Even though slightly irrelevant and totally uninteresting, let me start by sharing a personal insight about me. I rarely ever watch any extra features on a DVD, and practically never any "making of" documentaries. What does happen very exceptionally, however, is that I encounter a film with which I so immensely fall in love with that I want to analyze and embrace every slightest detail of it. "Picnic at Hanging Rock" being such a seldom beauty, I was more than thrilled to check out the "A Dream Within a Dream" documentary.
One of the reasons why making of documentaries are not very exciting is because cast & crew members generally always say the same things, namely they loved the story, felt honored to be a part of the production, and forever consider it as one of the greatest films they ever worked on. "A Dream within a Dream" is also like that, but the difference here is that I genuinely believe these people. Among all the interviewed contributors of the film (director, producers, scriptwriter, composer, cinematographer, and various cast members), there's a noticeably immense respect and admiration for Joan Lindsay. She was the author of the book, who visited the set around the time of filming but passed away when the documentary was made, and fanatically safeguarded the fact that "Picnic at Hanging Rock" should always remain a mystery without solution. Anyone who has ever seen the film or read the book will probably concur with that. One of the - perhaps THE - reasons why this is such an intriguing and haunting tale is because there aren't any answers.
Furthermore, the documentary shares a handful of great and insightful production details, like how the actual picnic sequence got shot over the course of several days and always at the exact same time around noon to ensure the ideal type of daylight, and delightful trivia details. The one perplexing me the most was the history behind the typically English-looking boarding school building, and how it came to exist there in the middle of the Australian outback.
If you - like me - have "Picnic at Hanging Rock" listed among your all-time favorite movies, you will be fascinated by every interview and every insight. If not, this'll be just another "making of" documentary, but nevertheless a very well-made and professional one. Director Mark Hartley is a specialist in the matter, and a few years later he got a lot of well-deserved success with the brilliant "Not Quite Hollywood"; - a documentary about exploitation cinema in Australia.