Peter Weir

Until I watched and then read up on Witness, I couldn’t name an Australian director other than Baz Luhrmann (wait... Phillip Noyce, he’s one too) . This is an injustice to other Australian directors. Luhrmann has only made about four films, his most recent being the poorly received love letter to Hugh Jackman ‘Australia’


Peter Weir has made thirteen films at a consistent rate of one every three years or so since his debut in 1974. If you check out his filmography you’ll recognise a few of them and have probably seen at least one.

Years ago I borrowed a book about screenwriting from my mate Geoff. It was full of interesting stuff about structure and pace and character and whatnot and the author frequently cited Peter Wier’s Witness as an example of how things should be done. Witness, Witness, Witness all the way through, so I finally got round to watching it. Afterwards I though I’d dig on Weir for a while, particularly because his upcoming film looks interesting in an Oscar baiting kind of way:




Weir was part of the ‘New Wave’ of Australian cinema (how many New Waves have there been, has every country had one?). According to Wikipedia, this particular wave started in 1971, lasted for almost twenty years and included the first two Crocodile Dundee films. Excellent as Paul Hogan’s Dundee films are (the first is still the highest grossing Australian film, take that Baz), I would say that the Aussie New Wave begins in 1974 with Weir’s ‘The Cars That Ate Paris’ and ends in 1981 with his WWI film ‘Galipolli’.

‘The Cars That Ate Paris’ is about a small town full of creepy hicks who cause car accidents then profit from the scrap industry and perform some questionable medical research on the survivors. It’s a very independently minded film but not completely avant-garde

There’s a conventional narrative taking place concerning one of the would-be victims, although a lot of things are left mysterious and open for the audience to speculate about what’s going on. Very much a film made by a director finding his feet it’s a tad disjointed, like two different films with competing ideas; a cross between Mad Max (lots of raggedy young men driving around in knackered cars) and a David Lynch film (strange, sinister characters getting up to unexplained and immoral activities). Creepy in the way only rural Australia can be.

And so many cars! The film is clearly a low budget indie affair but they managed to coble together loads of old motors, working and wrecked. You’d think the outback was full of them. This film predates Mad Max by five years but it may have had some kind of influence.

Filmed in New South Wales, most of the TCTAP takes place in a familiar, dusty outback type of town, but it starts off in a very green almost English Country Landscape. The opening sequence is deliberately idealised, shot like some kind of satire of TV advertising which contrasts the rest of the film quite well.

If someone had said to me before I had watched this film “Imagine an Australian Cult Classic from 1974” I might have pictured something pretty close to this. While it’s certainly original and interesting, it’s not particularly remarkable. There are lots of nice touches and the cast are very believable (they certainly look the part), but it’s a bit unsatisfying that so much goes unexplained. Wier clearly wasn’t interested in making a conventional film; he took the freedom that independent production brings and ran with it, which is always commendable.

Next, Weir made the critically acclaimed adaptation of the Australian novel ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’. A dream within a dream long before Inception, but not literally about dreams, in fact it’s as far removed from Inception as a film can be. Again it feels like two films in one; the opening act is dreamy and free flowing, almost as though Weir shot it to be viewed while listening to Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’, then the film takes a dramatic turn and becomes a slightly sinister mystery which is compelling enough even without the backdrop of Victorian schoolgirl erotic awakening(!). Again a lot is open to interpretation though this probably comes from the source material as much as Weir’s own input.

PAHR is one of Australia’s most culturally important films, they screen it every Valentine’s day at Hanging Rock apparently. The Blu-Ray I watched features a two hour documentary on the film, longer than the film itself (I admit I didn’t watch much of it). I was reminded a little of The White Ribbon, Weir’s film is no where near as dark or disturbing, but it has the same theme of children being treated very strictly by repressed adults.

Like TCTAP, ‘Picnic’ demonstrates that no matter how much soul a film has, almost every movie benefits from having a well rounded story. From here on the films that Weir made were far more conventional, probably due to the pressure that came with larger budgets, but then again doesn’t every film maker want to tell a story? I don’t think Weir abandoned his youthful artistry when he went on to make his recent ‘popcorn’ movies; he just wanted to make a bigger emotional impact. He certainly succeeded with Gallipoli.

Based upon the Australian involvement in the Gallipoli Campaign (where the British Empire and the French landed on the Turkish coast with the intention of capturing the Ottoman capital) most of the film follows a couple of Western Australians who volunteer to go to war. A young Mel Gibson plays one of them in his first role after Mad Max (there’s something about the young Mel that I’m not too keen on. I much prefer the older, craggier, mullet sporting Mel). The ‘War Film’ bit only happens at the end, it’s more of a ‘Going to War’ film.

It’s quite a big film, shot almost entirely outdoors, mainly in deserts, with Port Lincoln doubling for the Turkish coast. Yet after having seen ‘Saving Private Ryan’ et all, Gallipoli is refreshingly un-epic. This is mainly because of the small budget (it was still only an Australian film remember, made before Crocodile Dundee) but less is definitely more. As I think I’ve mentioned in a previous post, the sign of a good director is that they can do a lot with limited money and resources. The music also takes away from the grandness of the film, there are a couple of dramatic moments that play out to the sound of orchestral strings, but some of the score is slightly lame, particularly the bits by Jean Michel Jarre, which are very out of place.

Like PAHR, parts of Gallipoli take place in upper-class turn of the century Australia. This is a side of Australia that has rarely been shown on screen ever since Mick Dundee appeared on the scene to cement the Australian Stereotype in the minds of a cinema-going generation world wide.

Peter Weir co-wrote this one and was involved with the project from the beginning, whilst it is a far more conventional film that his earlier efforts, it still has a uniqueness to it. It’s not at all a Hollywood film (unlike the films Weir made afterwards) although the drama is strained a little at the end, and there is some historical inaccuracy, all for the sake of a big climax. But the rest of the film is good enough for these failings to be forgivable.

After Gallipoli, Weir and Mel teamed up again for ‘The Year Of Living Dangerously’ which I’ve not seen but it appears to have been the stepping stone to Hollywood for both of them. Weir made ‘Witness’ next, his first film made entirely outside Australia, and with an already established lead; Harrison Ford.

It’s not a bad film. The performances are all good, particularly from the guy who played Karl in Die Hard. It’s exactly the type of film someone might point out as well crafted, particularly from a screenwriter’s perspective.

It’s about a tough city cop who has to hide out in an Amish community (fish out of water). While there he falls for an Amish woman, who falls for him too, but because of the circumstances they can’t act on their impulses (forbidden love). The cop comes to appreciate the peaceful, non-violent way of life on the farm (light-hearted comedy set pieces) and becomes a father figure to the Amish woman’s young son (feel good bonding moments). When the bad guys track the cop down and show up at the farm, the cop has to prove that sometimes, violence is necessary (dramatic climax and possible subliminal message about how firearms are necessary for home protection and every true American should own one).

It seems that Weir had little input beyond directing. An original screenplay, but unoriginal in the sense that it is almost a film by numbers. A typical Hollywood screenplay; written by a screen writer whose first concern is to write screenplays that sell, then re-written by other professional screen writers who work for the studio. Once they’ve got a script they’re all happy with, the studio goes looking for a star whose name they can stick on the poster, and a critically acclaimed yet inexpensive director who want’s to make a film in Hollywood.

I’m sure Weir applies the same enthusiasm and artistic intention to each of his films, but he is proof that not even great directors can always defy The Studio. Studio scripts or studio friendly adaptations produced by the studios rely on the passion and skill of the director to maintain the integrity of the initial concept. Hopefully Weir's ability and vision will be evident in ‘The Way Back’.