Weir, Peter

Weir, Peter (wēr), 1944–, Australian film director, b. Sydney. His early work helped to bring Australian film to world attention; his later films, made in Hollywood, mingle American movie technique with the style of European art films. Weir's vivid and varied work often deals with clashing cultures and ideals. His films include Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), a brooding turn-of-the-century tale involving the disappearance of Australian schoolgirls; Gallipoli (1981), a drama of idealistic young Australians fighting a bloody, pointless World War I battle; and The Year of Living Dangerously (1983), a story of love and political intrigue in Sukarno's Indonesia. Among his later films are the dramas Witness (1985) and Dead Poets Society (1989); the comedy Green Card (1990); his most commercially successful work, The Truman Show (1998), which tells of a man whose life is, without his knowing it, the subject of an avidly watched television show; and the early 19th-century swashbuckler Master and Commander (2003), based on Patrick O'Brian's novels.

Bibliography

See M. Haltof, Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide (1996), J. Rayner, The Films of Peter Weir (1998), and M. Bliss, Dreams within a Dream: The Films of Peter Weir (2000).