an impressive portrait of a fatal, atrocious historical affair

Rating: 8/10 (10 July 2005)

The plot was told often enough here; so I must not repeat it. It is loosely based on the drama "Das heilige Experiment" (The holy experiment) by Fritz Hochwaelder (which is very remarkable in another view, too: there is not a single female character in it).
The gorgeous scenery and camera work, Morricone's aptly supporting music, and the good acting have been mentioned, too.
It was said that the psychic whereabouts of the leading characters (I agree partially) and of the natives (I agree totally) were displayed too little.
But in this movie, this is not very important, because the fate of the leading characters - though they carry the action - is not relevant: the crucial point is the fate of the Indians, who are sold into slavery by one catholic European government to another, with the approval of the pope who denies them to be real human beings. THIS is the outrageously inhuman pivotal point. The lead characters are just (more or less) idealistic pawns in the big atrocity; their private woes are trivial in relation to weight of the historical decision. So the film should have been centered more on the part of the dirty political and religious pundits, and on the battle of the Indians against cruel oppression. I even plead for more explicit gore here (which I rarely do), to make things clearer for watchers who learn more by their senses than by abstract reasoning. Here it is justified (like in "Soldier blue"); this is not just a flick to kill time with, or to feast on violence, as "Die Hard #17" and the like. Instead, "The mission" has turned a bit of a de Niro festival.
For this, and for some weaknesses in the narrative flow, I give it just 8 instead of 10 points.
The matter of this film is not just an episode of history, long gone by and dead. It concerns the role of the catholic church in politics. There are parallels: just as the then pope let the Indians down in their desperate struggle, thereby securing his mundane power, pope John Paul II stopped and depraved of power the exponents of the "Theology of Liberation" in Latin America like Gustavo Gutiérrez, Dom Helder Camera, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, Ernesto Cardenal, Leonardo Boff, who felt urged to preach to not only pray but ACT in favour of the poor and miserable. (If you don't know what I mean, just see "Romero", which is about bishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was even shot dead for his commitment to the poor.) So the wealth of the rich is secured, and the poor keep living a bad life.
The Jesuits, who - after a changing course of sometimes being the popes's elite fighters - had developed to becoming the catholic church's dedicated exponents of struggling for a socially better world some decades ago, culminating under their highly respected leader Don Pedro Arrupe, were depraved of power by John Paul II, in favour of and with the help of Opus Dei, a conservative order whose work brings things to get conserved as they are.
And Joseph Ratzinger, the new pope - well, he was John Paul II.'s "right hand" for decades.