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August 09, 2013 newsreel

Harrison Ford crushes your romantic dreams about Witness

by Jen Chaney
Harrison Ford crushes your romantic dreams about Witness

In Peter Weir’s Witness, Harrison Ford falls for a modest, beautiful Amish woman (Kelly McGillis) who clearly returns his affections. We know she returns his affections because she dances with him in a barn, lets him see her topless while she’s taking a sponge bath, and engages in a steamy make-out session with him in the middle of a Pennsylvania field. But alas—and SPOILER ALERT—their love can never be. Aware he’s brought too much danger into her life, Ford’s policeman John Book eventually takes the dirt road straight out of Lancaster County.

The film was released in 1985, when Ford was at his most swoon-inducing and his adoring fans were most prone to be disappointed at his failure to find a happy, romantic ending. Consequently, some of those fans may be disappointed all over again to hear what Ford had to say in a new New York Times Q&A, where he insists that there’s no way John Book would have wound up with McGillis’ Rachel.

“It would be interesting to find out if John Book from Witness is living out his days on that Amish farm with his Amish bride,” the Times’ Adam Sternbergh says during the interview.

“He left, man,” Ford responds. Sternbergh asks again: “You don’t think he married Rachel and became an Amish farmer?” But Ford holds firm: “No, no. I don’t think so.”

This is really no surprise, since Witness is, in part, a tragic love story about people who can’t overcome the wide cultural gap between them. Also, it’s pretty clear at the end of the movie that Ford left and probably isn’t going to turn the car around, embrace McGillis, and suggest they go to Dutch Wonderland together. Still, this really puts the kibosh on any thought of an Amish-inflected, Fifty Shades Of Grey-style Witness 2.

Sternbergh didn’t ask the obvious follow-up Witness question—“IS LUKAS HAAS OKAY??”—but I’m going to assume he is, and is currently living a happily ordinary life in Pennsylvania, with his Danny Glover demons long, long behind him.

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