REAL ART RERUN
WITNESS

This Real Art Rerun was originally posted on March 30, 2003.

I watched some big chunks of Witness last night on Bravo. I have seen the film several times and I really think that it is one of the best movies of the last two decades. I also think that it is one of the more ideological films to achieve box office success in recent history. I really need to do a textual analysis of pacifist themes in the film here on Real Art sometime soon, but not today.

Instead, I now post a really moving bit of the screenplay (that I ended up transcribing myself because I could only find rough drafts online). To get the sense of the moment, you need to know that Harrison Ford plays a Philiadelphia cop, John Book, that has to hide out in Amish country from rogue cops who want to kill him. An eight year old Amish boy, Samuel, the title character who the rogues also want to kill because he can identify a killer cop, has discovered Book's gun and plays with it. Book worriedly takes the gun away, unloads it and hands it back to the boy to examine. Samuel's mother, Rachel, played by Kelly McGillis, walks in and insists that Book respect their ways. Book then gives her the gun for safekeeping. The film then cuts to the next scene:

(BOOK's unloaded .357 and bullets lay on the kitchen table in the foreground. Behind, sitting at the table, are SAMUEL and his grandfather, ELI.)

ELI--This gun of the hand is for the taking of human life. We believe it is wrong to take life. That is only for God.

(Cut to a close up of the two with SAMUEL's face dominant)

Many times wars have come. And people have said to us, "You must fight. You must kill. It is the only way to preserve the good." But, Samuel, there is never only one way. Remember that. (pause) Would you kill another man?

SAMUEL--I would only kill a bad man.

ELI--Only the bad man, I see...and you know these bad men by sight? You are able to look into their hearts and see this badness?

SAMUEL--I can see what they do. I have seen it.

ELI--And having seen, you become one of them. Don't you understand?

(Cut to a close up of the gun and bullets)

What you take into your hands,

(Cut to a close up of the two with ELI's face dominant)

you take into your heart. "Wherefore come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord. And touch not the unclean thing." (pause) Go and finish your chores now.

SAMUEL--Yes, Grandfather.

(SAMUEL exits. Close up on ELI with a very concerned look on his face)

The verse is from 2 Corinthians 6:17. Why the hell do so many American Christians seem to be reading a different Bible from the one I've read? I think the Amish are on to something...

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