Peter Weir’s film “Witness” Essay

Peter Weirs have, Witness reveals that besides our contemporary world, in that location are other worlds with their own values that are unique. These worlds conflict with the occidental world through their variation in lifestyle. The Amish are a association of people who live peacefully in the midst of a robust, hatred riddled contemporary world. Weir presents a film that fits two genres, one of a crime and the other of romance. Within the first ten minutes of the film these two worlds it captures the differences of these two worlds through the use of cinematic techniques. The Amish world is introduced at the very start of the film where the opening visual fades in, to reveal a long shot showing the landscape. There is no use of mawkish lighting but merely the natural sunlight of an early morning. This proposes an root that the Amish community lives in a plain, simplistic, traditional, and a calm lifestyle.The establishing montage of the unruffled and peaceful world of the A mish becomes apparent through a wide be given shot that pans across the screen in a panoramic resume of gently swaying wheat fields from which emerges a small band of downhearted clad people walk silently following one another. even so in this very early part of the movie, the audience has a glance of order and conformity. Their black clothes juxtapose the brilliance of the Wheatfields clearly portraying their different world. Pennsylvania 1984 is surprising to the viewer, because they might yield a much earlier date. The idea of two worlds is also symbolized by the division of the scene into top one-half of the sky and the bottom half of the grass. The crossing of the two worlds is portrayed by the Amish moving through the pulp from right to left through the grass.This is an unusual technique because usually nearly movement is from left to right, thus reinforcing their unusual world. Weirs purpose in presenting such an orderly scene ironically is to exemplify the dystopia o f the fast urban life of crime and corruption. The culture clash between the Amish and the modern proficient society becomes evident when Eli takes Rachel and Samuel to the station. The camera zooms into the carriage portraying the occupants to be Eli as the driver and Rachel and Samuel as the passengers. An overhead view gives way to long shots of glorious country landscape and the horse-driven carriage as it is juxtaposed with the truck. The truck a symbolic representation of the modern world and a vehicle that is cognize to literally thunder its way like a bully on eminentways has to follow the carriage which was going at its own pace. This demonstrates that the Amish world target it is not governed by time and will go the way they want.through and through the close-ups of Eli, Rachel and Samuel, the audience sees the glassed-in world of the Amish as being reclusive and imprisoned as opposed to the free world of faster vehicles. Weir illustrates this sudden imposition of the American way when at the station while awaiting their train. An undershot of the train is ample and intimidating which dwarfs the Amish world. He is mesmerized by it all, tours the train station. Accustomed to shortsighted angels in their books, Samuel is miniaturized by a gigantic figure of an angel. A high angle shot from behind the statue dwarfs Samuel symbolically highlighting the insignificance of their culture to the American way of life. Even among the Amish these worlds there are others who resemble different from the