Witness

“Witness” (Alternate title - "Amlet Goes To The City", alternate title - "Guns And Englischers Are Dangerous And Here's Why," alternate Title - "The Amish Don't Need Your Englischer Punches") is a movie with Harrison Ford I’ve never even heard of, until a friend told me about the plotline. We were both sort of inebriated in a bar, yelling over the music about the finer points of Amish vs. Mennonite, and about the threshing stones used by my ancestors to harvest wheat, and along came the plotline:

Movie Snob - “Yeah, so ‘Witness’ is about an Amish kid that goes to Philadelphia with his parents and sees a murder in a train station bathroom…”

Me - “OMG DID HE GO TO READING TERMINAL?!?! There are so many Amish there! I saw them in the bathroom! The girls wear straight pins to close their dresses, because buttons are of the devil!”

Movie Snob - “What? No, not Reading Terminal. Like, an ACTUAL train sta-“

Me - “READING TERMINAL USED TO BE A TRAIN STATION, MAYBE THIS MOVIE WAS MADE BEFORE IT WAS A HIPSTER PARADISE!”

Movie Snob - “No, NOT Reading Terminal! Just like, a regular ol’ train station! Anyway, this Amish kid, this Am-let, if you will-“

Me - <collapses forward onto table in helpless laughter because let’s face it, “Amlet” is a great name for an Amish kid, and imma call him Amlet from here on out>

Movie Snob - “-this Amlet sees a guy get murdered in a train station, and he’s the only witness. Like the title. So then Harrison Ford is on the police force, and he dresses like an Amish to protect this kid-“

Me - “OH, LIKE THE AMISH IN THEIR INSULAR COMMUNITY *TOTALLY* WOULDN’T NOTICE THIS STRANGER DRESSED LIKE THEM WHO DIDN’T SPEAK PENNSYLVANIA DUTCH.”

Movie Snob - “Whatever. Anyway, he goes to protect this kid, because people want to kill him, and they try, but Harrison Ford PUNCHES THEM-“

Me - “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO AMISH WOULD NOT BE COOL WITH THAT! "VENGEANCE IS MINE, SAITH THE LORD!!!!!"

I don’t remember what happened after this point. Not because I was soused or anything, it just was a lot less interesting.

Anyway, that is apparently the basic plot of “Witness.” So now I gotta watch it, because according to him, it’s AWESOME, and the BEST MOVIE EVER; but according to me, it sounds like it’ll be riddled with inaccuracies.

1.       The movie opens with a bunch of Amish walking to church. I’ll have you all know that a lot of the “Amish” actors in this film are actually Mennonite. I’ll ALSO have you know that Amish church services are BRUTAL. I went, once, as part of my “Mennonite Life, History and Thought” class, and while it was soooooo interesting, like SO INTERESTING, it was also 3 hours of sitting on a backless wooden bench in a dark basement room lit by kerosene lanterns, listening to a man speak in Pennsylvania Dutch, which I don’t speak, and of which my High German-speaking professor only understood about 50%. The dinner afterwards, however, was FANTASTIC. We had arrived on a day when there were visitors from Indiana, and speaking with them was very interesting. The Amish are actually very well-traveled.

2.       OMG DID I JUST SEE BUTTONS ON LITTLE AMLET’S SLEEVE CUFFS?!?!?! I BETTER NOT HAVE! As previously mentioned, buttons are too modern and “too English” EDIT - apparently it is ok for men to wear buttons on their shirts, but not women. Because of course. 

3.       Wow, they just slit that dude’s throat, and there was absolutely no blood spray anywhere? That’s just anatomically inaccurate. At my school, we have this Ukranian urologist who is our Anatomy professor, and he has SEEN SOME SHIT, back in his days in the army in the Ukraine. He told us how, if we are in a knife fight, to know whether we have severed our carotids or our jugular (pronounced “joooogalur”). If you’ve sliced your carotids, the blood will be spraying everywhere, and it’s all over. But if it’s just your joooogalur, the blood will just sort of fall out, and you can shrug your shoulders to prevent major blood loss and (ostensibly) still win the knife fight.

4.       Wow, so they take the little Amlet and his mom to a real sketch location to meet a suspect? And then leave them in the car to go into the sketchy bar, grab the suspect who is just a random-ass black man (hello racial profiling), and slam him up against the kid’s window for identification? I mean, wow, the 80s were just such a different time, I guess.

5.       Officer Captain Hot Stuff stuffs a hotdog in his mouth and takes a bite, then sits there awkwardly not chewing until Amlet and his mom are done praying, and I just feel like that’s how all non-religious people feel when everyone else is praying.

6.       Wow they’re all using typewriters to do their police reports. I mean, I learned to type on a typewriter that my dad brought home from work, but gosh, the 80s were just such a wasteland.

7.       OMG THE MURDERER IS A COP OMG AND HE SUPPRESSED EVIDENCE FROM A NARC RAID OMG. Just like my fave show “Gotham,” all the cops are corrupt except one.

8.       OMG MURDER COP JUMPED OFFICER CAPTAIN HOT STUFF AND SHOT HIM AND NOW HE’S BLEEDING OMG THEY HAVE TO GET THE AMLET AND HIS MOM OUT OF PHILADELPHIA OMG THE BACKGROUND MUSIC IS SO INTENSE RN SO MANY LASER SOUNDS

9.       OMG OFFICER CAPTAIN HOT STUFF PASSED OUT FROM HIS BLEEDING STOMACH WOUND AND CRASHED INTO A PURPLE MARTIN HOUSE AND NOW THOSE POOR BIRDS WILL HAVE NOWHERE TO LIVE!!!!!! “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Welp, Jesus and purple martins are on the same footing, now, I guess. In related news, purple martins are the only birds that rely on manmade housing - like, they literally do not build their own nests. Back in the day, Native Americans used gourds to lure them to their campsites to eat bugs or whatever, and the birds got used to this lush lifestyle, and now are mostly totally dependent on humans for their tenement-style nesting boxes, with some exceptions for the occasional hole in a cactus or a dead tree or what-have-you.

10.    “Is the English dead? He looks dead.” I’m gonna end up loving this Opa. In other news, Amish call their grandfathers “Dawdi,” and not the word used in the film, which is “Opa,” the High German for Grandfather.

11.    Officer Captain Hot Stuff's stomach wound is in the coronal plane across his abdomen. There is a distinct entry and exit wound, both of which are perfectly circular, meaning that EITHER Officer Captain Hot Stuff has the most bulging-est abs of anyone, ever, OR the bullet entered the right side of his abdomen, and then once inside, pulled a sharp left and exited to stage left, perpendicular to the skin. Also, the "doctor" that Opa Dawdi called gives him a tea and tells him to drink it, and I'm sure that'll help. In other news, the Amish are SUPER taken with chiropractors and other alternative-type medicine, which is interesting. 

12.    Haha, Murder Cop and the Gotham PD are tryna find Amlet and his mom – “There must be a registry of these people, right? Like a Muslim registry, except Amish? I mean, Donald Trump called for a wall to keep out the Mennonites, stands to reason he'd want to register the Amish, right?” “Oh, sure, voter registries, tax records, definitely!” Except the Amish don’t pay taxes, and by-and-large don’t vote, soooooooooo… “Ok, well, maybe you could do some telephoning?” Good luck with that. The Amish have telephones, because what if, God forbid, they need emergency services or something. But the telephones have to be out in a field or a barn or something, and there’s typically only one or two per community. Or they use the phones at their Mennonite neighbor’s houses. Point is, they wouldn’t answer the phone.

13.    Officer Captain Hot Stuff lets Amlet play with his gun, and that is just NOT going to go over well AT ALL. It IS, however, a really great segue into Opa Dawdi’s discussion of Anabaptist pacifism with Amlet and also the wider viewing audience, and I really appreciate that.

14.    Opa Dawdi puts Officer Captain Hot Stuff to work, because far be it from the Amish to pass up free labor. He tries to milk a cow, but can’t, because of course not. It’s actually really hard, if you’ve never done it. My grandma used to milk a couple cows every day when I was a kid, and she used to let me try, and I could never do it, because 1) I was like, 7, and my hands were not strong, and 2) it actually requires quite a bit of coordination.

15.    Officer Captain Hot Stuff tries to make a pop culture reference at supper, and the Amish stared at him like I stare at people when they try to make a pop culture reference at me.

16.    Uh wow, so Amlet’s mom is dancing around a barn with Officer Captain Hot Stuff to an oldies song, and is NOT wearing her covering. HER HAIR IS JUST ALL UNCOVERED, IN THE PRESENCE OF A MAN WHO IS NOT HER HUSBAND, WHAT THE HELL!?! It’s not like she just took it off, or anything, it wasn’t there to begin with! There is just so much wrong with that. She’s NOT WEARING HER COVERING, YOU GUYS THAT WOULD *NOT* HAPPEN. Amish women (and some conservative Mennonite women) are basically Anabaptist hijabis.

17.    Omg wow that is not how shunning works. I mean, yeah, you can’t eat at the same table or touch them, or worship with them, but you can’t just SHUN someone, just like that. There has to be this whole thing of warning them not to, and then having them persist in the face of that warning, and THEN you can be shunned. Also, when a person is shunned, they literally just pull up a card table next to the table, so they’re not TECHNICALLY eating at the same table. They are sneaky.

18.    Gotham PD – “we’re like the Amish. We’re a cult!” OMG THE AMISH ARE NOT A CULT.

19.    OMG BARNRAISING! Honestly, barnraisings always look like such a great time, mostly because I just freaking love it when communities are like “YOU NEED HELP WE WILL BE THERE WITH HELP BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU AND YOU NEED HELP AND WE CAN HELP YOU.” Case in point – when people from our Raleigh church move, they just send out an email being like “Heyyyy, gonna be loading up all our crap on thus-and-such day, give me a hand?” and then like 12 people with moving blankets and trucks and trailers and work gloves all show up and help them move all their crap from their old house to their new house, and it is just so great, and I love it.

20.    Officer Captain Hot Stuff may (supposedly) be a great carpenter, but I literally just saw him trying to swing a hammer by holding it right behind the head. WRONG. I used to do that, when I was a kid, and couldn’t control a heavy hammer, and Dad would always tell me to hold it by the end, because then I had more leverage. But then when I did that, I didn’t have as much control, and I hit the hand holding the nail. Or I hit my sister's hand, if I managed to persuade her to hold the nail while I hit it. But any adult who is supposedly good at carpentry should be able to swing a hammer like a not-moron.

21.    OMG QUILTING BEE!!! We had a quilting frame at my Mennonite church in San Francisco, and we’d set it up every so often and work around it and talk for a few hours after the service or at retreat or something. I loved it.

22.    Oh, Amish nip slip, that’s unexpected.

23.    Oh, full-frontal Amish nudity, ok, maybe close the door while you’re bathing, if you have an Englischer man staying at your house? Or just in general? Far be it from me to critique any woman's expression of her own sexuality, but idk, this just seems gratuitous.

24.    “Amlet’s Mom, if we’d made love last night, I’d have to stay. Or you’d have to leave.” Um, no, probably you’d both have to leave, because having out-of-wedlock sex with a nonreligious Englischer is deeeeeeefinitely up there on the list of “Things That Are Bad To Do.”

25.    And then homeboy Captain Officer Hot Stuff goes and straight-up PUNCHES a dude for smearing ice cream on an Amishman’s face and razzing a family. Ok. That is an overreaction. People have done far worse to the Anabaptists, and we’ve still managed to prevail without punching. Also, the ice cream-faced Amishman is apparently Viggo Mortensen, and I just find that really funny. Also, who the crap puts ice cream on someone else's face?! ICE CREAM IS DELICIOUS, and putting it anywhere other than your mouth is just a damn waste.

26.    Aww, Captain Officer Hot Stuff fixed the purple martin house! But he stuck it in the ground so it’s crooked as a dog’s hind leg, so…

27.    OMG THE GOTHAM PD IS STRAIGHT-UP WALKING INTO AMISH COUNTRY WHILE HOLDING LONG GUNS. Yeah, I can’t imagine that’s going to go well at all.

28.    Aaaaaand then Captain Officer Hot Stuff suffocates a member of the Gotham PD under several tons of corn in a silo. And that is a completely reasonable way to die on a farm. The number of times our FFA “Farm Safety Day” addressed the dangers of aerosolized grain dust as a catalyst for elevator fires, or how not to play in a gravity box because if someone opened the hatch, literally you would absolutely die is like, a LOT. The gravity box thing happens to kids all the time. 100% accurate.

29.    OMG BRAH, DO *NOT* FIRE YOUR GUN INTO A SILO FULL OF RECENTLY-LIBERATED GRAIN, YOU COULD *ABSOLUTELY* START A RAGING FIRE.

30.    All the Amish come running to bear witness to exactly why guns and Englischers are bad, and probably Amlet’s Mom gets PTSD from having a gun pointed at her head while two Englischers yell profanities about guns and yank her son back and forth between them, all while holding guns and yelling.

31.    Officer Captain Hot Stuff and Amlet’s Mom stare at each other longingly, but ultimately go their separate ways, because love between an Amish and an Englischer technically would work, but would be very difficult, and would lead to a lot of family- and community-themed heartbreak.

In short, meh. I guess it’s a good movie, if you’re not into critiquing the finer points of Amish portrayal in the media? They did a pretty good job portraying the Anabaptist penchant for community, nonviolence, and turning the other cheek, but THE LACK OF COVERINGS, OMG! Also, apparently they spoke High German throughout the entire production. Not Pennsylvania Dutch. If you’re gonna do Amish, you gotta do it right, and they were like, 60% there. Really could have used a few more expert opinions from the Mennonites or something.

The 80s space-music was pretty bangin’ tho.