Peter Weir briefly attended Sydney University, dropped out to join his father's real estate business, and left that job for a trip to Europe in 1966. Upon his return, he took a job at a TV station and, in his free time, began making short films full of anti-establishment attitudes. In 1969, he signed on with the Commonwealth Film Unit as an assistant cameraman and production designer, which led to opportunities to direct a number of short films and eventually features.
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 a context of snobbish, exploitative and incompetent British rule and its international success helped establish the screen career of Mel Gibson.
Australian films of the 70s and early 80s tended to avoid male/female psychology and romance, but in "The Year of Living Dangerously" (1982), 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 and he was rewarded with his first Oscar nomination as Best Director. Ford gave an underrated tour-de-force performance as an idealistic inventor who packs up his family and leaves America for an untainted village in Central America in Weir's next film, "The Mosquito Coast" (1986). His own "American" qualities, however, contain the seeds for disaster. The film revealed a darker side than seen in Weir's previous work though this may also be attributed, in some part, to Paul Schrader's adaptation of Paul Theroux's hard-hitting novel. Robin Williams' 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 an educational elite. For his efforts, Weir earned a second Academy Award nomination as Best Director.
Weir truly went Hollywood with his next outing, the light romantic comedy "Green Card" (1990). A genial and inconsequential outing, it provided the English-language debut for the shambling French hunk Gerard Depardieu well matched by leading lady Andie MacDowell. Weir earned a surprise Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination. He 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. After a five year absence, the director returned to motion pictures with "The Truman Show" (1998), which provided a rare dramatic role for comic actor Jim Carrey as an insurance salesman who, in a Pirandellian twist, discovers his life has been the basis for a television show. The comedy not only earned praise for Carrey as a dramatic performer, it also resulted in an Academy Award nomination for Weir as best director, along with nominations from the Directors Guild, BAFTA and Golden Globes, as well as several wins among critics awards.
After another lengthy hiatus, Weir returned to the big screen and both writer and director, adapting (with screenwriter John Collee) the 10th installment of the 20-book of author Patrick O'Brian's meticulously detailed epic historical adventure novels set during the Napoleonic Wars. The result was the absorbing high seas adventure "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (2003). Weir, who was already known for his attention to period detail, awesome visuals and a character-driven sensibility, worked in close collaboration with fellow Aussie Russell Crowe (as Captain Lucky Jack Aubrey of the H.M.S. Surprise) to create a compelling adventure that was as adept at conveying quieter character moments as it was rousing action sequences. As a result, the film garnered much awards buzz upon its release, then saw its heat cool down, only to be revived with a bountiful 10 Academy Awards nominations, including Weir's fourth nomination for Best Director.