''The Last Wave'' (also released in the United States as ''Black Rain'') is a 1977 Australian

mystery Mystery, The Mystery, Mysteries or The Mysteries may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters *Mystery, a cat character in ''Emily the Strange'' *Mystery, a seahorse that SpongeBob SquarePants adopts in the episode " My Pre ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by

Peter Weir Peter Lindsay Weir ( ; born 21 August 1944) is a retired Australian film director. He is known for directing films crossing various genres over forty years with films such as '' Picnic at Hanging Rock'' (1975), '' Gallipoli'' (1981), '' The Y ...

.''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' film review; 16 November 1977, p. 21. It is about a white solicitor in

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

whose seemingly normal life is disrupted after he takes on a murder case and discovers that he shares a strange, mystical connection with the small group of local

Aboriginal people There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

accused of the crime.

Plot

The film opens with a montage of scenes of daily life in Australia in the 1970s— a rural school in the desert with children playing, the main street of an

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than Australian bush, the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastli ...

town, a traffic jam in the city— all being affected by unusually adverse weather conditions that suddenly appear. These include heavy rainfall followed by unusually large chunks of hail breaking through the windows of the school injuring students, a frog infestation, and other anomalies. Only the local Aboriginal people seem to recognise the

cosmological Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...

significance of these weather phenomena. During one of these freak rainstorms in

, an altercation occurs among a group of Aboriginal people in a

pub A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the late 17th century, to differentiate private ho ...

, which results in a mysterious drowning death. At the

coroner's inquest A coroner is a government or judicial official who is empowered to conduct or order an inquest into the manner or cause of death. The official may also investigate or confirm the identity of an unknown person who has been found dead within th ...

, the death is ruled a homicide and four of the Aboriginal men are accused of murder. Through the Australian Legal Aid system, a lawyer named David Burton (

Richard Chamberlain George Richard Chamberlain (March 31, 1934 – March 29, 2025) was an American actor and singer who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show '' Dr. Kildare'' (1961–1966). He subsequently earned the title "King of the Mini- ...

) is procured for their defence. Due to internal politics and the eschatological divide between the European settlers and Indigenous people, the circumstances by which he was contacted and retained are unusual in that his law practice is

corporate taxation A corporate tax, also called corporation tax or company tax or corporate income tax, is a type of direct tax levied on the income or capital of corporations and other similar legal entities. The tax is usually imposed at the national level, but i ...

and not

criminal defence In the field of criminal law, there are a variety of conditions that will tend to negate elements of a crime (particularly the ''intent'' element), known as defenses. The label may be apt in jurisdictions where the ''accused'' may be assigned some ...

. He is reluctant at first but is intrigued by the challenge and takes on the case. Soon his professional and personal life begin to unravel. Burton starts having bizarre dreams involving running water and drowned corpses. In another, he is visited in his home by one of the incarcerated Aboriginals, named Chris Lee (

David Gulpilil David Dhalatnghu Gulpilil (1 July 1953 – 29 November 2021) was an Australian actor and dancer. He was known for his roles in the films Walkabout (film), ''Walkabout'' (1971), Storm Boy (1976 film), ''Storm Boy'' (1976), ''The Last Wave'' (1 ...

), whom he had never met. When later introduced to the four accused men, he recognises Lee and begins to sense an otherworldly connection to him and to the increasingly strange weather phenomena besetting the city. His dreams intensify along with his obsession with the murder case. He comes to suspect that the murder was an Aboriginal tribal execution in which a curse is put on the victim simply by pointing a bone at him. Lee refuses to admit that he is tribal or reveal anything about the murder, but tells Burton that his dreams have meaning because he is ''Mulkurul''; descended from a race of spirits who came from the rising sun bringing sacred objects with them. After meeting with the shaman of Lee's tribe and learning more about Aboriginal practices and the concept of

Dreamtime The Dreaming, also referred to as Dreamtime, is a term devised by early anthropologists to refer to a religio-cultural worldview attributed to Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology, Australian Aboriginal mythology. It was originally u ...

as a parallel world of existence, Burton comes to believe that his dreams and the strange heavy rain bode as signs of a coming

apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre originating in Judaism in the centuries following the Babylonian exile (597–587 BCE) but persisting in Christianity and Islam. In apocalypse, a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a ...

. After another intense dream, Burton senses danger. He persuades his wife to leave the city with their children right before a torrential storm causes a flooding disaster. In the chaos of the flood, Lee manages to escape from prison to find Burton and take him down through subterranean tunnels under the city which lead to a sacred Aboriginal ritual site. Lee shows him the entrance to another ancient chamber nearby that is strangely familiar to him; Burton is sent off to find the answers that he seeks. In the chamber, Burton sees a painting on the ceiling depicting the arrival of European explorers from South America and a calendrical prophecy of a cataclysmic oceanic disaster. He finds a collection of ancient relics, a decayed corpse of a man wearing medieval Western garments, and a stone mask. After close inspection, he realises this bears a face identical to his own. He collects as many relics as he can carry but is suddenly confronted by the tribe's

shaman Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into ...

shouting and lunging at him. They struggle and Burton kills the shaman with one of the stone relics. He tries to find his way back to the surface through the sewer tunnels, but he loses the relics along the way. He finally emerges through a drain pipe; exhausted, he collapses on the beach and stares at the horizon. Then we see the look of both shock and acceptance on his face as the screen is filled by footage of a surreal towering ocean wave. It remains unclear whether this is reality or Burton's final apocalyptic premonition.

Cast

as David Burton * Olivia Hamnett as Annie Burton *

as Chris Lee * Fred Parslow as Reverend Burton * Vivean Gray as Dr Whitburn * Nandjiwarra Amagula as Charlie * Walter Amagula as Gerry Lee * Roy Bara as Larry * Cedrick Lalara as Lindsey * Morris Lalara as Jacko * Peter Carroll as Michael Zeadler * Athol Compton as Billy Corman * Hedley Cullen as Judge * Michael Duffield as Andrew Potter *

Wallas Eaton Wallas Eaton (18 February 1917 – 3 November 1995), sometimes credited as Wallace Eaton or Wallis Eaton, was an English film, radio, television and theatre actor. He is perhaps best remembered for his voice roles between 1949 and 1960 in th ...

as Morgue Doctor * Jo England as Babysitter * John Frawley as Policeman

Production

In an interview on the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...

DVD release, director Peter Weir explains that the film explores the question, "What if someone with a very pragmatic approach to life experienced a premonition?" Finance was provided by the

Australian Film Commission The Australian Film Commission (AFC) was an Australian government agency was founded in 1975 with a mandate to promote the creation and distribution of films in Australia as well as to preserve the country's film history. It also had a product ...

($120,000), the

South Australian Film Corporation South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC) is a South Australian Government statutory corporation established in 1972 to engage in film production and promote the film industry, located in Adelaide, South Australia. The Adelaide Studios are managed ...

($120,000), Janus Films (US$50,000) and

United Artists United Artists (UA) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford an ...

($350,000). US based writer Petru Popescu worked on the script. Weir considered two Australian actors to play the lead but eventually decided to go with Richard Chamberlain. Filming started 24 February 1977 and took place in Adelaide and Sydney.David Stratton, ''The Last New Wave: The Australian Film Revival'', Angus & Robertson, 1980 p75-77

Reception and accolades

''The Last Wave'' was met with positive reviews from critics and audiences, earning an 87% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

. The film also holds an 85/100 on

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

. The film was entered in the 6th Tehran International Film Festival in November 1977, and won the Golden Ibex prize.

Release

Box office

''The Last Wave'' was not as popular as Weir's 1975 film '' Picnic at Hanging Rock'', but still grossed $1,258,000 at the box office in Australia. United Artists decided not to release the film in the US but it was picked up by World Northal for U.S. distribution.

Home media

In the United States and Canada, ''The Last Wave'' was released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

by the

as spine #142 and is available on their bespoke streaming service, The Criterion Channel. In Australia, ''The Last Wave'' was remastered and released onto DVD &

Blu-ray Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...

Umbrella Entertainment Umbrella Entertainment is a privately-held Australian film production and distribution company that began operating in 2001. It is based in Kew, Victoria. Umbrella Entertainment manages the theatrical, physical, and digital releases of Australia ...

in September 2020 as the first film in the ''Sunburnt Screens'' collection. Umbrella later re-released the film onto 4K Blu-ray in September 2023.

References

External links

*
''The Last Wave'' at AllMovie
* *
''The Last Wave''
at Oz Movies
''The Last Wave''
an essay by Diane Jacobs at the

''The Last Wave''
National Film and Sound Archive, Australia {{DEFAULTSORT:Last Wave, The 1977 films 1970s mystery thriller films Apocalyptic films Films about reincarnation Films directed by Peter Weir Films set in Sydney Films shot in Adelaide Films shot in Flinders Ranges Films shot in Sydney Films about race and ethnicity Australian mystery thriller films Films about Aboriginal Australians Films set on boats Films about dreams 1977 drama films 1970s English-language films English-language mystery thriller films United Artists films