Weir's contribution to the Australian film renaissance of the late 1970s lay in his ability to portray the imminent disruption of the rational world by irrational forces hovering just beyond our mundane lives. His reputation as the most stylish of the new Australian directors was built on his charting of that country's landscape and cultural oddities with a sense of wonder.
Weir's first feature, THE CARS THAT ATE PARIS (1974), portrayed the terror lurking beneath a sleepy Outback town called Paris which profits from highway disasters. It is a Gothic horror story laced with fetishistic black humor. He created another kind of haunting atmosphere for PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975), in which a turn-of-the-century girls' school picnic in the Australian bush turns tragic. Weir contrasted the imported and repressive cultural values of the English-style boarding school with the unsettling but liberating influence of the natural environment of Hanging Rock, where the girls' sexuality is stirred by the phallic and frankly unrefined rock.
The accumulation of details around a motif also shaped THE LAST WAVE (1977), in which water is used functionally in the narrative as well as thematically, until all civilization seems at the mercy of an enormous tidal wave prophesied by an ignored aborigine. Weir's early films portrayed a stable society on the verge of collapse both from fear and from events beyond its control, and never more so than in GALLIPOLI (1981). A culturally underdeveloped society, made strong by the values of camaraderie and loyalty, is forced by duty into war in service of an empire devoid of concern for anything but its privileged classes. The film made the isolationism of Australia comprehensible in the context of snobbish, exploitative and incompetent British rule.
Australian films tend to avoid male/female psychology and romance, but in THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY (1983), Weir dealt with the animal attraction of an endangered species, Caucasian observers in the Third World. An Australian journalist (Mel Gibson) and an embassy employee (Sigourney Weaver) fall in love in the midst of political unrest in 1965 Jakarta. Once again, Weir sharply evokes a palpable sense of place and time in this underrated film which, although mishandled by its American distributor, did land Weir his first Hollywood picture.
In the thriller WITNESS (1985), Weir sensitively recreated the simple but disciplined virtues of the Amish, in pointed contrast to the corrupt world of urban police politics. Harrison Ford gave an acclaimed performance as John Book, a tough and honest cop who functions in both worlds. The film also demonstrated that Weir could adeptly handle Hollywood's requirements for glossy romance and compelling action sequences. Ford gave an underrated tour-de-force performance in Weir's next film, THE MOSQUITO COAST (1986), as an idealistic inventor who packs up his family and leaves America for an untainted village in Central America; his own American qualities, however, contain the seeds for disaster. This film revealed a darker side than seen in Weir's previous films, though this may be attributed, in some part, to Paul Schrader's adaptation of Paul Theroux's hardhitting novel. Robin Williams's exuberance enhanced the comic edges of DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989), a popular depiction of an American private boys' school and its repressive response to ideas about individuality and sensitivity. The film's lectures on the value of poetry and a new way of seeing seem addressed more to Hollywood than to educators.
Weir truly went Hollywood with his next outing, the light romantic comedy GREEN CARD (1990). A genial and inconsequential film, this provided the English-language debut for the shambling French hunk Gérard Depardieu. Weir returned to more substantial issues with FEARLESS (1993), a drama about people's varying reactions to tragedy, starring Jeff Bridges, Rosie Perez and John Turturro. He was nominated for his hard-edged look at surreal reality television and celebrity in THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998), which starred Jim Carey and Ed Harris. His most recent Oscar® nominations were for producing and directing MASTER AND COMMANDER (2003), starring Russell Crowe. Upcoming projects include PATTERN RECOGNITION (scheduled for 2008) and SHADOW DIVERS (scheduled for 2009).
In 1966, Weir married costume and production designer Wendy Stites, who has worked on his films since 1975. Their daughter, Ingrid Weir, has appeared in a couple of films.
Nominated for Directing 1985: WITNESS
Nominated for Achievement in Directing 1989: DEAD POETS SOCIETY
Nominated for Best Screenplay Written Directly For the Screen 1990: GREEN CARD
Nominated for Achievement in Directing 1998: THE TRUMAN SHOW
Nominated for Best Picture 2003: MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD Producer (w. Samuel Goldwyn, Jr. & Duncan Henderson
Nominated for Achievement in Directing 2003: MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD
6 nominations