![]() Feldman (Producer), Maurice Jarre (Original Music Composer), John Seale (Director of Photography), Thom Noble (Editor), Stan Jolley (Production Design) more. Camburn (Amish), William Francis (Town Man), Tom Kennedy (Ticket Seller), Ardyth Kaiser (Couple in Garage), Thomas Quinn (Couple in Garage), Eugene Dooley (Detective), Victoria Scott D'Angelo (Detective), Richard Chaves (Detective), Tim Moyer (Detective), Nino Del Buono (Detective), James Frank Clark (Detective), Joseph Kelly (Detective), Norman Carter (Detective), Craig Clement (Detective) and others. King (Amish), Paul Goss (Amish), Annemarie Vallerio (Amish), Bruce E. ![]() Nuss (Amish), Emily Tracy (Amish), Fred Steinharter (Amish), John D. Schaeffer), Maria Bradley (Schaeffer's Daughter), Rozwill Young (T-Bone), Paul S. Yoder), Ed Crowley (Sheriff), Timothy Carhart (Zenovich), Sylvia Kauders (Tourist Lady), Marian Swan (Mrs. , Brent Jennings (Carter), Patti LuPone (Elaine), Angus MacInnes (Fergie), Frederick Rolf (Stoltzfus), Viggo Mortensen (Moses Hochleitner), John Garson (Bishop Tchantz), Beverly May (Mrs. ![]() John Book), Kelly McGillis (Rachel Lapp), Josef Sommer (Chief Paul Schaeffer), Lukas Haas (Samuel Lapp), Jan Rubeš (Eli Lapp), Alexander Godunov (Daniel Hochleitner), Danny Glover (McFee) more. It's what makes his love affair with McGillis's single mother all the more believable and genuinely involving, as the script doesn't defer to a simple "forbidden fruit" concept and instead charts their most intimate behaviors and gestures.At one point, they begin to dance, and seem to continuously be on the verge of making out, stopping and gazing at one another awkwardly more than once.Harrison Ford (Det. Harrison makes Book less a hard-nosed detective than a quietly inquisitive and brave man of purpose, a worker and a helper first and foremost. It's not so often, however, that they've proven so revealing in a such a subtle performance. This is one of Ford's most seemingly effortless and naturally charming performances, and he does a lot of the acting with his face and mumbling delivery. As Book and Rachel's romance becomes more and more obvious, the dirty cops get a tip on their whereabouts, leading to a thrilling climax that pits Book against a gaggle of gunmen on the farm. Weir is also careful to not overpraise the "simple" life of the Amish, as they don't prove particularly useful when trouble shows up. In other words, Weir refuses to portray their society as alien or cryptic, and finds a dramatic bounty of fascinating exchanges and images in showing how, underneath the belief structure, the Amish deal with the same toil and emotions that city folk do on a daily basis. Weir depicts the Amish as a group just as contentious and apprehensive of others as any other faction one might find in America, and that the simplicity of their life is derived from practicing complex, physically taxing skills that allow them to work as a unit. ![]() country mouse" design and focuses on how Book assimilates into Amish culture, working as a carpenter and laboring alongside those who believe electricity to be the route to ruin. Wallace and Kelley steer away from the "city mouse vs. Wallace and William Kelley, Weir avoids the monotonous sentimentalism and idle imagery that these films are often typified by. Now, the idea of a "mature romantic drama" might very well cause you to yawn so hard your bottom jaw locks in place, but working from a script by regular television scribes Earl W. As directed by Weir, the film becomes less about crime and punishment in the 1980s than it is about traditionalism and cultural displacement, themes that have been at the forefront of Weir's art since his debut one-two punch of The Cars That Ate Paris and Picnic at Hanging Rock.ĭespite the pulpy opening salvo, the rest of Witness comes off as a mature romantic drama centered on the growing relationship between Book and Rachel. Plans to stash the kid away in the city change when evidence comes to light that the perpetrators may actually be corrupt police officers, which causes Book to hide away with Samuel and his mother, Rachel ( Kelly McGillis), at their home on an Amish farm in Strasburg, PA. When a young Amish boy, Samuel ( Lukas Haas), witnesses a brutal murder in the men's bathroom of Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, he becomes a target for the men who carried out the murder and, subsequently, the ward of the murder's chief investigator, John Book ( Harrison Ford). This is not the case with Peter Weir's Witness, the Australian master's Oscar-winning crime drama, though the film's premise opens similar to the aforementioned breed of films. ![]()
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