directed by Peter Weir, 1977, 106 minutes.

Sydney barrister David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) takes on a legal aid case to defend a group of First Australians charged with the murder of Billy Corman (Athol Compton), one of their number who had stolen sacred artifacts. As David investigates, he becomes certain that this was an execution carried out by tribal elder Charlie (Nandjiwarra Amagula) rather than the result of a drunken assault. As freak weather escalates, David discovers a spiritual bond with Chris Lee (David Gulpilil), one of the accused, and wonders if his own dreams of an apocalyptic flood may be prophetic.   

Hot, humid darkness. It’s 3AM. You surfaced suddenly from a sweaty anxiety dream and know that you won’t get back to sleep. Your mind is racing, scrambling from one foundering raft of free-floating anxiety to another. Better to get up, you know exactly what you need and five minutes later you are watching the opening credits of Peter Weir’s “The Last Wave”. If you must stay awake, this is the perfect cinematic alternative to a good night’s rest. You lost count long ago of how many times you’ve seen it, but you know that it is the best remedy for restless nights and the small, sleepless hours.

Hypnotic and soporific, Weir’s film has deep, insistent rhythms. Charles Wain’s mesmerising score mixes electronic and natural sounds, reverberating around and underneath the visuals with a throbbing digeridoo drone. The effect is unsettling but also strangely comforting, like diving deep, or floating in the womb. Images reflect forwards and backwards in a deceptively calm surface: An overflowing bath, water soaking a stair carpet foreshadow global catastrophe. In the dreamtime of “The Last Wave” death is simply part of an inexorable, self-renewing cycle. For Weir, the end of days is a thrown stone that creates concentric ripples in a still pool; when the movement ceases you become aware of the welcome darkness beneath the surface and the transience of humanity. When the last wave breaks it promises comfort and sweet oblivion, refuge from the bedlam of daily life: Cars will drown, filth and rubbish will be swept away, and we’ll all float away as natural order is restored. There is pain, certainly: All the wonders that we have made, love itself will be lost alongside cruelty and hatred. Like the shipwreck victims in Emily Dickinson’s “Glee” (c. 1862), David’s wife and daughters will be left “spinning upon the shoals” alongside the rest of the “bonnie souls”. Weir is no misanthrope: Characters like Guido, (Guido Rametta), so proud of his home-grown vegetables and Don (Malcolm Robertson) tirelessly seeking legal aid for his impoverished clients display enough warmth and colour for us to feel a pang of regret for the passing of humanity but guilty and innocent alike face atonement.

A sense of expiation haunts Australian cinema. Films like “Long Weekend” (Colin Egglestone, 1979) and “Lake Mungo” (Joel Anderson, 2008) suggest that the colonists who culled the indigenous tribes with bullets and smallpox have bequeathed a poisoned legacy of guilt to their descendants. The natives themselves were once immigrants, the rigours of tribal law helped them to survive in an unforgiving environment where humanity seems a speck in nature’s eye. Russell Boyd’s photography shows nature in revolt. Frogs, hail, and slimy mud fall from a sky that weeps incessantly, as if trying to purge a guilty stain, but the blood red sand can never be rinsed clean. The landscape seems to throb with rage against the interlopers whose dusty little towns affront a hostile wilderness. Once a penal colony, Sydney has become a different kind of prison, in its decaying Victorian backstreets, warder’s houses are now slums. The towers of steel and glass seem puny as they cower beneath a tainted sky. As Weir suggests in “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (1975) nature’s sleepless malice is inimical to the fragile follies of civilization.

Weir avoids cumbersome polemic and instead suffuses “The Last Wave” with a poignant sense of melancholy. David (Richard Chamberlain) is not a typical crusading lawyer. He is motivated more by a need for spiritual revelation than by any sense of social justice. His identification with Mulkurul, a mythic, pale-skinned prophet from across the seas has led some critics to dismiss the film as a white saviour story but in “the Last Wave” moral and spiritual authority lies firmly with the natives. The courtroom drama seems petty when set against the intractable authority of tribal law. Weir steadfastly refuses to romanticize the realities of tribal life: Charlie represents a culture that, like nature, can be harsh and unforgiving. For him the apocalypse has already taken place, the guilty have been judged and must await the final reckoning that will wipe the slate clean. Caught in the middle is Chris, whose battered drover’s hat and scuffed leather lend him the messianic charisma of Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix. As David yearns for a spirituality that he cannot find in family, work, or leisure Chris finds secular society more alluring than the austere rites of the tribe; he chafes against his visions of apocalypse and regrets the lives that must be lost, despite the injustices committed against his people. Twinned opposites, David and Chris are drawn together; their intense metaphysical exchanges play like love scenes. Performances are uniformly excellent: Richard Chamberlain’s stately air, precise diction and poise make him seem alien, detached from the hubbub of Sydney society. David Gulpilil is outstanding, an unsettling but disarmingly vulnerable figure. Nandjiwarra Amagula lodges in the memory as Charlie, so severe and inscrutable that we accept without question that he can kill by sheer force of will.

Darren Aronofsky’s diluvial epic “Noah” (2014) raises some pertinent questions about man’s abuse of the environment and divine retribution, but most viewers were left bewildered by his bizarre concoction of biblical eschatology and apocryphal fantasy. In “The Last Wave” Christianity, personified by David’s father (Fred Parslow) seems unable to offer any comfort or guidance on how we should face final judgement. Stanley Kramer’s funereal “On the Beach” (1959) finds survivors of nuclear holocaust awaiting death by radiation; despite being stranded in Melbourne they at least have enough time to tick some items off the bucket list, wrestle with guilt and contemplate euthanasia. Weir depicts mankind sleepwalking to destruction, blithely unaware of what is coming. David must bear his burgeoning awareness of impending doom alone, even his loved ones remain ignorant, it’s too late for action and warnings go unheeded. In this sense the film feels closer to our own predicament as we consume our way towards catastrophic climate change, but no matter how justified the sentence, Weir refuses to harangue us on our way to the scaffold. The results of last wave may be terrible, but the film feels strangely serene, almost transcendent. As anthropologist Dr Whitburn (Vivean Gray) explains, cataclysm is part of a natural cycle, a cleansing event that precipitates renewal.

If you can find a copy, Petru Popescu’s novelization is well worth seeking out. Film tie-in novels seldom possess much literary or cultural value, but Popescu is a capable and underrated novelist. As one of three screenwriters who worked on “The Last Wave” he brings more commitment and skill to the exercise than the usual hack writer. Critics usually judge the quality of cinematic adaptations by their fidelity to the source text rather than their own artistic merits; with the translation reversed the novel offers a rare opportunity to compare literary and cinematic approaches to the same story. Weir’s film is gaunt, exposition and dialogue pared to the bone. Popescu is more interested in character and context. His novel is a worthy adjunct to the film, if read after viewing it enriches the experience with backstory and socio-political critique. We’ve seen how the world will end: Be it nuclear fire, deep freeze, asteroid impact, tectonic shift, plague or flood, cinema and television have shown us what to expect with sometimes depressing, sometimes hilarious results. If seeking the latter, go straight to “2012” (2009) by Roland Emmerich (the master of disaster) which provides fire, earthquake, climate chaos as well as flood in the ultimate closing down sale. If you’re seeking something more meditative look no further the “The Last Wave”. Weir, like Dickinson has the knack of folding singular events into intimate poetic form, his film sums up the end of humanity more eloquently than any number of Emmerich spectaculars. Let this marvellous, melancholic tsunami sweep you away into the welcoming dark.

Quote:

“You don’t know what dreams are anymore.” Chris Lee (David Gulpilil)

Connections:

Film

‘On the Beach’ directed by Stanley Kramer (1959)

‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ directed by Peter Weir (1975)

‘Long Weekend’ directed by Colin Egglestone (1979)

‘Melancholia’ directed by Lars Von Trier (2011)

Music

Try these for an alternative needle drop soundtrack to “The Last Wave” (with apologies to Charles Wain):

‘Next Time Around’ from “The Northstar Grassman and the Ravens” Sandy Denny (1971)

‘Moon, Turn the Tides….Gently, Gently Away’ from “Electric Ladyland” Jimi Hendrix (1968)

‘Here Comes the Flood’ from “Peter Gabriel 1” (1977)

‘The Same Deep Water as You’ from “Disintegration” The Cure (1989)

‘Rain from Heaven’ from “Gift” by the Sisterhood (1986)

Reading

Munya Andrews, Journey into Dreamtime, Ultimate World Publishing, 2019, ISBN 9781925884050

Petru Popescu, The Last Wave, Arrow Books, 1978, ISBN 0099177900