Blaine Dixon First few times I saw this I saw it as a fun mystical apocalypse I was sorta into apocalypse masochistic thinking in the 70s. Weir does set a hell of a mood.However I see an agenda here...white people disillusioned loosing faith in their own science, religion and mystical rites turn to foreign exotica. Add to this guilt for something their ancestors did. This time its not just to the Brit convicts the anti-hero is descended from but we goes back thousands of years to a white culture that survived an apocalypse, moved to South American and built the Mayan civilization then moved to Australia!Our anti-hero is the sole survivor of Atlantis! Odd that no whites are depicted anywhere in South American Indian art as shown in this movie, perhaps that civilization was wiped out and all evidence?Well back to the agenda, there is a strong apologia for Aborigine ritual murder, (its tribal so its legal!) (Just like the ritual rape of nubile females by tribal elders in the outback as part of their coming of age...now that's really self serving male porkchopery!)Finally the 300 foot wave comes and I guess wipes out Sydney and drowns the whites....so do the aborigines escape or do they sacrifice themselves for the other tribals in the outback?

Eumenides_0 Although I've long been a fan of Peter Weir, I hadn't watched any of his Australian movies until I watched The Last Wave. And it was a pleasant, unpredictable surprise.Richard Chamberlain plays David, a lawyer invited to defend five aborigines charged with murdering another Aborigine. For David's peers it's a clear case of drunken disorder and they think they should plead guilty and serve a quick sentence. But David believes there's a mystery underneath the murder, linked to tribal rituals. As his investigation proceeds he learns not only things about his clients but about himself too.To reveal more would be to spoil one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. I can only say that this movie goes in directions that no one will be expecting.There are many elements that make this a fascinating movie: Chamberlain's acting, for instance; but also the performances by David Gulpilil, who plays a young aborigine who introduces David into tribal mysteries; and Nandjiwarra Amagula, who plays an old aborigine who's a spiritual guide. The relationships between these three characters make the heart of the movie.But there's also the way Weir suggests the supernatural in the movie. David has dreams that warn him of the future. Australia is undergoing awful weather, with storms, hail falling and even a mysterious black rain that may be nothing more than pollution. But it's also related to the case David is defending. How it's related is one of the great revelations of the movie. Out of little events Weir manages to create an atmosphere of dread and oppression, suggesting future horrors without really showing anything.Charles Wain's score is fantastic, especially the use of the didgeridoo. The photography is also quite good. Russell Boyd, Weir's longtime DP who won an Oscar in 2004 for Master and Commander, depicts a dark, creepy world full of mystery.I also find it remarkable that for a movie centered on aborigines, it doesn't turn into an indictment against white culture or into a sappy celebration of the their traditions, like Dances With Wolves or The Last Samurai. This movie is too clever to be that simplistic.Sometimes it can be frustrating, and it may upset viewers who expect to finish a movie with everything making sense; but for those who don't mind some strangeness or ambiguity, The Last Wave is a great movie to watch.

MesaHead This is one of those movies that makes you chuckle at the end because it did not answer any of the questions it sparked along the way. Yet, the more I think or talk about it the deeper it seems. The best supernatural thrillers are those that end with a sense of closure coupled with ambiguity. To me this is more "real" than a film that pretends to have all of the answers. No matter how enmeshed one becomes in the supernatural there will always remain a sense of mystery. Our natural minds just cannot completely encompass the purpose and mechanics of the supernatural world. More than once the Old Testament says of God "His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thinking." In the New Testament Paul wrote that at best we "see through a glass darkly". I believe this sums up the inherent futility of man's attempt to impose his logic on a dimension that has it's own separate logic. It's a language we cannot speak, spoken on a frequency we can rarely and barely discern if ever at all.Weir succeeds in conveying a sense of consciousness in nature phenomenon. In fact the weather appears to be separate character with it's own distinct visage and voice. This is the films greatest achievement.The film sets everything up well but ultimately fails to engage us plot. At pivotal moments the key characters motivations are not clear at all. Why does Chamberlains character do that at the end? Why is this place or that thing so special? I really didn't understand the most fundamental plot device until I watched the interview included in the extras. A great film doesn't require Cliff's notes.I think Weir was trying to give us sense of the supernatural and our relation to it by "implying" it through sounds and images. That's good. It works. This is "real". The problem is that the plot is also merely implied. While I was enticed to watch until the end and pleased with the mood of the film in the end there was no payoff.

dfox79 I saw this film yesterday at my local independent cinema. Both its main man, Chamberlain, and the director Weir are unknown to me although I gather from looking around here that both have had pretty illustrious careers.I won't revisit the plot. Lots of other people have already done that. Suffice to say, the film's main strength, for me, was its unsettling ambiance. Much of that has to do with Chamberlain's unfathomable persona and vaguely alien looks. The electronica soundtrack adds to the mood. The script is spartan, with room to breathe, which further adds to the unsettling tone.The special effects are as simplistic as you'd expect from an Australian film made at the back end of the 70s.As someone else has mentioned, the climax "wave" probably suffers as a consequence of budgetary limitations.