did not really like any of the girls. This may just be because of the way in which girls were taught to act in this time period and at this school, but it does not really matter. I did not like them, so I found it much harder to relate to them and to find how they were symbols. However the role of the girls in the movie was obviously extremely important. They showed the relationship between humanity and nature, the relationship between order and chaos, the relationship between tradition and change, and the general feel of this time period. Those things were all very important to the movie. I did not really like the movie over all, but it was certainly both unique and interesting.
ReplyDeleteWell. I'm still angry about some things, but based on the quote above I do think Peter Weir achieved what he intended to do with this movie in terms of putting the viewer in an enclosed environment while demonstrating the rigidness of the school. However, I felt a disconnect between the beginning of the movie and the rest of it in a bad way. I understand that things don't have solutions but I feel like it ended up being a lot to put into one movie in a way that made it feel like too much that was too disconnected. I do still feel like in some parts of the movie he made his point about no solutions and other parts he made his point about the environment of the school, but I wish there had been a better connection between the two or that if that wasn't possible he had tried to work with a little less. It definitely wasn't a bad movie and I liked some of the things that to me showed the danger of such a repressive and rigid society and the effect it can have on people, for example Sara and Mrs. Appleyard, but there were many things I also didn't like and it's been my least favorite movie so far.
ReplyDeleteI think the film is about being constrained, like Mrs. Appleyard and being different, like Sara. Mrs. Appleyard is very much about traditions and can maybe relate to Jack Aubrey because she's very close minded. Also Sara could partially relate to Dr. Stephen because Sara is abour difference. An example of that was when Sara was aksed to resight her poem and she didn't know it, but she knew her poem, but that was not acceptable. I also think this movie shows the breaking of tradition too which also happend in The Last Comander. Although The Last Comander and Picnic At Hanging Rock are very different films, there are a couple things that can relate between each other. During the movie I realized that there is a class difference from the town and between the college. It was really clear about the class difference when they were getting in the carriage and most of the people in the town stopped and looked at them, or a couple people ran after them for a short bit. The college also seems very wealthy, and I think of it as an honor to go to that college. It seems like a good college to be educated at and to be trained.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the idea that, unlike in The Last Wave, Weir ignores the pressure to seamlessly explain and conclude the film, and although I personally don't prefer that technique, I can appreciate it's effect. By leaving the mystery unsolved, he shows that that isn't the most important part of the film. I think this decision adds to the message of the film. Ultimately it's showing that maybe some of the characters haven't sorted out their priorities as far as what to admire, worry about, etc. At the girls' school they obsess over proper manners, posture, and wearing gloves in public. Also, the characters seem to be blinded by outer beauty. Everyone seems to be mesmerized by Miranda because she is beautiful. They dismiss Sara even though she is in greater need of affection and, in my opinion, seems to be a more intelligent, unique, deep person. Granted, we didn't get to see much of any of the girls, however Sara shouldn't have been dismissed in the way that she was. I think Weir shows the bias these characters have very well, particularly in the scenes where Michael sees images of Miranda as a swan, when Mademoiselle de Poitiers calls her a Botticelli angel, and when the girls, upon seeing Irma for the first time since her disappearance, yell and demand answers about Miranda's fate. These characters admire Miranda's beauty, and the etiquette taught at the school. Sara's poem doesn't fit in because women are asked to be "educated," yet not to be unique or think for themselves. Albert isn't respected because of his improperness and his social class. Even the way the characters talk about rape shows that they are concerned with the experience rendering girls improper, as if it makes them worthless. The society promotes so many ridiculous ideals, and the film brings their absurdity to light.
ReplyDeleteI’m afraid I don’t have a lot more to add after my other post for Picnic at Hanging Rock. Plotwise or themewise, I don’t think the second part of the movie had much to add after what was done or insinuated in the first part; everyone’s still obsessed with Miranda, we still don’t know what happened to the girls, the Appleyard School for girls is still totalitarian, stuffy and misogynistic. However, I will try to add more insight from to the content of my last blog post.
ReplyDeleteLike Carolyn, I also think this movie is about people’s desire to keep order — keep the natural world separate from the “civilized” world, have strong gender roles to separate the sexes, and enforce hierarchy to separate the different classes. There are special sorts or rules to keep these different kinds of order “intact”. Don’t travel too far up the rock, make sure to wear your gloves so you look decent, do everything that your teachers say. This is also evident, this being the idea of having clearly defined identities and borders, in the way people classify Miranda. She can’t be seen as a nuanced character; she is always a swan, a Botticelli angel.