sharky_55
What Weir succeeds in doing here is maintaining an atmosphere of pervasive dread throughout The Last Wave. With his massive fire hoses he will flood the vast red outback with a rare rainstorm, and then move towards his focused territory, by letting the elements smash windows and enter the man made domain. The rain-clouds hover over the urbanised city like a great grey shroud, and what little life and colour is lost in the showers. And then he will use movement in order to close into our characters. First, closeups of a trickle of water down stairs that seems almost harmless in comparison, but quickly gains momentum and a determined will of its own. Then he will slowly zoom into the family dinner table, as if the water has already reclaimed upstairs and is about to take the dining room too. It's a marvellous little bit of camera-induced claustrophobia, fear in the most apprehensive way, slow moving, implacable, unstoppable. Of course it is just a bathtub overflowing, but it begins to mean a lot more for David Burton, the Sydney-based solicitor. Unfortunately what Weir cannot do is match this with mood with an engaging, thoughtful narrative. It is not dissimilar to the problems I had with Picnic at Hanging Rock; a vague, ominous sense of foreboding, mystical powers that go unexplained, a mystery that goes beyond mankind's grasp. And it is broached in a way that has become more and more wearisome in recent times; a white man accidentally stumbles upon a thousands of years old secret, a festishsised native of the land, the mystic power that runs through their veins. David attempts to unlock the mysteries in a court session, but even more so from a modern perspective it feels like he is not only explaining this to himself, but to the audience. There is no subtext, no discourse attempted to unravel the multitude of issues regarding the Indigenous Aboriginal identity, how it is morphed within a urbanised context, how their morality is at odds with the western-centric law system, how their sense of community has been displaced, and so on. It descends into your standard horror/thriller riddled with suspense. It is a pity too, because the suspense is so well done. The visuals become a way of boring into the subconscious of David, and the awakening of his paranoia and fears - as the Mulkurul's duty is to warn of the coming apocalypse. His visions becomes surreal, and flicker between reality and dreamtime; a plague of descending frogs ala bible style, a stream of water trickling from his car dash that had just giving a rational explanation for the black globs of rain obscuring his windscreen, and then his whole car enveloped in a underwater trance. His dreams begin to haunt him - the camera moves quickly through the halls of the apartment, unnerved, as if running from an unseen beast, and then into David's own bedroom, peering down upon his place of solace, stalking, observing, threatening. Car fog-lights in the night become a shimmering, gliding phenomena, marring his rational mind. And in Wain's soundtrack, with the sinister synthesizer backing, and the soft but creeping didgerirdoo, we become aware of danger before we even see it, as though we too have inherited David's dreamlike sixth sense. But Weir veers too deeply, and what was seductive and fear-inducing becomes disorientating. He robs us of our senses by having David manoeuvre through dark tunnels and caves, and in a rare moment of genius, contrasts the feeble light of his flash-light alongside Charlie's dancing, lively flame. But he turns away, grabs blindly at a relic that may or may not be important, and staggers out into the real world again. This ending is supposed to be ambiguous, but Weir renders this effect impotent by showing the unending wrath and power of the waves of the ocean in an entirely separate frame from from David's blinking, disbelieving eyes. This seems to be the result of a small budget - and if you look carefully and spot the surfer on the beach of David's apocalyptic vision, you would tend to agree.
sunznc
The film stars Richard Chamberlin as a corporate attorney who has mysteriously taken on a case defending Aborigines in the city of Australia. A few remaining members of a tribe are accused of killing a man wanting to join their tribe.The film has an intoxicating, mesmerizing feel to it with the long, lingering shots, the slower pace, the scenes of rain and water flowing, the dreamy and unusual soundtrack. It is interesting to watch and the film does draw you in. However, something is missing here. The film needed narration, which makes me sound very American, or explanation that is a bit more clear. The attorney has dreams and learns that his dreams come true so does that mean his vision of water and death are prophetic? It seems so but then the film ends and it's a bit anti-climactic, a bit of a letdown.I think it would have worked better for me had the script been a bit less esoteric.
moonspinner55
In Australia, four Aborigine men stand accused of causing the death of, or perhaps murdering, one of their own; a white taxation lawyer becomes involved, but he can't seem to break through to the secretive defendants--nor can he shake the feeling that something is terribly amiss in his own life, which is juxtaposed by the freaky-wet weather. Would-be apocalyptic mishmash from director and co-writer Peter Weir begins with a marvelously spooky sequence in the schoolyard (where hailstones fall from a cloudless sky), yet the eerie beauty of that opening is allowed to dribble away in a melodramatic study of class and race guilt--the wealthy and powerful whites versus the poor black Aboriginals--underscored with supernatural flourishes. Weir wants to be profound and serious, so there's nothing intrinsically mysterious or exciting about the lawyer's prophetic dreams, nor his relationships with the Aborigine tribe or his wife and daughters. A potentially fascinating situation is kept ominously mundane, while lead actor Richard Chamberlain drifts through in an anxious fog. *1/2 from ****
ctomvelu-1
THE LAST WAVE is never going to win over the mainstream audience. It is a slow-moving but fascinating film for those who are willing to go along with it. An Australian properties lawyer is asked to take on the case of five aborigines accused in the murder of one of their own. All sorts of portents and omens soon pop up, as the man's death involves a tribal issue that was not meant for white man's court, and pretty soon the lawyer is having trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy. It looks like the end of the world may be at hand, and he and the aborigines may know this but no one else does. Richard Chamberlain as the lawyer is at his peak here. David Guptil, a familiar face from several other Australian flicks and a decent actor, is one of the five aborigines on trial. THE LAST WAVE is simply not for everyone, anymore than is MAGNOLIA (both happen to have strange things falling from the sky). Check it out on a slow Saturday night.
