Peter Weir on Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe: ‘Talent and trouble often seem to share the same space'

Peter Weir, 80, is arguably Australia's greatest ever film-maker. Yet he only turned in two films this century – the stupendous Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), which received 10 Oscar nominations, and the comparatively little-seen prisoner-of-war escape drama The Way Back (2010) – before he retired from directing at the relatively ­early age of 66.
This year, Picnic at Hanging Rock, the astonishing, enigmatic film that put Weir on the map, celebrates its 50th anniversary. Adapted from Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel about three sylphlike schoolgirls who vanish into the bowels of a volcanic outcrop in central Victoria on Valentine's Day in 1900, like gossamer into thin air, it launched a career of questing verve, with hardly a dud in the mix. Weir followed the Australian war masterpiece Gallipoli (1981) with The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), before his high-quality work for a range of Hollywood studios produced Witness (1985), The Mosquito Coast (1986), Dead Poets Society (1989), Green Card (1990), Fearless (1993), and The Truman Show (1998). He would notch up six Oscar nominations in the process, and was given an honorary award in 2022.
In 2006, Weir couldn't see eye-to-eye with Johnny Depp or Warner Bros in preparing Shantaram, a Bombay-set adventure about a ­heroin-addict bank robber, so he quit the film (eventually made as a TV series ­with Charlie Hunnam in 2022) and, after one last roll of the dice with The Way Back, film-making itself. Here, from his home in Sydney, he looks back on the film that made his name.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is often mistaken for a true story. Following Joan Lindsay's novel, did you consciously want to give the tale the quality of a national myth?
Following the film's release, many people assumed it was true. It all comes from Joan's prologue – 'Whether this is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves...' I loved that statement and felt it added to the veil of mystery surrounding the story.
Joan would never discuss the matter, but this was no advertising ploy. The story as presented is not true, but its inspiration/origin – who knows? That's Joan's secret. I didn't aim to give it the quality of a national myth. I just aimed at making it work as a film! A mystery without a solution was both the power of the piece and its inherent danger, at least as a movie.
Could you give a sense of the casting process? From ­Dominic Guard, who had already starred in Joseph Losey's 1971 film The Go-Between, to 19-year-old Anne-Louise Lambert, making her debut as Miranda, there's such a range of acting experience on screen.
The young girls who auditioned seemed too sophisticated, even at 15 or 16 years old. At least, as far as Sydney and Melbourne went. It was in Adelaide, in South Australia, where those who auditioned seemed closer to young ladies of an earlier era.
If you cast accurately, half the job is done. This was the case with Anne-Louise Lambert. After her disappearance, I missed her so much from the cut, I added dream-like scenes that brought her back on screen. She embodied the spirit of that ethereal girl so completely, I said little to her, not wanting to break the spell.
The Go-Between was a fine film, and the performance of the young Dominic Guard stayed with me. He was my first and only choice for his part. Rachel Roberts [who replaced the ailing Vivien Merchant as the headmistress, Mrs Appleyard] had little or no preparation time. We were already a couple of weeks in, shooting scenes involving the girls preparing for the picnic. They were so into the mood that Rachel found their intense stares of dislike thoroughly off-putting. When addressing them prior to their setting off, she asked for them to be removed from her eyeline, preferring to engage with a piece of gaffer tape stuck to a stand.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is cited more than any other Aus­­tra­lian film as something like ­colonialism's swan­song, what with it being set in the first year of the 20th century, in the dying days of ­Victoria's reign. Do you think of it as a farewell, a good ­riddance?
I thought it all pretty obvious and irresist­ible – the exclusive English school afloat on a sea of eucal­yp­tus at the bottom of the world. An end and a beg­in­ning. Rich stuff.
You have said that the atmosphere of Hanging Rock itself was quite oppressive. Have you ever returned?
I went back some years ago and, like an old general returning to the scene of a great battle, wandered over the Rock retracing our steps. The shoot was certainly tough. Never enough time! Take the picnic scene. It should have taken half a day to shoot. We spent a week on it, because my director of photography, Russell Boyd, pointed out the light was perfect for one hour only – from 12 noon. So we'd break the set up after an hour, and trudge up the Rock for other scenes, day after day.
How important was this film specifically in the evolution of your career?
The film was successful enough to introduce me to the film world, at least in Europe. It was a risky project – whodunits have solutions; this one didn't. The fact that it worked encouraged me, apart from learning a lot about setting a mood.
Is there anything about it you would change?
No. I made my changes in the 1990s for the Director's Cut. I removed some 12 minutes from the film, something I'd wanted to do in 1975 for the world release. The film had opened successfully in Australia, but I saw how it could be improved. The investors were puzzled – 'You want to cut a hit film?' Unfortunately, they would not agree.
The idea of an idyll or enclave that's more disturbing than we first realise recurs in your work, for instance in Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society and The Truman Show. Is this a theme that helped guide you?
I treated each film as a separate case, looking neither forward nor back. In other words, I served the story. Of course, my fingerprints are all over these films, but they were not about me.
Which of your films gave you the most difficulty?
Most difficult? Hmm... we had death threats when we were filming The Year of Living Dangerously in Manila. The then-president's wife, Imelda Marcos, loaned us the ­presidential guard, she was so anxious to have the film stay. Armed guards arrived at my hotel room door every morning to escort me to work. It was so tense. We pulled out and completed the film in Sydney.
Mel Gibson. Russell Crowe. Gér­ard Depardieu. Robin Williams. Jim Carrey. Nearly Johnny Depp. Your leading men comprise quite a troubled bunch! Do you see any commonality in these performers?
Talent and trouble often seem to share the same space! Of course, I don't see these famous names as you do. Observing the fusion of their own personal traits with those of the characters they were playing, plus the intensity of the experience – this is what I know and remember of them.
You've said that you've entered the 'extinct' phase of your career, and that your energy gradually ebbed away.
It's more that the unknowable muse, glorious electrifying inspiration – that's what ebbed away, and without that, no matter how fit I may be for my age, I can't make my kind of films. I had a good run. The timing was right, after several decades, for me to take a bow and leave the stage.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is back in cinemas now

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