The Last Wave. 1977. Directed by Peter Weir.

(3/17/01)

This was a very frustrating film for me to sit through. I really couldn't get an idea of what it was all about. It is about a lawyer who gets involved with defending a group of aborigines who are accused of killing a young man. He becomes drawn into their world and discovers something about his own identity and powers. At the end he is led into a secret chamber and reads a story on the walls which ends with an apocalypse. He finds his way back into the outside world and the film stops abruptly as he is confronted with a gigantic wave which is about to confront him.

So what is this all about? It beats me, really. The film seems like a low-budget horror film burdened by symbolism. The film begins with an odd occurrence of rain when there are no clouds. Water imagery abounds--there is black rain, a bathtub overflows, there is something about a car that I don't remember and then, of course, the last wave. So?

This actually threw me because as the film begins with rain and hail I assumed that that is where the story begins. But I was wrong. When we see the young man running with the sacred objects he has either seen or stolen I wasn't paying close attention because I didn't realize that this was the actual beginning of the narrative. And it took me a little while to catch up.

I didn't find this film so believable on a literal level. What the hell is a high-class corporate lawyer doing defending these aborigines on a murder charge? Even if he were doing it as an act of public service this kind of case is not his specialty, not his field. So that doesn't make sense. And I have a problem with the idea of a lawyer defending people who don't want to be defended. The aborigines do not want their story told in court and are prepared to take the consequences. And I feel that that should and would be respected by any sensible lawyer. So all that just didn't make sense to me. Perhaps I wouldn't have cared if I had understood the symbolism enough so that the literal narrative wasn't particularly important to me. (That's just a guess.)

I wasn't impressed with the performances--or perhaps it was just that the characters didn't interest me. I think that Richard Chamberlain is a name that I've heard, but I didn't find him interesting as the lawyer. Olivia Hammett as his wife just grated on me.

I don't know anything about Australian aborigines. They are not part of my life or background. Perhaps that is why their portrayal in this film didn't have much resonance for me. I can well believe that to an Australian audience these people and their culture were a little bit mysterious, a little bit exotic.

This film is about a man's discovery of himself, of who--and what--he really is. The protagonist is not just an ordinary man. He is something called a "Mubculan"--that's as near as I can spell it. He has something to do with these aborigines, a bond which he experiences first through dreams, then through his encounters with a wise old man known as Charlie. For me, the most memorable scene in the film is the one when he comes to see Charlie who questions him and asks him: "Who are you? Who are you?" over and over, more and more softly. It is a haunting moment.

Other than that I have no idea what this film is all about. I would find it interesting to read an explanation of it, but that is really more on account of its reputation than for any fascination I felt with the film itself.