Bearing Witness

 A culture clash is always a great subject for a movie. Many screen adaptations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet raise the barriers separating the two lovers by showing that they come from very different ethnicities: see, of course, the (Anglo) Jets and the (Puerto Rican) Sharks of West Side Story. And the suspense element in international thrillers like The Third Man or The Da Vinci Code is heightened when the participants in the drama do not share a common background. Many police dramas set the values of the law-enforcement community against those of the general public. But 1985’s Witness is perhaps unique in bringing together a Philadelphia homicide detective and devout members of Pennsylvania’s rural Amish population, which shuns technology while cleaving to religious and social values that are centuries old.

 The story of Witness is a complex one. An eight-year-old Amish boy, on a rare trip out of town with his recently widowed mother, goes into a train-station men’s room and is horrified to see a brutal murder. He’s the “witness” of the story’s title, and soon Philadelphia police detective John Book (Harrison Ford) is on the case, which becomes far more complicated once it’s known that the victim is an undercover cop, and that corrupt members of his own department are responsible for the death. Through a thorny set of circumstances, Book seeks refuge with the boy's pretty mother, Rachel (Kelly McGillis), and her family. To save himself from detection, he must learn to blend in with the rural, peaceable Amish way of life. This means suppressing his own basic urge to fight back against adversaries, and also fending off the growing attraction he feels toward Rachel. (In perhaps the film’s most quietly complex role, Rachel is attracted to him as well.)

 When spotting this film on a shelf in my local library, I was looking for Places in the Heart, I wanted to re-watch that 1984 drama in tribute to Danny Glover, who had named this as his favorite performance. To my surprise, Glover is also a featured player in Witness, released just one year later, and a comparison of the two roles verifies the breadth of his talent. As Moze Hadner, he’s a down-home drifter, not entirely honest, by no means educated, but filled with a generosity of spirit that ultimately makes him lovable. One year later, as police lieutenant James McFee, he’s a decorated cop who has chosen to put his talents to nefarious ends.

 I’m no expert on the so-called “plain” lifestyle of the Amish, but cast and crew seem to have worked hard to set these characters apart from our “English” world. In the course of the film we get a good look at Amish ways, particularly in a spectacular barn-raising scene, and come to respect their values. There’s also one particularly grotesque moment when we see how stoically the Amish separate themselves from local hooligans who delight in tormenting them. In the leading role, Ford achieves an effective balance between his familiar machismo and respect for a culture totally alien to his own way of life. There are strong supporting performances by young Lukas Haas, ballet star Alexander Godunov (as a would-be suitor for Rachel), and others, all under the effective direction of Australian Peter Weir, making his first American feature. I was especially taken by the cinematography by John Seale, which owes much to the tender light so evident in the 17^th century Dutch paintings of Johannes Vermeer. This was one of the film’s eight Oscar nominations: it won statuettes for its screenplay and editing, and a lot of love from audiences.

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Home is Where the Heart Is: Places in the Heart

Sadly, actor and activist Danny Glover, perhaps best known for his cop role opposite Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon series, has acknowledged he’s been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Always a straightforward guy, he’d previously been frank about his youthful struggles with epilepsy. Now, close to 80, he’s looking back at a career that has given him a wide range of character roles in both wacky comedies and somber dramas. His favorite? He acknowledges that he’s most proud of a 1984 slice of Americana called Places in the Heart.

  As a tribute to Glover, and as a salute to the growing-pains of the USA in its semiquincentennial year, I recently caught up with Places in the Heart. It’s definitely a small film worth knowing, and not just because her leading role in it won Sally Field her second Oscar, and the opportunity to gush to the Academy that "I can't deny the fact that you like me—right now, you like me!" (Personally, I can’t deny the fact that most people misquote her words as “You like me—you really like me!”)

  Places in the Heart was written and directed by the late Robert Benton, who in 1967 came out of New York to co-write (along with fellow Esquire journalist David Newman) an historically -based screenplay they called Bonnie and Clyde. Their script—about a pair of attractive young bank robbers gallivanting through the Southwest during the Great Depression—eventually led to a production deal. After some serious interest from François Truffaut, Arthur Penn ultimately shot Bonnie and Clyde, with  Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the leading roles. It became a national sensation and scored 10 Oscar noms in a highly competitive year.   

 After that triumph, Benton pursued his interest in directing as well as writing, winning Oscars in both categories for the 1979 divorce drama, Kramer vs. Kramer. But he was a native Texan, and perhaps that dry, dusty landscape continued to call to him. In 1984, he returned to his roots, crafting a Depression-era story set in Waxahachie, Texas, with nary a bank robber in sight. Life is not easy in Waxahachie: Edna Spalding (Sally Field) has been left a widow after the accidental killing of her husband, the local sheriff. Desperate to support herself and her young children, she takes in a boarder, a bitter ex-soldier (John Malkovich) who lost his sight during the Great War. She also takes pity on the African-American drifter (Glover) who shows up to do chores, even though he’s been caught trying to steal her silverware. Edna’s basic good-heartedness proves contagious, and a viable new household forms. But there are also many external challenges: the bank is eager to foreclose on Edna’s acreage; her sister’s marriage is threatened by a philandering spouse; a powerful tornado (dramatically filmed) flattens the town’s center; the Ku Klux Klan violently turns on Glover’s character. Somehow Edna holds on, leading to a remarkable final scene in which love and redemption surface in a way that can only be called mystical. 

 1985 was a year of BIG movies, led by Amadeus, A Passage to India, and a powerful drama about journalists covering the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, The Killing Fields. Folksy Americana hardly seemed like one of the film-year’s major areas of interest.  But Places in the Heart, a loving, inspiring, and yet down-to-earth portrait of small-town life, holds its own among the costume epics.

 I wish Danny Glover well, and hope he’ll be able to cling onto his memories of being a central figure in this tender film.