reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (02/12/85)
Peter Weir is a powerful visual director who is still at
home with words. The scripts of his films, while well written
and literate, are merely the skeleton on which he hangs images to
flesh out his vision. None the less, the script is of importance
to Weir. This dichotomy bothers some people. Visualists dismiss
him as being too pat and literate, while traditionalists distrust
stories told more through pictures than words. It doesn't bother
me one bit. In fact, I'm impressed by directors who can produce
films that bridge the gap between words and pictures. After all,
ever since "The Jazz Singer", that's been the game.
Weir's inclinations are more towards the visual, but he has
the discipline to avoid excesses by rooting his movies in strong
scripts which ultimately rely on the word. "Witness" is a fine
example of Weir's approach. The story concerns John Book, a Phi-
ladelphia policeman who is faced with the murder of another cop.
He has one witness: an Amish boy. Unluckily, the murderer is
himself a policeman, so the hero must flee with the boy to the
relative safety of Amish country, where they can hide. Gradual-
ly, Book and the Amish boy's mother fall in love, an impossible
love because of the differences between their lives. I can pic-
ture what Roger Corman would do with this story, or, for that
matter, how it would play as a TV movie. What's interesting
about this film is not the story, which is, let's face it, a gim-
mick, but what Weir does with it.
Despite the rather mechanical nature of the plot, the script
is good. Earl W. Wallace and William Kelley have drawn several
excellent characters and make the plot move in an acceptable,
plausible manner. Moreover, they are true to their characters.
They don't make them do things which are against their natures.
Fidelity is central to characterization, and Wallace and Kelley
are faithful.
Just how many of the visuals in a film come from the screen-
writers and how many from the director is impossible to say
without having read the script in several stages and observed the
shooting. Keeping this in mind, I would venture a guess that
most of the shots and visual touchs in "Witness" that really im-
pressed me are Weir's. His past films ("Picnic at Hanging Rock",
"The Last Wave", "Gallipoli", and "The Year of Living Dangerous-
ly") all bear the same marks. One of Weir's strongest points is
his talent for visual metaphor. Without any character saying a
word, Weir can communicate complicated thoughts and emotions.
Most directors don't do this very well; some don't even realize
it can be done. Weir's metaphors seem inevitable and hence, ef-
fortless. Art often appears effortless, especially in the hands
of masters, but rarely is.
Weir's head isn't in the clouds, concentrating just on pret-
ty pictures and clever images. He is a complete director.
"Witness's" pace is well chosen. The story never becomes lost in
irrelevancies, because Weir is able to concentrate on the essence
of the plot. Action sequences are both clear and exciting. In
particular, Weir works well with the performers.
There's not a bad performance in "Witness", and there are
several very good ones. Harrison Ford, as John Book, deserves
particular praise. Ford's post-"Star Wars" films were very weak,
but since "Raiders of the Lost Ark", he has found his center as
an actor. Now he is secure in his talent, which is akin to that
of Cary Grant and Gary Cooper. Ford doesn't have tremendous
range, but he does have tremendous charm, which is even rarer.
Ford is a movie star in the old style, one of the few left. He's
almost impossible not to like. Beyond his immense likability,
Ford has enough ability to show us Book's deeper feelings; I
think that this additional acting talent, modest by the standards
of more protean actors such as Olivier and De Niro, is what
separted the great stars of the thirties and forties from the
merely beautiful and charming, and Ford has it.
Kelly McGillis is beautiful, chaste, and yet seductive as
the widowed Amish mother. She's less ethereal, more real than
she was in "Reuben, Reuben", which is appropriate, as this char-
acter is less of a dream figure than a very real woman. Little
imagination is necessary to see why the detective falls for her,
despite the fact that her religion is a nearly impenetrable bar-
rier between them. She also makes a believable mother for Lukas
Haas, the boy who witnesses the murder. Haas is perfectly
believable as an Amish boy, a boy brought up in a tradition very
different from ours. This must have been a tremendous challenge
for such a young actor, and Haas carries it off well. Alexander
Godunov is also fine as an Amish farmer in love with McGillis.
Maurice Jarre's score is worthy of particular note. Jarre
hardly deserved his Acadamy award nomination for "A Passage to
India", as that score was an inappropriate self-plagiarization of
his score from "Ryan's Daughter". His score for "Witness", how-
ever, is excellent, symphonic in places, electronic almost in
emulation of Tangerine Dream in others. As a score should, it
reinforces the themes and emotions of the film, and is very good
music in its own right.
As a detective movie, "Witness" is perhaps not a success.
Any mystery about the murder is dispelled early, between the
first half hour and the last fifteen minutes there is little ac-
tion, and the central question as to whether the killers will
find Book and the boy is not treated as a matter for suspense.
"Witness" works very well, though, as a confrontation between two
different life styles and as a love story. The real suspense
concerns whether Ford and McGillis will wind up together, and
what they will have to sacrifice for their love. Since detective
stories are so easy to come by, I have no regrets that Weir
didn't play it for action rather than emotion. "Witness" is de-
cidedly not the TV movie version of this story, nor even the
feature film expansion of the TV version, as too many films today
are. "Witness" has been filtered through the mind of an artist,
not churned out by a celluloid molding machine.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiherdbrown@watarts.UUCP (Dave Brown) (02/19/85)
I haven't seen Witness yet, but comparing Harrison Ford to Cary Grant or
Gary Cooper does sound a little bit much.
Sincerely yours,
DAVE BROWNreiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (02/23/85)
In article <8253@watarts.UUCP> dbrown@watarts.UUCP (Dave Brown) writes: >I haven't seen Witness yet, but comparing Harrison Ford to Cary Grant or >Gary Cooper does sound a little bit much. > What I meant was that Harrison Ford has precisely the same type of talent as these two gentlemen. Let's face it, neither Cooper nor Grant was really a great actor. Both had limited ranges. However, they were great movie stars, because they had a charisma that reached out of the screen into the audiences. Moreover, they had enough talent so that they were a bit more than just personalities. I contend that Ford is the same type of performer. He does not have the ability to play many disparate kinds of roles, but what he does he does extremely well. Ford will never succeed as WIlly Loman in "Death of a Salesman" or as the father in "Long Days Journey Into Night". He will never physically transform himself into a character as DeNiro did in "Raging Bull". He will probably never successfully play any character other than a slightly transmuted Han Solo in a different setting. But then, Sargeant York and the sheriff in "High Noon" and Mr. Deeds and John Doe were all just Gary Cooper in different circumstances, and I'd be hard pressed to point out essential character differences between Grant's roles in "The Philadlephia Story", "North By Northwest", "Holiday", and "Bringing Up Baby". It's too early to tell if Ford will prove to be as enduring as Grant and Cooper, but his undeniable appeal (to most people, at least) is the same type as those actors. Keeping in mind that, for as long as they were actively making films, Grant and Cooper were highly underrated actors, I don't think that this comparison is too outrageous. -- Peter Reiher reiher@ucla-cs.arpa {...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher