This is an exceptional film

Rating: 10/10 (21 August 2007)

I first saw The Mission when I was sixteen years old and Ennio Morricone's haunting score as a backdrop to the visual leitmotif of Iguaçu Falls captured by the cinematography of Chris Menges's persist as some of my favorite cinematic moments. Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons successfully portray Jesuits in Paraguay prior to the Charles III's expulsion of the order from the Americas in 1767. The movie succeeds on various levels and perhaps is the best movie that Hollywood produced in the 1980's apart from Amadeus and the Last Emperor.
This movie summarily is a morality play in which passive and violent resistance are contrasted. Robert Bolt, the script writer, avoids subscribing to either approach, but intelligently constructs a plot in which the conflict centers around whether violence against repression or passive resistance are a priori. In the end, neither of these approaches is sufficient and the Portuguese army slaughters the Guarani. I can't help but think that liberation theologians like Archbishop Oscar Romero, who the Salvadorian government murdered, influenced Bolt's consideration of this topic.
As I perused other user comments, I believe critics of this film are turned off by the "jolted dialogue" and the "under-developed characterization". In truth, the dialogue is relatively sparse compared to other Hollywood movies and relies upon visual and musical motifs to communicate developments in the plot and characters--our indebtedness to Shakespeare's dialog driven plays perhaps prejudices us against other forms of communication. The use of apt imagery with terse but effective dialogue results in more than adequate character development in the Jesuits.
The movie does not develop the Guarani and can be accused of reifying these people as noble savages. However the movie is about Jesuits and both native and non-native laymen are backdrops to the development of the conflicts exhibited in the priests played by DeNiro and Irons.
I certainly recommend this movie as a great drama that presents interesting questions in a formally pleasing way.