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| Thursday, March 17, 2005 05:39 PM |
| Oh, That Kind of Mission... |
 by Fëanor |
Let's talk about The Mission. This was the film my friend mouserobot brought to movie night last night. It was not exactly the fun, exciting movie I was hoping for (as Cyn has already pointed out), but I liked it very much, nonetheless. It's based on actual events in and around a series of Spanish Jesuit missions in South America during the 18th century. The native South American Indian population resists the missionaries violently at first, but eventually find the missions a place of security and peace. That is, until the pope's emissaries and the Spanish and Portuguese governments decide they want the Indians and the Jesuits out, and everybody gets slaughtered.
Movie night is rarely quiet time; in fact, it usually involves a large group of people simultaneously shouting horribly offensive jokes at the TV screen. But during the last quarter of The Mission, this group was hushed into absolute silence by the brutal and moving depiction of the Jesuits' and Indians' vain attempts to oppose (by both peaceful methods and violent ones) the armies who had come to oust them.
Visually, The Mission is absolutely stunning, featuring amazing natural scenery, great, naturalistic costumes and make-up, and fantastic camera work and direction. The acting is also excellent. It was easy to forget Jeremy Irons's embarassing turn as Profion in the D&D movie while watching his moving portrayal of Father Gabriel, a determined and principled member of the Jesuit order. Then there's the always incomparable Robert De Niro as the mercenary and slaver Rodrigo Mendoza, who is converted--his violent ways (temporarily) calmed--by Gabriel. And Aidan Quinn and Liam Neeson handle their small roles with professional power. There are also many, many actual South American natives playing the Indians.
And Ennio Morricone's (hah, I spelled his name right on the first try!) score is fantastic, as usual. Really my only problem with the film is when it makes use of words. The dialogue is occassionally preachy, awkward, and clumsily obvious. The end of the film in particular is really shrill and didactic, with an unnecessary final line of dialogue, and one of those superfluous text epilogues that tells us what we should have learned from all this, and even quotes the Bible. And in fact, poppy tells me that Catholic schools play this movie for their students all the time--that's where she'd seen it.
But despite its flaws, The Mission is a great film, and the final half of it is as powerful a statement about humanity, politics, religion, and violence as I have ever seen put to film.
I also want to talk about an article that was on Salon today, but I'll leave that for a future post. It's time to get out of here, get some dinner, and get myself to game night. |
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