Witness (1985) - Analysis

This film is about a young Amish boy who witnesses a murder whilst in a train station, in Philadelphia, with his Mother. The use of the title of the film is directly linked to the first scene of the film as his a 'Witness' of the murder. The estimated budget for this film was $12,000,000 and in total from the USA it grossed $65,500,000 on the box office. It was directed by Peter Weir and won 2 Oscars and was nominated for a further 6.

           The film starts with only non-diegetic sound - music playing over the film – used to make the audience first associate with the young Amish boy without being distracted by dialogue. The music is also quite angelic and compliments the camera shots used in the first part of the film. The first shot we see is of the young Amish boy in a slightly low angle close up of his face. This is used so that the audience can firstly make a connection with the boy before seeing any other characters. The use of the low angle is to perhaps make his hat look like a halo and show his innocence and importance in the overall storyline, which is complimented by the music playing. This is also confirmed further in the next shot. A low angle shot of a statue of an angle helping a man, the Angel of Mercy Statue or the Angel of the Resurrection in 30th Street Station, Philadelphia, is used to show foreshadowing in that the boy may be like an Angel when he helps to be a witness in the murder investigation. It is also used to show a direct contrast between Amish life and life in Western/modern society. The Amish are community oriented and have always been, keeping away from modern technology and/or society as much as possible, the original American dream, but we can see from the film that the real world is very the opposite of what the Amish believe to be the perfect life. This is shown by the corruption and brutal violence in this film. Yet, the Angel symbolises much more for the boy as it is his first time outside of the Amish community therefore this giant statue that many people pass every day is new and beautiful to him. It is a new culture and a new way of life, so it is a culture shock to him as they are so different. The low angle shows us the statue from his perspective as he is looking up to it in awe, we also are shown this from the use of shot-reverse-shot when it cut to the boy then back again to the statue to show how intently he is observing it.

Directly after the low angle of the statue we have a very high angle shot looking down at the boy. It could be said it is an over-the-shoulder shot because the shot is looking over the statue’s shoulder down to the boy. This is used to show his insignificance in the whole scheme of things and that his small community is very small compared to the larger Western society. It is also used to show his isolation as he is alone at that moment in time and doesn’t have anybody to protect him. As stated before, he is staring at the beauty of the statue and admiring the architecture, but from this angle we can many people walking past the statue and not paying any attention to it. This shows how people in today’s society are too busy to stop and appreciate beauty, but the Amish still retain this quality as it is not around them all the time because they live separately. The boy’s mother comes from behind him and pulls him away from in front of the statue – used to show that he wasn’t alone in the station and to remind the audience that he is a very small child and still needs his mother’s protection. It also reinforces the traditional values that the Amish have that women should be mothers and carers and look after the children.

It then cuts to a long shot of the boy and his mother sitting on a bench. This is used to establish a location and also to foreshadow an event. The use of a vanishing point is prominent in this shot as all of the lines in the shot are directional towards the door in the background, meaning that some kind of dramatic moment is going to happen behind the door. The young boy then asks his mother a question. This is a key moment in the film as it is the first diegetic sound in the film so far now that the music – non-diegetic sound – has stopped. As he walks towards the vanishing point, his mother stops him and calls him back because he has forgotten to wear his hat. This is used to show that his mother doesn’t want him to lose his innocence or ‘angel-like’ qualities as the hat represents a halo - seen in the first shot. The use of diegetic sound is also crucial to showing the direct contrast between lifestyles as the language they are speaking is not recognisably English, this shows the complete disassociation that the Amish have with modern American society.

It cuts to a medium close-up shot of a man and then to a similar shot of the boy. This is used to show them on an equal level and that neither of them is superior to one another as the shot is level on both occasions - not being at a high or low angle. It then cuts to a long shot to establish the location of the toilet and to show the contrast between the height of the man and the boy. The use of ambient lighting and low saturatio in this shot is used to create tension and a moody atmosphere. The boy then walks into a toilet cubicle and peers out of the cubicle to look at the man washing his face in the sink. It then cuts back to the man, but this time it is more of a close up shot. Another person walks in front of the camera, but the camera doesn’t move to show the audience who it was. This is used to create an enigma – the unknown – as we do not know who this man is or why the other man is staring at him. After staring at the ‘enigma’ the man continues to wash his face. As the camera pans up above the man washing his face we can see the back of a man, but we can only see that it is a black man in a suit standing at the urinal. After a short cut to the boy it cuts back to the black man standing at the urinal. He turns his head and nods.

It then cuts to a long shot which changes the viewpoint for the audience. This time we can see the man at the sink, the man at the urinal and also the ‘enigma’ standing in the foreground is one of the murders, but we don’t know who he is or even see his face. The ‘enigma’ man walks over, only showing his back to the audience, and he puts a jacket over the man at sink’s head. It then cuts to a close up of the black man’s hand as he now has a knife, then the black man comes over and slits the white man’s throat that is being strangled under the jacket by the other man. The colour of the jacket is significant because it is the colour red, which has many connotations – the main connotation in this scene would blood and death. The director has used the colour on purpose to reiterate the fact that the man is being killed. It then cuts to a shot of the boy looking through the door at the men killing the other man. The composition of this shot is so that the centre of this shot is the boy’s eye and it keeps the audience’s focus on that the boy just witnessed a brutal murder. The use of a black man as the killer is used to show the negative connotations with the colour black and that historically black people were always used as the bad guys in films and never the heroes as we have connotations of evil, death, darkness and brutality with the colour black.

It then cuts to the little boy and he backs into the cubicle and gasps, but the black man hears him, as we see in the next shot. The shot of the boy is a level shot, but it still shows his hat to be like a halo because he is still an innocent child. The shot of the black man shows him to question what he heard and get a gun out of his pocket – showing continues violet tendencies. He begins to kick open the toilet cubicle doors, looking for any people that may have been watching. The use of the toilet is crucial as it is a generic thriller convention because it is a very unglamorous location and reflects the situation of the murder. The boy then hears the man and acts fast to lock the door of the cubicle he is in, but he struggles as he gets nervous and a close up shot is used to show that he cannot lock the door. Then the man reaches the locked door and a close up of his hand and the gun is used to show that they are both struggling with the door, but because of each other. As the man kicks open the door, the boy slides under the cubicle into the previous one and dropping his hat in the meantime. Then it cuts to the boy and there’s a panning shot from the toilet up to his face as he is standing on the toilet. This is used to show that he has lost his innocence because he isn’t wearing his hat anymore, which represented his halo and him as the ‘angel’ – showing that he will never been the same now he has witnessed such a crime. The shot stays on the boy even as the black man walks out of the toilet.

It then cuts to a low angle shot of a policeman and people walking around. As the people disperse it shows the boy and his mother sitting on the bench again with her comforting him, but again he has no hat on. After this it cuts to a shot of a door with a blue colour behind the glass. It opens and a man walks in wearing a suit. He is shown in the light and with a blue background; this is used to represent him as a hero and show that he is going to be the hero in the whole film as the ‘villain’ was shown in dark, ambient lighting and also had dark skin.