Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Peter Weir’s “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is a mystery with no answer. It’s 1900 Australia and a group of girls from an elite finishing school leave for a picnic at Hanging Rock, a chunk of mountain with a near-supernatural magnetism. It looms as a god, setting visitors in a daze. Watches stop. People sleep. Four girls wonder for no reason but curiosity. Three disappear, one returns panicked. The vanished girls drop the perfect façade of the school and town into hysteria, order and etiquette shattering. People don’t fear the girls’ deaths, they fear their “violation.” The unknown expands. Weir uses glowing cinematography and pan-flute music to portray the perfection that we all desire to build us for the fall. Life is unanswerable, we cannot escape it reciting poetry or meeting dinner time. The only innocent free girl throws herself to death. The grand head mistress (Rachel Roberts) loses her glory to reality, her fate leads back to that Rock. Honestly, “Picnic” is perfect, as defined as what we are not shown, by as what we are. It is art that cannot be explained or crunched into a few sentences, it must be seen. On repeat. Endlessly fascinating. A+

Bully (2012)

“Bully” is a brutal documentary look at five stories of youths bullied, beaten, and taunted by peers, and ignored by clueless or uncaring adults. It brings anger and tears, especially for a guy who was himself heckled. Three stories (a lesbian, a boy with cognitive/emotive issues, and a poor girl pushed to violence) are told in present tense; two in past tense as the tormented committed suicide rather than live miserable. Director Lee Hirsch takes inside schools, on buses, and into the homes of its subjects. He shows an 11-year-old’s casket, and a broken father whisper, “We need to tuck him in one last time,” to his wife as they follow behind it. Brutal. Its strength lays in damning school administrators who dismiss the concerns of parents and youths, opting to say “just get along,” outright lie, or change the subject and talk about their new grand baby. But, hate to pick, it’s not a full-rounded film: Every story is set in rural America, no cities whatsoever, and Hirsch never confronts the bullies. Why not? Last thought: It’s a crime the MPPA bullied “Bully” with an R-rating, when “Hunger Games” got a PG-13. Senseless. B+