Weather Or Not
A fellow cine-blogger's recent post-Katrina entry made a laundry-list comparison between the imagery in director Zack Snyder's not-too-shabby zombie remake and the eerily rhyming news footage of desperate, hungry hordes of survivors in New Orleans. At a surface level, it might seem cold or uncouth to juxtapose the sensory emotions of real-life tragedy with man-made entertainments, but one could also argue how vital it is to capture images in the first place: film has often been a vessel for both neighborly empathy and understanding the abstract.
So if last year's Dawn of the Dead resembles the hurricane's aftermath, then Australian auteur Peter Weir's The Last Wave (1977) could be the apocalyptic final days leading up to Mother Nature's wrath. Ostensibly the story of a Westerner finding his predetermined fate amongst tribal aborigines, The Last Wave tells the ominous tale of David Burton (Richard Chamberlain, whose face was described by Weir in 1979 as having a useful "alien quality"), a Sydney corporate tax barrister who finds himself defending five Aborigines on an inexplicable murder rap of one of their own.
Strong courtroom and class-struggle plottings intertwined with tribal-secret conspiracies make for intelligent drama, but after his sublimely haunting Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), one might deduce that Weir was more fascinated in constructing tony atmospheric horror, the single best reason to seek out this didgeridoo- rumbling gem. As David investigates his case with vigorous curiosity, his own consciousness becomes the conduit to nightmarish visions involving demonized waters. Does he have second sight into tsunamis, hurricanes and floods, or is he merely processing a vivid form of anxiety?
What's truly amazing about The Last Wave is Weir's robust dexterity in deconstructing the many textures and demeanors of H2O itself. The setting's freak nighttime storms hold gorgeously menacing compositions, yet the film seems to view all fluidity as multi-faceted. Water can be simultaneously benign and treacherous, and not just in those lingering dream sequences... During a torrential "black rain," a man shields himself with his umbrella while sipping from a water fountain. An aboriginal houseguest asks for a glass of water while a downpour frightens the outside air. Kids frolic through the garden sprinkler under the dangerous clap of thunder. 
Was Weir drawing out correlations between that which could destroy us, yet makes up a majority percentage of our bodies? How somber must we heed the irony that we're vulnerable to that which we need to live?
This cinephiliac has ulterior motives in not revealing more of the narrative's mechanics -- partially because it would be a shame to ruin some timeless surprises, but more as an open-ended experiment to newcomers: Does blurring context to this lucid liquid landscape heighten its visceral potency when held up to today's headlines? From its hailstorm-in-a- classroom opener to its claustrophobic sewer-tunnel denouement and ambiguously aqua-logged ending, are you more or less intrigued to see The Last Wave based only on a comparative reading against relevant visual horrors? Weeding out the sick-minded gawkers who relish traumatic images, how does reality affect your film-watching habits? Are you all romantic comedies while grappling with world crisis, or are you prone to turn to provocative cinema to find better footholds in your own comprehensive reasoning? At least answer this, am I being too heady about a picture starring adventurer Allan Quatermain?
COINCIDENTALLY: Weir's more recent The Truman Show (1998) -- another film exploring the dark underbelly of reality -- ends with Jim Carrey's unwitting reality-TV star escaping through a secret door in the middle of an ocean. While a friend and I discussed yesterday how the film could have been better (a) without an audience- demander like Carrey, or (b) if the aforementioned conclusion took place halfway through its running time (imagine the possibilites of Truman seeing the REAL world after a lifetime in The Real World: is it utopian? dystopian? can he ever go back?), it's amusing to wonder if Weir took a mental swim in that parallel. Maybe life's remaining answers can be found in a shoreline gaze...
