With the same feel of his previous film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Peter Weir creates a new confrontation between modern man and the unfathomable power of nature in The Last Wave. This one is still an accomplished, interesting film, but it doesn't quite hit the same poetic or mysterious notes at the same level. It makes some parts of the answers to the questions it asks more literal and, much like The Cars that Ate Paris, really specific to the Australian experience that ends up feeling more distancing than enlightening. Still, it shows that Picnic at Hanging Rock wasn't a fluke, that Weir had really grown as a filmmaker, and that he was distinct in some interesting ways.
An aboriginal man is murdered by five of his fellows in Sydney. From the outside, it looks like a drunken brawl, but when the lawyer David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) gets brought on to help with the case, he digs as deeply as he can into the intersection between tribal law and Australian law as well as the unwillingness of the five to talk to him. So, he focuses on one, Chris (David Gulpilli), and invites him over to dinner with his wife Annie (Olivia Hamnett). Chris brings along the aboriginal mystic Charlie (Nandjiwarra Amagula).
The central question of the film is about premonitions generally and the premonition of a coming disaster specifically. It's tied intimately to the ideas of Picnic at Hanging Rock because it's not really about the premonition itself as some sort of mystical, otherworldly force, but the premonition as an extension of the natural world, the further implication that the natural world is larger and much more beyond our comprehension than we are willing to admit.
David is met by visions in his dreams, and he gets explanations from Chris and an Australian anthropologist (Vivean Gray) about how the aboriginal people see dreams as extensions into another layer of reality which combines with David's own dreams that have connections with the real world, like the fact that he dreamed of Chris offering him a sacred stone before he ever met Chris.
The background of all of this is that Australia is being pelted by rain and hail unseasonably in November. It destroys a school in the country. It pelts Sydney day after day, night after night, and the prevalence of water bleeds into David's life with small events like his twin daughters flooding the upstairs bathtub, sending water down their stairs that he and Annie have to clean up. What really dominates the early parts of the film are this overbearing sense of foreboding as we navigate the earliest signs of these visions and happenings with David, unable to really figure out what this uneasy feeling is leading to.
Where the film is less interesting and ends up feeling like a distraction is with most of the later developments with Chris and Charlie. I was reminded of the incoherent way that John Boorman treated the aboriginals in the Amazon in The Emerald Forest, but Weir never goes quite that far. They're not magic, but they do have some kind of connection to another layer of reality that David ends up sharing. My problem is that the particulars of the tribal law argument, the courtroom stuff, and then the final reveal of a hidden aboriginal sacred cave with mystical artwork feels thin at best. There's obviously some effort on the part of English-descended Weir taking part in retrospective consideration of the treatment of the naturals and how they have lost their culture with the rise of the English order (David's romantic views are well-balanced by his colleague Michael played by Peter Carroll who has long had interactions with the aboriginals and doesn't view them in any sort of magic way, but seeing them much more cynically). However, the treatment ends up feeling like there's little point to it, especially regarding the larger point about the unknowingness of nature.
And that's where the film ends up going with Weir combining reality and dreams in ways that few filmmakers do all that well. There are moments in the final half hour or so of the film thar remind me of some of David Lynch's best work in this area, and that's, I think, a high compliment to Weir.
I just find the film would have been better had it been more focused on that mysterious unknowing power of nature instead of Weir's sense of guilt for something his ancestors did.
The Last Wave is simply not at the same level of Picnic at Hanging Rock, but it's still a quality early film from a promising young Australian filmmaker who was helping form Australia's cinematic language after decades of degradation and eventual stoppage in the 60s. Weir has a strong eye, he's good with actors, and he is able to manage tone in very interesting and strong ways while asking large questions about man's relationship to the natural world.
I think Peter Weir is going to make something of himself. Maybe Hollywood will take note at some point.
An aboriginal man is murdered by five of his fellows in Sydney. From the outside, it looks like a drunken brawl, but when the lawyer David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) gets brought on to help with the case, he digs as deeply as he can into the intersection between tribal law and Australian law as well as the unwillingness of the five to talk to him. So, he focuses on one, Chris (David Gulpilli), and invites him over to dinner with his wife Annie (Olivia Hamnett). Chris brings along the aboriginal mystic Charlie (Nandjiwarra Amagula).
The central question of the film is about premonitions generally and the premonition of a coming disaster specifically. It's tied intimately to the ideas of Picnic at Hanging Rock because it's not really about the premonition itself as some sort of mystical, otherworldly force, but the premonition as an extension of the natural world, the further implication that the natural world is larger and much more beyond our comprehension than we are willing to admit.
David is met by visions in his dreams, and he gets explanations from Chris and an Australian anthropologist (Vivean Gray) about how the aboriginal people see dreams as extensions into another layer of reality which combines with David's own dreams that have connections with the real world, like the fact that he dreamed of Chris offering him a sacred stone before he ever met Chris.
The background of all of this is that Australia is being pelted by rain and hail unseasonably in November. It destroys a school in the country. It pelts Sydney day after day, night after night, and the prevalence of water bleeds into David's life with small events like his twin daughters flooding the upstairs bathtub, sending water down their stairs that he and Annie have to clean up. What really dominates the early parts of the film are this overbearing sense of foreboding as we navigate the earliest signs of these visions and happenings with David, unable to really figure out what this uneasy feeling is leading to.
Where the film is less interesting and ends up feeling like a distraction is with most of the later developments with Chris and Charlie. I was reminded of the incoherent way that John Boorman treated the aboriginals in the Amazon in The Emerald Forest, but Weir never goes quite that far. They're not magic, but they do have some kind of connection to another layer of reality that David ends up sharing. My problem is that the particulars of the tribal law argument, the courtroom stuff, and then the final reveal of a hidden aboriginal sacred cave with mystical artwork feels thin at best. There's obviously some effort on the part of English-descended Weir taking part in retrospective consideration of the treatment of the naturals and how they have lost their culture with the rise of the English order (David's romantic views are well-balanced by his colleague Michael played by Peter Carroll who has long had interactions with the aboriginals and doesn't view them in any sort of magic way, but seeing them much more cynically). However, the treatment ends up feeling like there's little point to it, especially regarding the larger point about the unknowingness of nature.
And that's where the film ends up going with Weir combining reality and dreams in ways that few filmmakers do all that well. There are moments in the final half hour or so of the film thar remind me of some of David Lynch's best work in this area, and that's, I think, a high compliment to Weir.
I just find the film would have been better had it been more focused on that mysterious unknowing power of nature instead of Weir's sense of guilt for something his ancestors did.
The Last Wave is simply not at the same level of Picnic at Hanging Rock, but it's still a quality early film from a promising young Australian filmmaker who was helping form Australia's cinematic language after decades of degradation and eventual stoppage in the 60s. Weir has a strong eye, he's good with actors, and he is able to manage tone in very interesting and strong ways while asking large questions about man's relationship to the natural world.
I think Peter Weir is going to make something of himself. Maybe Hollywood will take note at some point.