I remember seeing this when it was released, in a theater in Palo Alto, and not expecting much. I mean -- an Australian movie? Chips Rafferty would be in it somewhere. But it finally got to me. Here's a scene. Richard Chamberlain is sitting cross legged on the floor of a shabby apartment in Sidney, facing an Australian aborigine elder named Charlie.

Chamberlain: "You were outside my house last night. You frightened my wife. Who are you?" And Charlie at a deliberate pace replies, "Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?. . . . Are you a fish? Are you a snake? Are you a man? . . . . Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?" It's a stunning scene, shot all in close ups, with Chamberlain's blandly handsome face filling the screen in opposition to Charlie's black, broad-nosed, unyielding bearded visage.

The two guys couldn't be more different and this film is the story of how Chamberlain accidentally stumbles from his humdrum lawyerly existence into the inexplicable, almost unspeakable, mysteries of Charlie's world.

I don't think I'll go on much about the plot. It's kind of an apocalyptic tale. But I must say, whoever did the research on Australian aboriginal belief systems should get an A plus. They've got everything in here, from pointing the bone to the dream time, a kind of parallel universe in which dreams are real. It's an extremely spooky movie without any musical stings or splendiferous special effects. Charly's world simply begins to intrude into Chamberlain's dreams, for reasons never made entirely clear.

If there's a problem with the script, that's it. Nothing is ever made entirely clear. Does Chamberlain, who seems to have some extraordinary rapport with the aborigines, die in the last wave? Do the aborigines? Does the entirety of Sidney? The basic premise is a little hard to accept too, though granted that this is a fantasy. The aborigines are invested with the kind of spiritual power that Americans bestow on American Indians, whereas the fact is that mythology is mythology and while one may be more complex or satisfying -- more elegant and beautiful, if you like -- mythology is still an attempt to transcend an ordinary, demanding, and sometimes disappointing physical existence. The mysticism of Charlie is more convincing that the miracles of Moses in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," but they're brothers under the skin.

But I don't care about that. Taken as a film, this one is pretty good, and it's especially important for marking the celebrity of the director, Peter Weir, and the Australian film industry. This was the first of a great wave of films from the antipodes, some of them raucous, like "Mad Max," and some subtle and dramatic, like "Lantana." I like Weir's stuff, which resembles Nicholas Roeg's in being pregnant with subliminal dread. Try "Picnic at Hanging Rock" for an example of how to make a truly chilling movie with not a drop of blood.

Sydney lawyer David Burton (Richard Chamberlain) has new clients in four Aboriginal men charged with a murder of one of their own. David is haunted by nightmares of the torrential rains and Aboriginal mysticism. It is all part of an apocalyptic premonition of a drowning world.

This Peter Weir Australian film concentrates more on the Aboriginal mysticism. It is somewhat out of my league. It's unknownable and the film shines a white man's light on it. The drawings seem more influenced by the Mayans. I don't really know what's going on half the time. Of course, Burton is just as clueless. Weir is diving in the deep end. The underground encounter needs more visual surrealism. There is a wave at the end which needs something to give it scale. This touches on the surreal mysticism but it has no tension.

A Sydney lawyer (Richard Chamberlain) defends five Aborigines in a ritualized taboo murder and in the process learns disturbing things about himself.

Besides being a great film with a legal angle and a murder mystery angle, this is a great look at different cultures (particularly aborigine culture),how they interact, and the concept of "dream time" which may not be known to white Australians and certainly is unknown in the United States.

Peter Weir, more than any other director, has really brought Australia to the world and showed its best sides and why we should care.