Skip the movie, buy the soundtrack album

Rating: Null/10 (20 December 2010)

Missionaries, slave traders, and colonizers mingle in this dishonest, naive and simplistic tale, in which a band of monks defend Native Indians from marauding Europeans in 18th Century South America.
The film oozes the kind of bourgeois anger of Oliver Stone, beating us over the head with "messages" and placating us with nice cinematography, romantic primitivism and cosy Christianity.
The film was produced by David Puttnam, a guy who specializes in making films which pretend to say the right thing (indictments of injustices), but actually say the reverse. Take "Chariots of Fire", a film about social biases and anti-Semitism which everyone remembers instead for hunky, blonde haired runners running majestically in slow motion. Puttnam's films consistently seem to say the right things, whilst actually reinforcing something else, and so it's no surprise that "The Mission" bashes Colonialism, but not if it's done right and not if we forget that European religious enterprise was just as guilty as Portugal, France, Spain and England's economic apparatus in spreading disease, havoc, death, famine and political self renunciation.
Some complain that the film shows little interest in the Indians and focuses instead on three Christian martyrs, but such is the norm. What's really annoying is the way the villains of this picture sanction the overthrowing of missions and tribes whilst constantly professing, through various monologues and conversations, that they knew better. That they knew what they were doing was wrong and would have ramifications.
All bad historical message movies do this, neglecting to "show" the causes of history/behaviour "at the time" in favour for characters who impossibly possess a very modern vantage point which allows for false reflections and reconciliation. It's the Ridley Scott, Stephen Spielberg, Edward Zwick style of history.
Still, if one is willing to bathe in pretty signs and sounds, be distracted by money (ie expensive location photography) and switch off one's brain, there are several good things on display. Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson play a pair of affecting Jesuit priests, Robert De Niro at times looks handsome (this is where he stopped acting), Ennio Morricone's score is divine and the film possesses 3 sublime scenes. These three scenes are worth suffering through the film.
6.5/10 – Worth one viewing. See Pontecorvo's "Burn!" instead.