Witness (1985)

When I first watched Witness in a movie theater in Albany in 1985, I never imagined that someday I would be living in Pennsylvania with an Amish market around the corner from my house. The Amish are usually present at local fairs and festivals; they stand out as a witness to another way of life, one which places a high value upon modesty, simplicity, peace, and most of all, upon family ties. I hear that they still preserve the old custom of shunning those who break the moral code. (In our world it is the other way around; the quickest way to get oneself shunned is to try to take a stand in favor of morality or decency.) This custom is alluded to in the film, when it becomes known that Rachel and John are quite taken with each other, although they themselves have not yet acknowledged the attraction. However, the chemistry between them is so intense that, although confined to the realm of looks and gestures, the entire community is disturbed.

Witness weaves the intrigue of high adventure with a subtle yet powerful love story. Two people are thrown together when their very different worlds collide. Harrison Ford is the Philadelphia policeman John Book to whom violence is a way of life. He is forced to hide among the Amish in Lancaster county in the home of the widow Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis) and her father-in-law and little son. The boy Samuel is the only witness of the slaying of one policeman by another. The Philadelphia police are searching for both John and Samuel; the romance between John and Rachel unfolds as menace draws always nearer.

One of the best reviews of Witness is by Steven Greydanus, who says:

Witness is about looking, not talking, and some of its best moments are wordless. A brief exchange of looks between young Samuel and a Hasidic Jewish gentleman in the train station, Samuel smiling up hopefully at this familiar-looking bearded, black-garbed, brim-hatted man, and the Jewish man not quite frowning down at the little Christian boy. The powerful scene in the police station in which Book, on the phone, looks across the room at Samuel’s face and knows that he has somehow found the missing piece of the puzzle. And of course the moment that Book and Rachel will never forget, a moment of standing, motionless and silent, looking at one another through a door that ought to have been shut, neither willing for that moment to walk away or to move toward the other.

Ultimately, the peaceful way of the Amish triumphs over the way of brute force. For all the shooting and fighting and moments of passion, Witness shows the ascendancy of the spiritual over the material, for in the end Rachel and John, in spite of their ecstatic feelings for each other, return to their own realities, letting each other go.

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