On the interpretation of Peter Weir’s "Picnic at Hanging Rock". Caliban’s revenge

Abstract

Deliberations about Peter Weir’s film Picnic at Hanging Rock lead to two conclusions. The first one is concerned with the interpretation of the film, and the interpretation has to refer to its symbolism with several traps lying behind it. The other one concerns the interpretation of the events, the interpretation of what happened and how it should be described. If the plot of the film is a list of the surviving sources, it opens for a historian a few options of interpreting the film. On the one hand, by referring to what he knows or what he considers rational, he can compile his own story from the material that is available to him. He can also focus rather on the symbolical meaning of the stories he has heard and connect them with the culture of the time and place he studies.