The Last Wave

The weather turns strange across Australia: rain in the desert, hail in the city, frogs falling from the sky. In the same days an Aboriginal man dies in Sydney in circumstances nobody can explain and the death is treated as homicide. David Burton, a corporate tax lawyer, takes the defence. The more contact he has with the accused men the more he starts to dream. What he learns is that he is Mulkurul, descended from a race of spirits who came from the rising sun bringing sacred objects. At the end he finds a stone mask underground bearing his own face, and the film leaves him on a beach before an enormous wave. Peter Weir directed. Richard Chamberlain plays Burton and David Gulpilil plays Chris Lee. The cinematographer Russell Boyd won an AACTA Award for the work. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 78 percent. It is counted among the major works of the Australian New Wave and took seven AFI nominations including Best Direction and Best Actor. Who it is for: viewers who like dread left unexplained and the emergence of Australian cinema in the seventies. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by Aboriginal belief used as the vehicle for a white character's destiny. The film's construction is open to that objection.