Customer Reviews

Last Wave, the

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
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ï¿The Last Waveï¿ is an eerie, beautiful film by Peter Weir and is a companion piece to ï¿Picnic at Hanging Rockï¿, which he made two years earlier in 1975. Though ï¿Waveï¿ is set in 1970s Sydney and ï¿Picnicï¿ takes place at the turn of the 20th Century, both movies revolve around the great difficulty the white settlers, who took over Australia, had in fitting in, both with the land itself and with the Aboriginal natives. After all, Aboriginal culture was ancient long before there was an England or, for that matter, a religion called Christianity. Though both movies are highly recommended, both are uniquely Australian. Those with little knowledge of the place will find themselves at a loss as to what is going on.

David Burton [Richard Chamberlain] is a successful, middle-class tax attorney in Sidney. When he volunteers to take the case of several Aboriginal men accused of murder, he has little inkling of where this supposedly simple case will take him. Coincidentally, he has recently been having nightmares, one of which involves a young Aboriginal boy. He finds that the men are withholding much information. He comes to suspect that they are part of a tribe and that the crime was dictated by tribal law. His colleagues insist that there are no tribes in Sydney. Not only is David right, he discovers that there is a mysterious link between the defendants and the strange weather that has recently plagued the region. The case turns into a spiritual journey, one fraught with unanswerable questions and great danger.

The laconic and underrated Chamberlain is excellent. The movie is not a thriller, and it builds to its climax slowly and deliberately. This makes Davidï¿s quiet descent into madness appropriate.

One of the filmï¿s greatest assets is Russell Boydï¿s cinematography. He beautifully captures the dichotomy between modern Sydney with its gleaming towers and the ancient world that lies hidden beneath them. His surreal, dreamlike camera work helps make up for this low budget effortï¿s lack of special effects.

By the way, an American equivalent to ï¿The Last Waveï¿ is the fascinating independent movie, ï¿The Raptureï¿ [1991].

Other recommended Weir movies are ï¿Gallipoli [1981], ï¿The Year of Living Dangerouslyï¿ [1982], ï¿Fearlessï¿ [1993] and ï¿The Truman Showï¿ [1998].

"What are dreams?" asks lawyer David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) of his client Chris Lee (David Gulpilil), an Australian Aborigine on trial for manslaughter.

"I will show you a dream," he responds. "A dream is a shadow...of something real."

And, when you think about it, so are films. They are literally shadows of something real - recorded on transparent strips and projected onto screens with bright lights. Watching a good film is like dreaming while awake.

Peter Weir's The Last Wave has very much the texture of a beautiful, disturbing dream. Before going Hollywood and losing his artistic teeth, he made evocative little gems like this one - full of unformed dread and pregnant with the possibility of mythic revelation.

The plot concerns a routine bar fight between some Aborigines in Sydney, Australia, that ends in the death of one of them. Lawyer David Burton is called in as a Public Defender. No big deal - except that the case seems to involve a lot more than a Saturday night celebration gone horribly awry. It may, in fact, have everything to do with an ancient prophecy marking the End of the Current Age - and a catastrophe of alarming proportions. Can Burton unravel the mystery of the prophecy - and of his own true nature - in time to avert the End of the World as we know it?

Like a dream, The Last Wave unfolds with its own kind of logic - a logic that finds only a vague counterpart to our everyday sort of concrete reasoning. It's persuasive, too, the way any powerful dream always is. It makes us believe dialogue like I quoted at the top of this review, even though people never really talk that way in real life. It also forcefully reminds us that there is more than one culture in the world, and that we assume we are superior simply by virtue of our technology and science, at our own peril.

In many ways, The Last Wave makes me think of Werner Herzog, who also makes deliberately paced, dream-like films about cultural clashes. If you enjoy Herzog, give this film a look.

As a final note, The Last Wave probably deserves a thoughtful DVD release with a decent commentary track. Hint, hint, Criterion...

My father turned me on to this film when I was about 4. He used to play it for me when he was cooking dinner, listening to music, studying, any time he needed some time to himself and needed me to stay in one place. (Chariots of fire and The Warriors work well too. lol ) Well, I am 25 now and this film is as creepy, fascinating and hypnotic as it was then.

I mean, the third wave, for christ sake. It's over. Your outa here. Done. Would you be remembered as a quality addition to the human race? Really, "Who are you?"

I can add no more than my peers here, as all except one giant bozo found this film to be as good as I did.

I was pretty let down by this film due to the praise it received from a friend of mine whose opinion I value. I just found it didn't really present me with anything I hadn't seen before. The story was interesting but it could have been delivered in a much more original way. This is a good film but far from great.

There are only two good points for this snoozer. (1. The part where the murder takes place is quite powerful and very well done, and (2. Richard Chamberlain looks good in glasses. Other than that, "The Last Wave" drowns in its own inconsistancies.

I saw this film when it first came out in 1977. It blew my mind then. I recently saw it on television and it still blew my mind once again. Pretty good for a film that is over 20 years old. This is a fantastic film that covers a variety of genres. It's a mystery, it's a thriller, it's science fiction, it's a drama. It should appeal to anyone who like the strange and the wonderful. Richard Chamberlain is fantastic as David Burton a lawyer who finds himself representing a group of young Aborigines accused of a brutal murder. However this is not just any murder, and Chamberlain finds himself drawn into a battle between the old and the modern when he finds out that the man's death is connected to the theft of some ancient stones that depict the end of mankind. To add to his problems Chamberlain is having strange dreams, dreams in which he is surrounded by water and he is drawn to the Aborigines and the secret world of dreamtime and ancient prophesies. For David Burton is part of what is happening, he is part of something that is old as old as time, history is repeating itself and the Last Wave is about to fall... This film is packed galore with symbolism, pretty good special effects and damn good acting. David Gulpilil is great as the young Aborigine torn between the past and the present and Nanjiwarra Amagula is superb as Charlie, a pure blooded Aborigine who just might have answers to secrets spanning thousands of years. This is a thinking-person's film. It is slow moving but suspenseful and the plot is sometimes complicated but never confusing. Well worth adding to your video collection if you want something excitingly different and intellectually stimulating.

I have seen this film in 1977 or 1978, long time ago. I was stunned then. During the last year I often go back (mainly in music and films) to see whether I can recover some of the old magic. Believe me, the magic of this film is still there, no matter if it seems a bit old-fashioned, that is no surprise, 22-23 years have passed since it was released. It is the kind of film that carries you away and makes you reconsinder some things in life that you were taking for granted. Great music score by Charles Wain (by the way does anybody know what has happened to this man?).

peter weir is a fine artist and director (see also "picnic at hanging rock"). this movie is an unsettling, penetrating look at a mysterious subject. one line from the movie provides an eerie summary: "we've lost our dreams, then they return and we don't know what they mean." selection of the didgeridoo was an inspired musical choice, heightening the other-worldly nature of the film. well done again, peter!

Our modern, rational culture floats like a small boat on a huge, dark ocean of unguessable depth. Richard Chamberlain, in perhaps his best role ever, is a lawyer specializing in the arid technicalities of corporate taxation who is, by chance [well no, not really, as it turns out] drawn into the Shamanic world of the tribal aborigines who, unknown to most people, still inhabit Sydney, Australia. Little by little, the comfortable everyday world in which Chamberlain's character lived starts to dissolve, or at least become transparent, before the unguessably ancient and very different world around it. Meanwhile nature is acting very strange, paralleling the breakdown in Chamberlain's character. A wonderful movie, full of rich metaphors and images (including the final one) that remain in the mind long after the film is over. Even the soundtrack: some aboriginal instruments, some very nervous-sounding Australian-Irish dance music, and some spare but oh-so-telling chords, can stay with you for days. What are dreams anyway and what do we buy by living in a daylight world where we cannot see them? Weir suggests some provacative and disturbing answers.

A chilling, suspenseful drama. Full of subtleties. Not a lot of action. I saw it in the theatre when it first came out, and the photography comes across much better on the movie screen than on a TV set. It is still worth seeing. It gave me goosebumps more often than I could count. It is not a film for younger people who are used to fast paced action and special effects. They yawned through the whole thing and only watched it to be polite. But for viewers who enjoy watching a story slowly unfold, it is a rare treat. The abscence of background music in most of the film only adds to the suspense.