![]() “First time in the big city?” Daniel grins broadly at Samuel. Later Daniel comes by the train station as Rachel and her young son Samuel (Lukas Haas) travel to Philadelphia en route to visit Rachel’s sister in Baltimore - and from the note of surprise with which white-bearded old Eli, Rachel’s father (Jan Rubeš), greets Daniel at the station, we gather that Daniel is being quite forward in making known his interest in Rachel. The quip comes from Daniel (Alexander Godunov), who makes a point of seeking out the women, who are sitting apart from the men, to offer his condolences to the grieving widow, Rachel (McGillis). The first words in English are a brief exchange about the late farmer’s virtues and foibles, ending with an earthy quip about testicles - the first of a number of indications that we aren’t in a world of stereotypically puritanical fastidiousness. With the long beards and plain clothes, in the shadowy interior spaces, they look like figures in a Vermeer or some other Dutch master, a connection Weir emphasizes with his use of light and shadow. A tracking shot shows the house full of community members, some preparing food, setting the table, talking in small groups. ![]() The first words of dialogue - from a man who may be a minister at a household gathering that is evidently a funeral - are in German. In his first Hollywood film, the Australian filmmaker Weir ( Picnic at Hanging Rock) doesn’t hold the audience’s hand or explain what we can gather for ourselves. The Amish world is bathed in a golden glow, while the ugliness and griminess of the outside world is seen in an unforgivingly harsh light (literally in both cases, not just metaphorically). Aside from an opening title identifying the year as 1984, there is little in the opening scene, a funeral for a young farmer leaving behind a widow and a young boy, to tell us we are not watching a period piece not until later do we get a striking shot of an immense semi-trailer and a line of cars creeping along behind an Amish buggy and a trotting horse: two worlds momentarily juxtaposed, yet with nothing in common but the road under their wheels. Witness starts among the Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, amid golden cornfields and rippling grass, whitewashed farm houses and black horse-drawn buggies. If it’s not quite the world in microcosm, it’s a big chunk of it. Among the main cast are elderly and juvenile, male and female, pious and secular, urban and rural, honest and corrupt, jaded and innocent, peaceful and violent. It is about attraction between a man and a woman (Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis) separated by their fundamental life commitments, about the allure of the forbidden and unobtainable it is also about a brief but powerful connection between a fatherless young boy and a childless man. ![]()
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