Crevice (smaller) *** Crevasse (bigger) & Fissure (rocks)

 









crevice



Y

D



–noun 

a crack forming an opening; 



cleft (cleave)

rift【地】斷裂,不和【美】河流中的淺石灘  A deep [rift] had started in their family life.

fissure. (尤指岩石上的) 裂縫,裂隙





C



crevice, crevasse (nn.) 

 

A crevice is smaller by far than a crevasse, whether in literal application to cracks and 

fissures in rocks and glaciers or in figurative senses, 



such as references to the tiny crevices between our teeth 

and 

the yawning crevasses in our knowledge of the universe.





　 

The movie, which has been long out of release and unavailable even on video, has been restored in a new "director's cut" that, unlike most revisions, takes out footage instead of adding it. Weir has pared seven minutes [from] an already lean and evasive film. 



pare

–verb (used with object)  

1. to cut off the outer coating, layer, or part of.

2. to remove (an outer coating, layer, or part) by cutting (often fol. by off or away).

3. to reduce or remove by 

or 

as by cutting; diminish or decrease gradually (often fol. by down): to pare [down] one's expenses. 





The result is a movie that creates a specific place in your mind; free of plot, lacking any final explanation, it exists as an experience. In a sense, the viewer is like the girls who went along on the picnic and returned safely: For us, as for them, the characters who disappeared remain always [frozen] in time, walking out of view, never to be seen again. 





The movie is based on a 1967 novel by Joan Leslie, then 71, who presented it as fiction but hinted that it might be based on fact. A cottage industry grew up in Australia about the novel and the movie; old newspapers and other records were searched with[out] success for reports of disappearing schoolgirls. 



Much was made of the fact that the movie is set on a Saturday, and Valentine's Day did not fall on a Saturday in 1900; did the girls disappear into another time line? Were they raped by two teenage boys who were also on Hanging Rock that day? Did they simply fall into a crevice? 



What about the girl who was found alive a week later? She had lost her shoes, and yet her feet were not injured by the sharp rock paths. Did she levitate? There is even a book, The Murders at Hanging Rock, that explains that the disappearances were fiction, but nevertheless offers several theories, including UFO abduction, for what happened. 





Of course the entire point is that there is no explanation. The girls walked into the wilderness, and were seen no more. Aborigines might speculate that the rock was alive in some way--that it swallowed these outsiders and kept its silence. 



As Russell Boyd's camera examines the rock in lush and intimate detail--its [snakes] and [lizards], its birds and flowers--certain shots seem to suggest faces in the rock, as if the visitors are being watched.





abyss

fall into the [abyss], [abyss] of shame

abysm (figurative)

abysmal

[abysmal] ignorance, her concentration was [abysmal] 

abysmal[ly] gloomy

the [abyssal] zone (oceanography)

orifice 

Fray

Beleaguer