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| Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures |
It goes without saying retired Australian filmmaker Peter
Weir is one of the world’s greatest living film directors. Though hanging his hat in 2010 with his last
film The Way Back, Weir’s career spans all the way back to 1971 with his
debut films Homesdale and 1974’s The Cars That Ate Paris before
embarking on his first real true cinematic masterpiece with the legendary
mystery period thriller Picnic at Hanging Rock. A keen social observer who drops his viewers
into a particular setting before the chess pieces of the story gradually fall
into place, the master filmmaker continued his artistic ascension with such
critically acclaimed fare as The Last Wave, Gallipoli and The
Year of Living Dangerously before landing on the 1985 film that would garner
eight Academy Award nominations for the director: the snapshot of Amish life as
a bad cops genre thriller Witness starring Harrison Ford in arguably his
most complete performance as an actor.
Within a Pennsylvania Amish community circa 1984, widowed
mother Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and her eight-year-old son Samuel (Lukas Haas)
are on their way to the train station to visit her sister in Philadelphia when
at the 30th Street Station, Samuel wanders into the men’s room and
from his bathroom stall witnesses two men brutally murdering an undercover
police officer. Assigned to the case is
Detective John Book (Harrison Ford) who discovers through the witness a ring of
police corruption resulting in an attempt on his life in a parking garage,
forcing him, Rachel and Samuel to go into hiding within the Amish
community. Much to Rachel’s father-in-law’s
chagrin, the injured Book slowly recovers and starts to blend in with the Amish
community becoming one of their own, igniting impassioned romantic longings
within Rachel despite being from two vastly different worlds. Still the killers haven’t forgotten and
eventually slowly descend on the quiet Amish community looking for Book and the
key witness to their crimes.
A bilingual snapshot of the water and electricity free
covered wagons Amish way of life that gradually develops into a genre thriller
and then a kind of Romeo & Juliet doomed romance involving two people
from vastly different ways of life, Witness while partially a police
movie is largely about the modern world clashing with the old. In a series of opening shots beautifully
photographed by Academy Award winning cinematographer John Seale (Mad Max:
Fury Road), the camera careens over grassy fields and plains as legendary
composer Maurice Jarre’s ethereal electronic score swells to life, we get the
feeling of being transported back in time.
Only when a covered wagon on the highway slows down a semi-truck and
generates heavy traffic and car horns honking are these two disparate worlds
and timelines clashing together. While
ostensibly a thriller, it then becomes something of a fish-out-of-water story
as John Book immerses himself in the Amish community and starts tugging at the
heartstrings of widowed Rachel.
Acting wise, this is probably Harrison Ford’s finest hour
onscreen in a role not only well researched but hiding a quiet burning passion
which only erupts at key times such as a brief encounter with some local
bullies that gives away his ruse. Ford
has always been a talented and charismatic actor but here he imbues his
character with subtlety and nuance and winds up saying a lot more with his
facial expressions and his eyes than with words. Kelly McGillis too spent a great deal of time
in an Amish community learning the farm working way of life but also exuding
herself a sexual tension and yearning purely with her facial expressions. The supporting cast is also strong with child
actor Lukas Haas from Testament as the unintended witness to a crime, Josef
Sommer as the chief of police, Danny Glover as one of the assassins and Die-Hard
actor Alexander Godunov as Rachel’s on/off lover.
Ornate, carefully composed and like his other works Picnic
at Hanging Rock or The Truman Show leaving the audience with connecting
the dots on their own, Witness is one of the very best films of the
1980s, garnering eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor
for Harrison Ford. Both a slice-of-life
regard for the Amish community on film and a neo-noir crime thriller, Weir’s
grand and quietly stirring American epic while celebrated has been in less than
stellar home video editions for a moment there.
From Paramount Pictures’ first DVD run rife with problems, it seemed
like Witness would languish in insufficient home video releases for awhile. That is until just recently with Arrow Video’s
gargantuan deluxe limited edition 4K UHD set.
Stacked with archival extras including electronic press kits as well as
new visual essays and a video interview with the film’s cinematographer, the
film has never looked or sounded better including both the original 2.0 Dolby
Stereo mix and a remixed 5.1 DTS-HD track.
Seen years later, Witness remains timeless and like
you’re being transported into another world years apart from our own. As an actor’s piece, it is powerful,
passionate stuff with Ford and McGillis’ unfulfilled romantic longings slowly
burning over into view. For Weir, the
film functions as both a genre thriller and a social study of a way of life
entrenched in the past traditions with an outsider thrust into that world with forever
altering ramifications. Still a
masterpiece by one of cinema’s still greatest living directors, Witness bridges
something of an artistic gap for Peter Weir, finding a way to function as
docudrama with a portrait of Amish lifestyle within the prism of a crime
thriller. Unquestionably one of the most
important home video releases of the year for Arrow Video.
--Andrew Kotwicki
