Viewers will find the film providing a good starting point for discussion...

Rating: 7/10 (22 July 2003)

The Jesuits were to be teachers, educators in philosophy and religion... They became the intellectual elite of the Catholic Church, adviser to the kings and queens of Europe, and involved with the forest Indians...
In Roland Joffe's motion picture, their purpose is to convert and to civilize the untamed population... But while the Spanish sees the Guarani Indians as a potential converts for Christianity, the Portuguese considers them as nothing more than slave labor... Tension immediately arises among the Spaniards, the Portuguese, the Church, the Jesuits, and the Guarani...
The film examines the events surrounding the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, when Spain ceded part of South America to Portugal... As you may know, Portugal, eventually built a trading empire so dynamic that it would eventually push out into the Atlantic and set the stage for Spain's historic expeditions of conquest... By the Treaty, the Jesuits were to leave the New World... But neither the priests nor their flock wished to leave...
There is nothing great in politics, no matter how it is delivered, and for the noble natives, the consequences are no less dramatic... The collision of cultures had it enormous consequences... And the film is no simple account of heroes and villains, or victors and victims... It is simply a dramatic, sweeping tale of the complex blending two peoples into one...
Cardinal Altamirano (Ray McAnally) is the papal legate in charge of the Catholic activities of the South American territories... He faces a political dilemma: If the Catholic Church leaves the Jesuits as defenders of the Indians in South America, the Vatican might be at odds with the crowns of Europe, and the Catholic states might begin to resist the power of the Pope...
Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) is a conqueror without sword against brutality and oppression... He converts the native peoples to Christianity, and defends their rights and beliefs against the European powers... His dream is to see a community in which Christian natives living in peace with the Spanish and Portuguese...
Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert De Niro), is an ex-slaver turned Jesuit priest, who wants to defend the Indians by guns against the merciless cruelties and butcheries of the slave dealers, and ward off the ravages of the Portuguese...