BLACK RAIN (1977) AUSTRALIAN FILM

BLACK RAIN, also released as THE LAST WAVE (1977) – This was Aussie director Peter Weir’s eerie follow-up to Picnic at Hanging Rock from 1975. If you found the excellent 1975 movie perplexing, Black Rain will redefine that word for you.

It’s pure Peter Weir but if you want outside comparisons think of an X-Files episode crossed with Prince of Darkness and directed by David Lynch. Australia is suddenly struck by bizarre weather phenomena like weapons-grade torrential downpours and huge hailstones that break windows and leave occupants bloodied.

A plague of frogs, oddly dark skies and then a multi-day rain event follow, providing an otherworldly background to the story in the foreground. 

Richard Chamberlain stars as tax lawyer David Burton in that story. He and his wife Annie (Olivia Hamnett) live in a small outback town. As a result of Australia’s Legal Aid policy, David is assigned to defend four Aborigines in a murder case even though he hasn’t done criminal trial work in years.

He’s the nearest Legal Aid lawyer in the area, plus there are indications that the government doesn’t really care if the Aborigines get proper representation. Draftee David dives into his law books to refresh his familiarity with criminal law.   

While brushing up in the days ahead, our main character also meets the men he’s defending. The quartet of accused murderers are less than cooperative and seem to be withholding information.

The defendants stand accused of murdering a fellow Aborigine and David begins to suspect that they killed the victim in a ritual related to the supernatural weather afflicting the area. The lawyer also feels an odd link to Chris (Aborigine actor David Gulpilil), one of the men on trial.

SPOILERS: 

Amid continuing rain and much mystical material tied into Aboriginal Dreamtime and visions of global apocalypse, David Burton comes to realize he is a descendant of ancient pre-Columbian travelers from the Americas.

Chris knows that David’s distant forebears brought supernatural relics with them, relics that they presented as gifts to the Aborigines of the time. The “gifts” tie into the impending apocalypse but it’s never made clear how. 

David eventually sends his wife Annie and their children away to higher ground because there is local flooding from the relentless rain. The Aborigine Chris leads the increasingly confused David on a search through underground caverns inhabited by his people long ago.

David finds the “gifts” his ancestors brought with them and tries to take them back to the surface in vague hopes of fending off the imminent global disaster though he has no idea how. The lawyer loses Chris and the objects on his way out of the labyrinthine cave system.   

Empty handed and exhausted, David finally succeeds in reaching the surface, emerging on a beach. For the final shot of the film, our protagonist stares in shock at the sight of an approaching tsunami so enormous it will destroy the Australian continent. 

And that is the finish, providing another ending as enigmatic as Weir’s finale to Picnic at Hanging Rock. What did it all mean? What causes the apocalypse? Would the ancient relics have helped at all? It’s up to the viewer.

The visions and Chris’ Aboriginal interpretations indicated that the entire world would end but we don’t know if the rest of the world gets wiped out by tsunamis or by some other means.

Black Rain/ The Last Wave leaves a viewer pondering the implications of everything they’ve just seen. I’m okay with that in this case because I feel Peter Weir was true to his vision and wasn’t just slapping together a bunch of enigmatic nonsense to try seeming “deep.”

Richard Chamberlain does what he can in a role that limits him to being baffled or frightened by most of what he experiences. To close on a light-hearted note, this movie was so far out there that nobody thought it was based on a true story, like happened with Picnic at Hanging Rock.

FOR MY REVIEW OF IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS CLICK HERE.