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4Mission9 Worthy Of Film AwardAn incidental Christmas present to myself was the movie “Mission,” winner of last year’s Cannes festival’s Best Picture award.Since it stars neither Clint Eastwood nor Sylvester Stallone, and is not one of the inumerable Star Treks, I had to go out of town to see it. But I recommend it highly for its awesome scenery and the shocking history it portrays.Set in the 1750s in Paraguay, Mission recounts a grand and true chapter in Jesuit history when missionaries helped Indians create happy and thriving cooperative societies (communes, really) which endured more than a century; and how those were destroyed by the combined evil of Portugal, Spain and the Vatican, in the interests of slavery and greed.Robert de Niro is Mendoza, one ofthe vicious slave traders until an agonizing conversion makes him a fellow Jesuit of Jeremy Irons, the saintly Father Gabriel. They split in the end, in defense of their Indians, Father Gabriel clinging to nonviolence, Mendoza reverting to his violent ways.With director Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields); producer David Puttnam and cinematographer Chris Menges (Chariots of Fire) and screenwriter Robert Bolt (A man for All Seasons) some critics insist Mission should have been better than it is. I'm not pretentious enough about my critical credentials to quibble. I was fascinated by it.The Wuanana Indians of Colombia, a sturdy, beautiful people, play the natives. Fr. Daniel Berrigan, the American peace activist, is an advisor to the film and also plays asmall but poignant role — a reminder that the tragic story remains true — that in Central and South America today, Indians and campesinos die, and missionaries are killed trying to protect them from the greed of multi-national corporations stealing their land, and the foreign policies of great nations bent on destroying their way of life.Irons and deNiro, presiding over their own “base community,” practicing their own liberation theology at the displeasure of the Vatican, are a reminder of the struggle still going on over the role of the church in the service of the poor.Some scenes make one ache for the loss to history. In one, the pompous dignitaries are examining the mission they would destroy, gaping in surprise at Indians carving violins and other fine instruments out of the native wood. A missionary remarks that instruments from here are used in the finest orchestras in Europe. Did you know that? I didn't.The contrast of good and evil among men is more than matched by the clash of appalling beauty and deathly violence in nature. The principal mission in the story is located “above the falls,” so that to reach it the missionaries and pursuing soldiers must climb sheer cliffs virtually encased within the plunging torrents of the gigantic water fall.These scenes were filmed at famous Iguaza Falls on the Argentine-Paraguayan border, one of the natural wonders of South America, Indeed, the falls provide a unique form of crucifixion to open the movie and guarantee that your attention will not thereafter wander.Mission has earned its awards and deserves them for the care its makers took to be authentic, not only in the historical accuracy of the script, but in the difficult, expensive decision to film real scenery and real people. Even without lines, the Indians play the most unforgettable roles of all.Why, you may, ask, „ spoil the season with so gloomy a film? But even the sadness and anger it creates do not leave one depressed. For, if as Mission reminds us, the evil persists, so too do the cause and the people, indestructible as the towering waterfall.
Newspaper Details
Ottawa Herald
Ottawa, Kansas, US
Fri, Jan 16, 1987
Page 1
Full Page
Clipped by
Jon C.
NJ, USA 15 Jan 2020
Other Publications Near Ottawa, Kansas
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