9 result(s) tagged “Peter Weir”

More than a half-century separates these two movies, and they obviously live in different parts of town. Tod Browning’s horror classic Freaks was controversial upon its release in 1932 and hasn’t lost much shock value, with its use of real sideshow performers and the uncomfortable mixture of exploitation and sympathy. Peter Weir’s Witness is a mild drama about the Amish that masquerades as a cop thriller. (Or is a cop thriller disguised as an Amish drama?)

Yet the two have much in common.

I’ve been curious about the hand shots for years, but even after collecting these screen captures I don’t have a firm grasp on their meaning. So I’m throwing them out there and welcoming comments, hypotheses, and arguments.

There’s a maxim that says a movie teaches you how to watch it, but Peter Weir’s The Truman Show teaches you how to watch it the wrong way. And in its brazen audience cues, it hints that you should question your reaction to the film. This is a movie that was made for misunderstanding.

You’re in your apartment. Your husband has gone to work. There’s a knock at the door. A genial man says he’s the plumber. You explain that you haven’t called for a plumber. He replies that he’s checking the pipes of all the apartments because of a pressure problem. You let him in; his story seems reasonable, and he’s got the right tools. It’s an act of trust. He says his name is Max.

You’re watching The Plumber. This setup is awfully familiar. You know the plumber’s a violent man, capable of unspeakable deeds. You know the wife, Jill, is in trouble. It’s an act of trust.

Peter Weir’s debut, The Cars That Ate Paris, is good art and a bad movie. It fails fundamentally as a narrative, but it has enough interesting things going on that it’s compelling in spite of itself.

In Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, director Peter Weir establishes his tremendous skill almost immediately. The audience is dropped on board the Surprise as a mysterious vessel is lurking in the fog, perhaps nothing but maybe an enemy. When the phantom ship attacks, the audience is thrust into battle without the exposition that is de rigueur in Hollywood fare. You might not be able to follow the specifics of what’s happening, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the Surprise is getting the shit pounded out of her.

When I was nine or so, I saw a movie on HBO at a neighbor’s house. It was slow, had strange music, dealt with a picnic at some desert locale, and haunted me for years. In college, an English and film professor described the scariest movie he’d ever seen. It sounded awfully familiar. My roommate at the time recalled seeing the same movie as a child in a hotel room in Scotland. So we began a long journey to find a video copy of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock.

If Peter Weir’s movies fundamentally operate on basic levels and within simple formulas, they also resonate more deeply than those of virtually any other working director. Weir creates well-rounded and complicated characters, puts them in a premise, and watches them go. He is, in short, making character-driven movies, generally without pretense or intrusive style, which might be one reason he’s not held in terribly high esteem.

I love Jeff Bridges. I love Tim Robbins. I love them equally, and (my gut tells me) in about the same way. We are a ménage à trios, even if they don’t know it yet.