As Burton's investigation continues, his clients make his work difficult by refusing to disclose the true events surrounding the murder.Īfter Chris starts to appear in his dreams, Burton is convinced that the Aborigine was killed in a tribal ritual because "he saw too much", though Chris refuses to acknowledge this in court. When he invites one of his clients Chris Lee (David Gulpilil) to his home for dinner, he is disturbed to find that he is the subject of an inquiry by Chris and his friend Charlie (Nadjiwarra Amagula), an enigmatic Aborigine sorcerer involved with the defendants. Burton and his wife Annie (Olivia Hamnet) study books about the Aborigines and learn about the role of dreams in the tribal traditions. As violent and unusual weather continue with episodes of black rain and mud falling from the sky, the contrast between the facile scientific explanations of the phenomenon and the intuitive understanding of the natives is made clear.
Water plays an important symbolic role in the film from the opening sequence in which a sudden thunder and hailstorm interrupts a peaceful school recess to Burton's discovery that his bathtub is overflowing and water is pouring down his steps. From the start, Burton is drawn deeper and deeper into a strange web of visions and symbols where the line between real time and "dream time" evaporates. Weir shows how white society considers the native beliefs to be primitive superstitions and believes that since they are living in the cities and have been "domesticated", their tribal laws and culture no longer apply. Taking up where Picnic at Hanging Rock left off, the film goes deeper into exploring the unknown and, in the process, shows the gulf between two cultures who live side by side but lack understanding of each others culture and traditions.
Richard Chamberlain is David Burton, a tax lawyer living in Sydney, Australia who is drawn into a murder trial defending five Aboriginal men accused of murdering a fellow native in Peter Weir's apocalyptic 1977 thriller The Last Wave.
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