Peter Weir essays

Peter Weir essays Combine an auteurist approach with a generic approach to discuss the films of a particular director in social, cultural, and ideological context. Briefly outline how this auteur uses genre in the films, and critically appraise the ways the auteur uses these generic elements to comment upon American society, culture, and ideology at particular periods in 20th century American history. Peter Weir is an Australia born film director working in the United States and has himself stated: "Frankly, I've never fit in anywhere." This perspective is reflected in Weirs films, in which, as an auteur, he presents the perspective of an individual who is on the outside looking in. His characters are all isolated from society in their own way. Some examples of such characters are: Max, a plane crash survivor who can no longer relate to the people or world around him in Fearless (1993); Allie Fox, an individual dissatisfied with the materialist society in which he lives in The Mosquito Coast (1986); and in a reversed approach, Truman Burbank, who is unaware that he is the world's biggest television star; he is the individual on the inside and everyone else is looking at him, in The Truman Show (1998). There are other more specific psychological and ideological questions raised by Peter Weir's films, as well as general commentary on American society in the twentieth century. Weir shares with his contempories - the Scorseses, Spielbergs, and Lucases - a kind of popular culture that is fundamentally American (Quart, 1991: 112). In Weirs personal point of view, The artistic personality belongs deeply nowhere ... it's the person who goes from court to court and plays before the king but never signs up to any particular group and remains a comment on society. Some of the comments that Weir makes in the films already mentioned are: there is a disparity between what is presented in society as reality&apo...