Witness
Released: 1985Director: Peter Weir
Genre: Thriller, drama, romance
Starring: Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis and Lukas Haas
Plot: A young Amish boy by the name of Sam Lapp witnesses a murder in the toilets of a train station toilet. He, his mother Rachel and a cop named John Book must go into hiding when the killers come after them.
When looking at the user ratings on the IMDB it shows that women over 45 rated it highest. This could have been due to the lead female character and the underlying plot line of romance between her and John Book (Harrison Ford), especially as Ford could be seen as desirable to some women. Older women rated it higher than younger women, this is most probably due to the appeal of the characters, plus the film was probably not targeting younger female audiences when casting the actors.
Witness - Screenshot Analysis
A detailed and perceptive analysis of the way Peter Weir uses and develops generic conventions. You have excellently identified the way Weir represents the city as a dystopia in contrast to the shots of the Amish community. In a sense (as in Once Upon a time in America and in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown) Weir is representing the dark side of the American Dream. The news this week of the shootings in the school in Conneticut are a current example of the American's love affair with violence and the gun! And the flip side of the American Dream.
ReplyDeleteYou have presented your analysis excellently, considering you only had a short clip from You Tube to illustrate your points.
Well done Hamish, your blog is an example of your commitment and intellectual and creative engagement with your coursework.
A point about user ratings, it's possible that the demographic who find the film most appealing (women over 45) is likely to be because the film is nearly 30 years old and Harrison Ford was a romantic hero in the 80's and 90's.
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