The Last Wave

Gareth Higgins on THE LAST WAVE

Richard Chamberlain’s recent death provoked me to watch The Last Wave, Peter Weir’s film about a white man confronted by Indigenous Australian prophecy. Chamberlain’s reputation - as Dr Kildare or miniseries heartthrob in the original Shōgun and the romantic religious melodrama The Thorn Birds (he had a habit of playing priests) - belied a diverse and fascinating career in cinema, television, and theatre. The progenitor of medical soap opera eye candy, he also showed up with what might be called “gracious heft” in films for Richard Lester (perhaps the most unsung of seriocomic directors), mad genius Ken Russell, and even David Lynch. The one time I saw him in person was after a screening of The Perfect Family, another clergy role. It was a Q&A for a large ensemble; there was pathos in the fact that nobody asked him - a man who at the height of Kildare was receiving 12,000 letters a week - a single question.