Witness

Bluesky

Outrageously billed as a story about a cop becoming Amish to solve a murder, Witness is no mere procession of thriller and culture-collision tropes. Instead, it unfolds as a patient, affecting study of human connection in unusual circumstances. The hybridised identity of Peter Weir’s film - Amish neo-noir? - signals a refreshing narrative approach that’s never in a rush, and all the better for it.

A young Amish boy, Samuel (Lukas Haas), ventures outside his insular, pacifist community for the very first time. Things take a brutal turn when he witnesses a murder in a Philadelphia train station restroom. John Book (Harrison Ford), the hardened detective assigned to the case, learns that his mentor is involved in the crime. Severely wounded and wanting to protect the boy, he returns Samuel and his mother, Rachel (Kelly McGillis), to their self-sufficient farm community - a world that has resisted change for centuries. It becomes the perfect place for Book to hibernate while he sorts out his predicament.

For much of its runtime, Witness sets aside the thriller structure in favour of a slow-burning love story. An early scene that could have been a clunky exposition dump - Rachel grilling John over a hot dog about his sister's criticisms of him - is compelling thanks to the performers' complementary levity. What emerges, with charm rather than cliche, then, is John as a gunslinging loner: a cynical man who believes only he can fix the world.

The Western reference is no accident. There’s a strong undercurrent of elegiac love for open spaces throughout, beautifully captured in meditative wide shots. The film’s pastoral section is bookended by moments of violence and intense Hitchcockian suspense, but its emotional core lies in the chemistry between Ford and McGillis, and the quiet magnetism of daily labour among the Amish. Much of the story is brought into focus through Samuel’s observant eyes. When it’s time to return to genre convention, Weir is ready to unleash an unforgettable set piece, which involves a particularly harrowing use of a corn silo.

Witness performs quiet narrative gymnastics that, in this director’s hands, seem effortless, removing pretentious implications that could easily inhibit the focus on rural purity and city-vice split. The film has an obviousness to its virtuousness, yet it works naturally thanks to the balance between the performances that elevate the material and Weir’s direction, which remains plain and appropriate to the community it’s organised around.

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