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The Mission [1986]


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Beautiful
Review date: 2008-11-14 Rating: 10 out of 10

This 1986 masterpiece is one of the few movies that demostrates what God/Nature is asking from each of us. To love one another. Still today politics is so far more important..so they think it is.
This movie is touching, loving, and shows how much one person can help so many people.

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Reviews


A truly moving experience
Review date: 2008-10-08 Rating: 10 out of 10

I sometimes struggle to remember why I liked certain films so much but as I get older and my memory fades I use a simple acid test. If I remember them so well after so many years with my memory, then it must be pretty good. And yes I remember much of "The Mission". It sets its sights very high indeed and deals in weighty emotive subjects. The inexorable expansion of civilisation and the effects of those native peoples that come under its influence.
The story revolves around the evangelical efforts of Roman Catholic priests to convert the local South American natives to catholicism and the effects of the wider church decisions on these small enclaves and outposts of Christianity. The priests who go out to evangelise are painted in a good light, whilst the Roman Catholic church is portrayed as an inflexible, monolithic lumbering organisation with an uncaring leadership. The film involves an ex slave runner who becomes a priest only to suffer an agonising test of his new found faith. Jeremy Irons plays the priest who goes out amongst the tribes and he is very convincing in that role. One of his best. He is a true man of god and lives and dies true to his faith. Robert De Niro, perhaps slightly miscast if I am absolutely honest, plays the ex slave runner priest.
The film is quite ravishingly shot and just as ravishing is the score by Ennio Morricone. Haunting and beautiful. One of the truly great movie scores. The opening scene shows a priest tied to a cross and pushed out into a river by natives. He is then seen plummetting to his death over a vast waterfall. It sets the scene. Many early emmissaries of the church were martyred when making that first risky contact with new tribes. We watch as the Jeremy Irons character slowly builds the confidence of his new flock. He is a man who lives for others and not himself. A selfless man with the purest of motives. There is a hard hitting scene where a native child sings quite beautifully for gathered Roman Catholic leaders and local VIPs only to be compared with a well trained animal. The tradgedy of the final clash between two cultures slowly unfolds to a truly heart rending finale. My sympathies were with innocent native peoples and those genuine christian people who truly put ther lives on the line for no personal gain, and truly had the interests of the people at heart.
I found the film a very moving experience which is extremely unusual for me these days. I am now long past the point of hiding behind the sofa when the Red Indians turned up. But seriously this is a lovely film and well worth watching. I thoroughly reccommend having this one in your collection.

The details are not important, the pattern is all-powerful
Review date: 2008-09-27 Rating: 10 out of 10

A film that comes from so far away 22 years ago that the story, or the history, of the film is no longer important, but was it important even in 1986? Today the struggle between the two Christian kings of Portugal and of Spain on one hand, though hostile to each other when the other party is absent, and the church on the other hand, a church that is also divided between the European hierarchy that only sees the survival they have to go through in Europe by defending there their interests by sacrificing a few missions in South America. Today these details are irrelevant The Christian church or churches have long abandoned this kind of policy, particularly the Catholic church. But today the general pattern of the story, the massacre, the slaughter, the slaying of a whole Indian, local population to the sole interest of the colonial powers who try to put their hands on the riches and resources of some foreign countries, like oil in Iraq for instance is quite a familiar story. And what about that American war hero who became an American war hero in a war that killed several million people and devastated a whole country for the sole political and economic interests of one country, one country alone. Who cares in the west about the local indigenous population that gets killed by western bullets? Like The Sons of The Pioneers used to sing, "Lie Low, Little Doggies, Lie Low on the Ground". We are living in a world that stands upside down in two ways. It is still standing upside down if we consider normal human ethics that tells us to help the poor and the weak and to respect the goods and property of other people, particularly their national territory. And yet that world that is upside down is in the process of tilting over and then getting upside down a second time, which might bring it upside up and downside down. The champion of deregulated free market jungle economy is nationalizing most of the American banking system and is getting ready to do the same with the car industry that has been playing with bankruptcy for quite a few years now. Less state he says the candidate of the party of this president. Yet this president nationalizes all that is getting into difficult straits by their own fault, but he does not forget that public money is the property of the rich since they did not contribute much and he is trying to give them a financial bonanza for their dumb incompetence. You see the pattern. That pattern that is still alive like hell and kicking like a dumb mule. Don't worry, as usual, before the world gets back to upright many people will be killed and will die. Before Brazil got a president that is starting the reversal of that historical injustice and mistake of 1750, quite a few millions were killed or enslaved or tortured or assassinated or whatever provided death was the end of it. But this film gives you another element of that pattern. The powerful who plan to genocide you manage to present the whole matter in such a way that you have to agree to foot the bill which will hurt you or otherwise the depression that would ensue would not only hurt, it would bring humanity a few hundred million individuals down, lower and shorter. And in the back of their heads they believe that this is sustainable since for at least twenty or thirty years the overpopulation of the world will be slowed down. As these vultures would say: there is always a positive point in any negative event. But the more I try to think positively the more I stand on the side of all these priests, these Jesuits, those who fought and died fighting and those who did not fight and died trying to bring God's word down on earth. The only thing that came for all of them was bullets, bullets and more bullets. Is that pattern human, historical, or plain characteristic of one particular period? But why does it come back up so regularly through the centuries?

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines


A powerful epic, watch and enjoy
Review date: 2008-05-09 Rating: 8 out of 10

When slave trader Robert de Niro kills his brother in a duel, he turns to a man of the cloth, Jeremy Irons, to seek redemption from his past. Certainly he is made to suffer until he has proved his remorse to both himself and to Jeremy Irons.

Eventually, de Niro, joins the order of priests who live amoungst a tribe of south american indians, who are under brutal threat from both Spain and Portugal's 18th century colonial empires.

How can the man of the cloth and the former man of the sword unite to sheild the tribe from subjugation and genocide ??

Nominations and awards a plenty for this one. Not one of Robert de Niro's best known films, but neverless one of his best. Jeremy Irons is perfectly cast in his role also.

Two empires of the past
Review date: 2008-03-23 Rating: 8 out of 10

This film is curious, because it deals and recounts some adventures and confrontations of Spain and Portugal, the two powers that dominated the World before England and USA. A theme little treated as expensive productions as this aren logically interested in plots generally happening in the USA.
To show this we see two or three prototypes of men that actually existed at these times but I think not abundant today in either the two countries, with the common citizen working hard in pursuit of a sort of "American Way of Life".
But in XVIII century these men existed. Incredibly, Spain and Portugal fought many times one against when really are brother or practically one country, in fact the same country with the same heroes at times of Roman Empire conquest. One is Father Gabriel, a Jesuit with steel discipline and big capacity for work, as most roads of South America still today follow those made by the Jesuits. The other is Rodrigo Mendoza, a hot tempered man of war, no fearing God nor devil, but capable to hate and love and feeling blame something. Rodrigo is also vaguely religious or has some moral at less when dealing with relatives or friends. As it were, Catholic religion at last, forgives all sins... and so, Rodrigo is capable in withstanding all hardships and fighting with dexterity but unfit for common daily work, as he's passionate and womanizer, always ready for adventure, a bit like the famous archetype of Don Juan. I don't know whether the problem with the Guarani indigenous was real, but probably similar problems had to happen in four centuries of domination. The film is enhanced by a impressive soundtrack and landscapes of South America that those conquerors sighted for the first time, but by XVIII century, both Spain and Portugal were in decline as all empires. Today, nor Spain nor Portugal have real enemies in the World excepting terrorism, an example to follow for these countries involved in unfinishable wars.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Robert De Niro
Ray McAnally
Aidan Quinn
Jeremy Irons
Ronald Pickup

Creators:
Robert De Niro (Primary Contributor)
Jeremy Irons (Primary Contributor)

Director(s):

Recording label: Warner Home Video
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
EAN: 7321900339292
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL,
Release date: 2006-06-01
Audience rating: Parental Guidance
Region code: 2
Running time: 120 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1986
Language: English (Original Language)

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