The Last Wave

"A dream is a shadow...of something real"
"What are dreams?" asks lawyer David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) of his client Chris Lee (David Gulpilil), an Australian Aborigine on trial for manslaughter.

"I will show you a dream," he responds. "A dream is a shadow...of something real."

And, when you think about it, so are films. They are literally shadows of something real - recorded on transparent strips and projected onto screens with bright lights. Watching a good film is like dreaming while awake.

Peter Weir's The Last Wave has very much the texture of a beautiful, disturbing dream. Before going Hollywood and losing his artistic teeth, he made evocative little gems like this one - full of unformed dread and pregnant with the possibility of mythic revelation.

The plot concerns a routine bar fight between some Aborigines in Sydney, Australia, that ends in the death of one of them. Lawyer David Burton is called in as a Public Defender. No big deal - except that the case seems to...

"Are You A Fish? Are You A Man? Are you Melkur?" ~ Beware Taxicab Drivers With Boney Sticks
David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) is a well respected lawyer and family man living and practicing in Sydney, Australia. Of Occidental origin and Anglican faith, David has never been one overly concerned with the intangible, unexplainable mysteries of life. However his predictable, concrete world has recently been disrupted by a series of vivid and disturbing dreams that have called into question the very nature of reality. Unable to sleep for fear of more night visions he buries himself in his work.

His Stepfather, Reverend Burton (Frederick Parslow), notices the change in David's demeanor during a weekend visit with the family and questions his Stepson on the matter. David confides in him with the statement, "I'm having bad dreams." As a conversation ensues David is reminded of a series of repetitive nightmares he had as a child. He would awaken in the morning to tell his parents that taxicab drivers came to him in dreams and took him on long drives during the night...

Eerie, evocative, and haunting
Our modern, rational culture floats like a small boat on a huge, dark ocean of unguessable depth. Richard Chamberlain, in perhaps his best role ever, is a lawyer specializing in the arid technicalities of corporate taxation who is, by chance [well no, not really, as it turns out] drawn into the Shamanic world of the tribal aborigines who, unknown to most people, still inhabit Sydney, Australia. Little by little, the comfortable everyday world in which Chamberlain's character lived starts to dissolve, or at least become transparent, before the unguessably ancient and very different world around it. Meanwhile nature is acting very strange, paralleling the breakdown in Chamberlain's character. A wonderful movie, full of rich metaphors and images (including the final one) that remain in the mind long after the film is over. Even the soundtrack: some aboriginal instruments, some very nervous-sounding Australian-Irish dance music, and some spare but oh-so-telling chords, can stay...

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