Romance sans Words: WITNESS

Earlier in my childhood, I had read a story which implied this – Only those people yell at each other who have their hearts at a distance; and those whose hearts are closer, they barely need to talk.

There have been a lot of movies about the forbidden love, so to speak. And yet, Peter Weir’s Witness brings our two protagonists Harrison Ford’s John Book and Kelly McGillis’ Rachel Lapp together in a manner that is so nuanced and so subtle whilst being believable. Genre-wise, Witness is a Romantic Drama for me which has a murder in backdrop. Leaving the plot points of the script, let’s focus on how Peter Weir weaves the romance between our protagonists. Book is a cop, and Rachel is a recently widowed single Amish mother. While saving Rachel and her son, Book gets shot but successfully drops them both in their Amish village. Of course Rachel decides to harbor and nurse John Book in her home till he is fit. I get a feeling that people who wrote The Last Samurai must have definitely seen this movie.

From the scene where Rachel starts to nurse Book till the scene where we first see some affection and conflict between the two there have been only 20 pieces of dialogues, you can safely attribute 10 to Book and 10 to Rachel. Just after the 20th dialogue between the two, Book calls Rachel, and when Rachel looks towards him, Book replies, “Nothing.” That is the first instance where you can feel that Book wants to be vulnerable and tell her something but something stops him. At the start of the movie, we do get to know that John is single and doesn’t have had any partner in his life from the longest time. Also, Rachel oozes that emotion of care and tenderness. Thus, it makes it easier for the film to sell that sooner or later Harrison Ford’s character will fall in love with Rachel. Rachel’s falling in love with John Book is a difficult sell on paper due to the fact that she is Amish, a recent widow and a single mother. Also, what one should suppose John say to make someone like Rachel fall in love with her? There is another character by the name of Daniel Hochleitner, who is a bachelor Amish clearly in love with Rachel since the start of the movie. The manner in which the conversations between Rachel and him are filmed imply that she knows that he loves her. But he has not confessed and thus Rachel can’t reciprocate. I also got a feeling that perhaps Rachel would have said yes to Daniel had he ever made his feelings clear to her.

There are four sequences in specific which cement the relationship between Rachel and John Book. Point to note is that the external factors are what lead to the mutual love between them. The first sequence is of John doing carpentry in the farm to help the Amish. In this sequence Rachel offers John some lemonade and there is some sexual tension between the two visible. Dialogues again are kept to bare minimum. The second sequence is of the same night when John is repairing his car in the barn and Rachel assists him in holding the lamp. The transition from sequence one to the second is done with such craft that it implies that the two have been in the barn talking for hours. We due to the cut don’t know if that is true or not but we can visibly see that sexual tension arise. Book is able to repair the radio in his car and tunes a song and asks Rachel for a dance. Mind you he never asked her to dance via a dialogue. It’s his movement across the car and the barn that led to the two dancing. They dance and Rachel seems merry and free of worry, almost to suggest that she is losing herself and her identity. Their moment of freshness is short lives as Rachel’s father in law catches her dancing and condemns her for enjoying herself with an English (Amish people call every non-Amish, English). This condemnation, I felt was the nail in the coffin. Like a little child who is told she cannot have it. She will want to have it. The third sequence is that John Book is proclaimed as one of the tribe after he assists the Amish men in building a barn. He toils hard as carpenter among all other Amish men. Everyone sees him differently after that event of barn raising. Rachel too in an act of defiance serves lemonade to John before she does to Daniel and she does so in a manner that her father-in-law is a witness to this act of hers. The fourth and the last sequence is of the same evening when Rachel is caught off-guard bathing by John Book. They look nervously at each other before John retires back to his room. If you notice clearly, the dialogues in all these four sequences between the two are bare minimum and all dialogues are in first two sequence. Rachel and John don’t utter a word in the other two sequences but let their eyes and body language do the talking. The next morning is when finally a piece of meaningful dialogue is spoken between the two. John Book tells Rachel that “If we’d made love last night, I’d have to stay. Or you’d have to leave.” The moment John finishes saying that dialogue he leaves without waiting for Rachel’s reaction. And she does react but John has left already.

There are so many ways that romance between the two could’ve come out as shallow or unbelievable. Masterfully Peter Weir crafts a visual language that makes this romance so endearing and fulfilling to watch. Kudos also, to the great acting by both Harrison Ford (who earned his only Academy Award nomination for this film) and Kelly McGillis. The unfolding of romance in this movie makes me ponder over how much we as humans focus on non-verbal language. This movie makes me question, what is the best way to show a romance blooming between two characters? The Before Trilogy is in stark contrast to Witness in unfolding of the romance. Yet how love happens in Witness is a very surreal experience despite the roots of the romance firmly in the real world. Next time I try to write romance of any kind, I’m sure the imprints of Witness would be there.