THE MISSION (1986)
From Friday, April 11, 2008
Directed by Roland Joffe, written by Robert Bolt, starring Jeremy Irons, Robert DeNiro, Aidan Quinn and Liam Neeson,and featuring an epic score by Ennio Morricone.
In the 18th century Spain and Portugal vied for land in South America. Father Gabriel (Irons) a Jesuit missionary from Spain, ventures deep into the Amazon rainforest to convert Indians and protect them from Portuguese slave traders. One of those traders, Rodrigo Mendoza (DeNiro) is an outlaw unable to return to Portugal. Mendoza is offered asylum and salvation by Father Gabriel if he will lay down his sword and help build a Mission in the jungle. When Spain loses the Mission’s land to Portugal, Gabriel and Mendoza defy the Church and both their nations over the fate of the Indians.
Never mind Christopher Menges’ Oscar winning cinematography. Never mind Morricone’s BAFTA and Golden Globe winning score. Never mind the litany of other nominations or that THE MISSION won the Golden Palm at Cannes. 41 minutes into this film DeNiro captures, without a line of dialogue, a true spiritual epiphany. It’s exhausting and beautiful and I promise you will never see anything like it in any other movie. Even if the rest of the movie sucked, this moment would justify its existence … but the rest of it is pretty impressive too!
It’ll finish Wednesday,
Love, Jim
TRAILER
AFTER THOUGHT FROM 7.27.10
I am not a Christian. I am a hopeful agnostic who’s faith has long been shaken more by men who claim to speak for God than by anything I read in The Bible. The story of THE MISSION is an experience that strengthens my faith by helping me define it in a more positive and less judgmental way. There is a sparseness to the filmmaking that aids the audience’s focus on the story. Joffe refrains from elaborate camera set-ups, allowing the beauty of the Brazilian and Argentine rivers and forests to appear as they would to anyone entering them for their first time. Though Morricone’s score occasionally soars with a full choir, it is rendered most often with an oboe and a pan flute. The presence of those two simple instruments is so natural that one could be forgiven for thinking “yes, of course, this must be what the wind sounds like there!” It is through having all these elements in such perfect concert that moments like Mendoza’s personal enlightenment can become a transcendental experience for the entire audience.