The Last Wave

(Australia)

Ayer/SAFC/AFC. Director Peter Weir; Screenplay Tony Morphett, Petru Popescu, Peter Weir; Camera Russell Boyd; Editor Max Lemon; Music Charles Wain

Richard Chamberlain
Olivia Hamnett
David Gulpilil
Frederick Parslow
Nandjiwarra Amagula

Australian director Peter Weir's film about the possibility of a coming tidal wave that may destroy the country or the world. Richard Chamberlain is highly effective as a young lawyer caught up in a case of an aborigine murdered by some others in town.

The lawyer has strange dreams that involve one of the accused men trying to give him some sort of sacred stone. He takes their case and tries to insist it was tribal but the man he has dreamed of, who at first tries to help him, begs off when an old patriarch seems to exert power on him.

Film builds, and though it sometimes falters in narrative, picks up again as Chamberlain turns out to be a sort of psychic member of a mysterious people who supposedly came to Australia long ago and disappeared.

(Color) Available on VHS. Extract of a review from 1977. Running time: 106 MIN.

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