I got one in Witness.
It is the moment in the third act when Samuel (Lucas Haas) and his grandfather ring the bell and turn to find their entire community running towards them.
Part of it has to do with how beautifully constructed the movie is.
Part of it comes from when I watched it - a few days against the US election, won by someone who stood against the values this movie so eloquently espouses.
Witness is one of those movies I wish I had gotten around to sooner.
Rather than treating the Amish community as objects to be gazed at, the movie opens among them.
Amid the everyday goings on of the people, we are introduced to Rachel at her husband’s funeral. We are introduced to her family, and potential suitor Daniel (future Die Hard henchman Alexander Godunov)
We are slowly introduced to the contemporary world through Amish eyes.
Young Samuel’s witnessing of the murder
This movie is so well-structured, writing about it feels like writing a plot synopsis.
Peter Weir keeps his focus on the performer’s faces.
This is a quiet movie where everything is expressed in the eyes.
There is a version of this story that would foreground the genre elements.
Instead, that focus on understanding every character gives the piece a more subtle, organic tension.
Harrison Ford’s John Book initially feels like stock - a dogged, honourable cop. He is a man familiar with the underworld, a dogged professional with no personal life.
The traits which would mark him as a traditional action hero of the eighties are highlighted as flaws.
Book is a man of short temper and self-reliance - qualities which put him at odds with the Amish.
Wounded and abandoned by his compatriots in the police, he is left at the mercy of the people he is trying to protect.
Ford is fantastic, with his inherent anger channelled into the portrait of a man who is finally forced to unwind, and reconsider every aspect of his life.
I was fascinated by the portrayal of the villain.
At no point does Josef Sommer or the character appear to be more threatening than he is.
He is not a villainous mastermind.
He comes across as pathetic, someone who is self-aware enough to recognise his corruption could doom him as easily as it could give him profit.
The final confrontation carries more emotion than a generic thriller standoff.
It is a chaotic, awkward back and forth, with Sommer playing Schaeffer as ashamed and terrified.
It is not pointed out but it is an interesting choice to have the character be German American - ancestrally from the same place as the Amish community Book stands with.
I love the smallness of the final shot:
Book drives away, briefly pausing to meet Daniel as he walks toward Rebecca’s home.
The camera stays in a long shot; we do not hear anything they say and we do not need to.
There is a sense of reconciliation and closure.
Life will go on.
Order has not been restored, but reoriented.
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