***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas, Josef Sommer, and Alexander Godunov
Directed by Peter Weir
1985
112 min R
Peter Weir’s “Witness” is probably still THE movie about the Amish. It’s not about a “cop going undercover with the Amish” but a romance between two essentially moral people whose moralities don’t coincide, which is used by the filmmakers to “compare and contrast” two cultures. Most movies treat morality and their audiences so cynically that they can’t imagine not uniting their lead couple, no matter what lies between them. “Witness,” however, considers its two leads: both believe what they believe very strongly, yet they are unsure if they would give up their beliefs for the other, or if they want the other to give anything up either.
Kelly McGillis plays a young Amish widow whose little son (Lukas Haas) witnesses a murder in a train station bathroom. Harrison Ford is the tough Philadelphia cop assigned to the case, symbolically named John Book. Through several twists that Weir and his screenwriters handle efficiently, Book ends up living with the Amish for a time while recovering from a gunshot wound, and awaiting his final confrontation with the dirty cops who set him up.
Much of “Witness” is handled silently and lighted with the shadows and dusty blades of lamp- and window-light popular among the Dutch masters. Memorable moments include the barn-raising sequence, which exemplifies the ascetic belief of finding joy in what is unavoidable, and not in pleasure-seeking. Then there’s when the boy’s grandfather puts him on his knee, with the cop’s revolver on the table, and explains Christian non-violence. I also like the faint, knowing smile of the rabbi in the train station, whom the boy mistakes for one of his own. And, of course, the effervescent impromptu dance the cop shares with the widow, set to car-radio oldies.
The final showdown is necessarily bloody and violent because it has to show the result of Book’s morality. There has been symmetry throughout the picture. Book’s venal superior, for instance, approaches Book’s partner and compares the police to the Amish right after we see the widow being threatened with shunning. Or when Book hears some bad news and takes out his aggression on some local punks who have been teasing the plain people.
Director Weir (“The Truman Show,” “Master & Commander”) keeps things clean and minimal; near the film’s end, the boy, who has come to see Book as a replacement for his late father, looks on with silent disappointment as Book shares a smoke and a cocky, insecure swagger with several other cops. One early scene, in which Book takes the boy and his mother to a rough neighborhood to identify a possible suspect, is difficult to believe, but we can forgive it. The casting of Ford is star power at its finest: we instantly side with John Book and feel his emotions. McGillis, in her other big role besides “Top Gun,” is not exactly pretty, but better and more interesting than pretty. “Witness” is a rare movie because the attraction between them is actually palpable. Alexander Godunov (in his other big role besides “Die Hard”) is quiet and sad-smiling as the Amish man who has lost her heart to the cop.
The Amish themselves are neither holier-than-thou nor ignorami, but human and flawed, jealous, apprehensive, and surprisingly bawdy in their preference for jokes about horse testicles and cow teats. So often, films treat “other” cultures as superhumans who merely exist to teach our mainstream, secular, Western hero a lesson. American Indians, for instance, were switched from mindless savages to ultra-noble super-hippies around 1975 and didn’t finally become full-fledged humans until adaptations were made of books by Sherman Alexie. In comparison with the police procedural aspects that begin the film, the sequences on the farm are so good that we almost wish there was no murder or witness at all, and that we could just observe how these people live. Still, thrillers are the easiest and most accessible ways for movies to get their audiences into worlds where they’ve never been before. Weir’s own “The Last Wave,” about a detective investigating a murder among Australian Aborigines, probably helped him understand “Witness,” and the method has been used with varying degrees of success with films such as “Thunderheart,” “The Interpreter,” and “I, Robot.”
The Vangelis-inspired electronic score is by none other than “Lawrence of Arabia” composer Maurice Jarre. Keep your eyes open for a wordless appearance by a young Viggo Mortensen and a smaller part by Danny Glover.
Finished Monday, July 11th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday night
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