'The Last Wave'

Three of Peter Weir's pre-Hollywood films, when he was filming in his home country of Australia, made it to the 1,001 list. The Hollywood films -- Witness, Dead Poet's Society, Master and Commander, The Truman Show -- made money, but almost zero critical attention. Hollywood sucks.

One thing I can't figure out is the aborigine's influence in Australia. For all the slavery and racism in the United States, the influence and role of blacks is large and nearly indefinable. It's like a planet.

Being divorced from the situation, I can't tell and watching films isn't helping things. The aborigines seem tribal, simple and mostly living outside of white society. In fact, The Last Wave deals with a Sydney lawyer, who is defending three aborigines in a homicide case that deals with the idea that there are aborigines still living in a tribal culture and those that live in the city.

The lawyer -- dealing with premonitions and dreams -- finds himself wrapped up in this mystical voodoo. I would imagine that there is sort of an inherent fear of the whites in Australia of the aborigines. The blacks in the United States clearly aren't indigenous. In Australia, the whites came in and honed in on the existing culture. They're in someone else's back yard and that's uncomfortable no matter how control you are in. Maybe that's the point of the film.