The Mission Is A Brilliant And Excellent Film

Rating: 10/10 (28 September 2012)

The Mission is a drama about the experiences of a Jesuit missionary in 18th century South America.It stars Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons together with Ray McAnally, Aidan Quinn, Cherie Lunghi and Liam Neeson. It was written by Robert Bolt and directed by Roland Joffé.
The film examines the events surrounding the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, when Spain ceded part of South America to Portugal, and turns this episode into an allegory for struggles of Latin America. Two European forces are on hand to win the South American natives over to imperialist ways. The plunderers want to extract riches and slaves from the New World. The missionaries, on the other hand, want to convert the Indians to Christianity and win over their souls. Mendoza is an exploiter dabbling in the slave trade. But after he kills his brother Felipe in a fit of rage, he seeks redemption and calls upon the missionaries to assist him. After repeatedly climbing a cliff with a heavy weight as penance, Mendoza finds redemption and becomes a devout missionary at a settlement run by Gabriel. The missionaries want to promote a new society in which the natives will live together in peace with the Spanish and the Portuguese. But this concept frightens the royal governors, who would rather enslave the natives than encourage peaceful coexistence between the Europeans and the Indians. They order the mission to be burned to the ground. But this event causes a rift between Gabriel, who wants to pray and pursue peaceful resistance, and Mendoza, who wants to take up arms and fight the Europeans.
Featuring a majestic score by Ennio Morricone and lush Oscar-winning cinematography by Chris Menges,the Mission is shot through with piercing, haunting imagery, pictures of enduring imaginative force.Also,it is a rich and thought-provoking. It contains moving images of despair, penance, and redemption that are among the most evocative ever filmed.The performances are also great especially that of De Niro,who effective as a callous soldier who kills his own brother and then turns to a missionary to oversee his penance and conversion to the clergy. The narrative and dramatic forces at work in this movie should be more stirring and powerful than they are but unfortunately,it lacks doesn't as it is too detached for the viewer to feel concern with the events and characters in the story.But that doesn't take that much from it as it remains a brilliant and excellent film.