最后大浪

Title: The Last Wave

Year: 1977

Country: Australia

Language: English, Italian, Aboriginal

Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Mystery

Director: Peter Weir

Screenwriters: Peter Weir, Tony Morphett, Petru Popescu

Music: Groove Myers

Cinematography: Russell Boyd

Editing: Max Lemon

Cast:

Richard Chamberlain

Olivia Hamnett

David Gulpilil

Nandjiwarra Amagula

Peter Carroll

Frederick Parslow

Vivean Gray

Wallas Eaton

Hedley Cullen

Rating: 7.0/10

There is a telling moment in Peter Weir’s third feature THE LAST WAVE, when Anne (Hamnett) descries Charlie (Amagula) standing and regarding outside her home, her knee-jerk reaction is to freak out, ordering her two young daughters to go upstairs and hide. Does that feel strange? Charlie was in her house as a dinner guest (albeit uninvited) the day before, and apparently the dinner went well if the atmosphere wasn’t particularly chummy. So even before sussing out Charlie’s motive, Anne is overpowered by mortal fear simply on account of his appearance, and why it that? I forget to mention, Anne is a Caucasian woman and Charlie is an Aborigine, so the answer is self-evident.

Oscillating between white man’s burden and the conscientious guilt of barbaric colonization, for any white filmmaker, to contend with a racially sensitive story is a double-edged task. Among the Antipodean cinema, only the recent Jennifer Kent’s THE NIGHTINGALE (2018) manages to find a felicitous formulation with a more revolutionary angle. THE LAST WAVE is made in 1977, so we couldn’t expect Weir to be too progressive in his perspective, and in fact, like PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975), he is more inclined to unpick the mysticism as a way to venerate the Aborigine’s immemorial legacy and culture.

Audience’s proxy is a Sydney-based white lawyer David Burton (Chamberlain), Anne’s husband, who is inexplicably embroiled in a manslaughter case of a city Aborigine, which is not even his field, he specializes in corporate taxation. But, he is the “chosen” one because of his psychic ability of experiencing “dreamtime”, a concept believed by the tribal Aborigines, and which Weir and his co-scribes dumb down as “David has the power of foreseeing futurity in his dreams”. Aided by one of the more forthcoming aboriginal offenders, Chris (Gulpilil), David is bent on finding out why he is “special” and arouses the vigilance from the tribal shaman, the said Charlie. But eventually, in lieu of fabricating some tenuous connexion between David and the tribe, Weir chooses a more metaphysical solution, the titular apocalyptic wave that threatens to send off the entire humanity. However, it is less a cop-out than an artistic license, as the script is a cul-de-sac, there is no place for a white-bread man here.

Aurally and visually, THE LAST WAVE continues Weir’s striking applications of dissonant foley effects and meteorological special effects, like the hailstones that opens the film, or the scene of a horrific underwater premonition.

Chamberlain is a dedicative and charismatic leading man even the story short-changes his character, once his lean, handsome four-squareness is encroached by monomania, twinges of torment and despair are visualized in his face, David’s quest for the truth can retrospectively and all too easily, be read as a queer Chamberlain’s seeking out an answer of why he is not like others, and the answer is an overwhelming elemental force.

In the supporting roles, Hamnett is worth her salts as a perturbed wife, but a young Gulpilil really lights up the screen, asserts himself with effortless civility and dignity, but also excellently registers Chris’ inner turmoil when he apparently betrays his tribe, should he have been elected as our main focal point, the movie would have been a more tub-thumping curio for today’s audience.

referential entries: Weir’s WITNESS (1985, 7.1/10), PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK (1975, 8.9/10); Fred Schepisi’s A CRY IN THE DARK (1988, 6.9/10); Jennifer Kent’s THE NIGHTINGALE (2018, 8.3/10).