The Mission (Two-Disc Special Edition)
by Roland Joffe
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jeremy Irons, Robert De NiroDirector: Roland Joffe
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Fernando Ghia
Producer: David Puttnam
Writer: Robert Bolt
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 125 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-05-13
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Model: 23497
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Sweeping and visually resplendent, The Mission is a powerful action epic about a man of the sword (Robert DeNiro) and a man of the cloth (Jeremy Irons) who unite to shield a South American Indian tribe from brutal subjugation by 18th-century colonial empires. It reunites key talents behind The Killing Fields: co-producer David Puttnam, director Roland Joffe and cinematographer Chris Menges.Winner
Movie Reviews of The Mission (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Movie Review: The Mission - Summary
Summary: 5 Stars
The year is about 1750. The location is the middle of South America; in a rain forest in Paraguay. It is Father Gabriel's funeral. The Indians put Father Gabriel's body, strapped to a cross, in the river and push it over the waterfall. This is the opening scene of the movie, The Mission, a story of colonialization. The movie flashes back to before Father Gabriel's death. Father Gabriel, a Jesuit played by Jeremy Irons, is in the rain forest jungle, playing the flute. The Indians from the Guarini tribe, hearing the flute, come and gather around him. One Indians takes the flute and breaks it. Father Gabriel tries to fix the flute but it can't be repaired. Another Indian, who Captain Rodrigo Mendoza, a slave trader played by Robert De Niro, shoots, is caught in a trap. Father Gabriel gets angry at Rodrigo. Rodrigo brings the Indians into the town. A girl, Carlotta, tells Rodrigo that she loves Felipe, Rodrigo's brother, and this causes Rodrigo to be sad because he loves the girl and angry because the girl he loves loves his brother. The next morning there is a parade and a celebration. Rodrigo comes into Felipe's bedroom and he sees Felipe and the girl in bed. Rodrigo storms out onto the street and Felipe runs after him. The two men fight until Felipe dies when Rodrigo stabs him out of his rage. A few months later, during which time Rodrigo has been in prison, Father Gabriel goes to visit Rodrigo. Father Gabriel tells him he can choose his own penance for his crime of murdering his brother. Rodrigo decides that he will drag a netful of amour and weaponry up a mountain. He does this day after day until when an Indians cuts the rope that tied Rodrigo and the net signaling to Rodrigo that he was being to hard on himself. Father Gabriel gives a book to Rodrigo, from which Rodrigo studies. After a short ceremony in the chapel, Rodrigo is declared an official Jesuit.
Spain and Portugal sign the Treaty of Madrid in which Spain (where slavery has become illegal) has to give some of the Indian land to Portugal (where slavery is legal). In order to keep the Jesuits from being forced out of Portugal, the pope orders the Jesuit missions in South America to be closed. That would mean that the Indians living on the missions would be abandoned and left to be captured by the slave traders. A group of men, one of which is the emissary of the pope, and horses arrive at the mission to share this news with Father Gabriel. There is a meeting in which the future of the Indians is discusses. Rodrigo gets angry at Don Cabesa for what Don says, but the next day Rodrigo apologizes. The emissary starts off on a trip during which he will visit different missions. He sees the Indians working on the plantation farms and carving the musical instruments. One Indian priest tells the emissary that everything at his mission is shared equally in hopes that his mission will be saved. At San Carlos the emissary pronounces that all the Indians must leave the mission. The Indians don't want to and then the emissary says that is God's will for them to go back to the jungle. In response, the Indians say it was God's will that brought them out of the jungle and into the mission in the first place. Although Jesuits take a vow of pacifism, Rodrigo takes the sword when the young Indian boy offers it to him. Rodrigo knows he is the only one who can teach the Indians to defend themselves. An Indians and Rodrigo steal gunpowder from the sailors. When stealing the gunpowder, one sailor wakes up and begins to yell. To silence him, Rodrigo kills him. Rodrigo asks for Father Gabriel's, who refuses to participate in the actual act of fighting. Father Gabriel gives him his necklace with the cross on it. The Indians and Rodrigo fight the Portuguese in the forest and in canoes in the lake. The Portuguese soldiers siege the town and Rodrigo tries to detonate the cannon-type apparatus he made with the stolen gunpowder but it doesn't explode. Rodrigo is shot and as he is dying he see Father Gabriel walking calmly with the Indians while holding a gold cross. Father Gabriel is shot and falls to the ground and then Rodrigo finally dies. The town is basically destroyed and there is a great scene showing the fiery inferno of the mission and many people, both Portuguese and Indians, being killed. The movie ends with a meeting of the governor and the emissary. The emissary is not sure if he made the right the choice.
The governor says, "Your eminence, thus is the world."
The emissary replies " No, thus we made the world."
The closing dialogue displays one of the messages of the movie- the destruction that colonialism and the slave trade caused.
Summary of The Mission (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Featuring a majestic score by Ennio Morricone and lush Oscar-winning cinematography by Chris Menges. It won the top prize at Cannes in 1986 and was nominated for a Best Film Oscar. The film is shot through with piercing, haunting imagery, pictures of enduring imaginative force. A visually stunning epic, THE MISSION recounts the true story of two men--a man of the sword (Robert De Niro) and a man of the cloth (Jeremy Irons)--both Jesuit missionaries who defied the colonial forces of mighty Spain and Portugal to save an Indian tribe from slavery in mid-18th-century South America. Mendoza (De Niro) is a slave trader and colonial imperialist who murdered his own brother (Aidan Quinn) and seeks penance for his sins by becomining a missionary at Father Gabriel's (Irons) mountaintop mission. The Mission is a rich and thought-provoking. It contains moving images of despair, penance, and redemption that are among the most evocative ever filmed.Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields) directs this fuzzy effort at a David Lean-like epic without David Lean's sense of emotional proportion. Lean's most important screenwriting collaborator, Robert Bolt, in fact wrote The Mission, which concerns a Jesuit missionary (Jeremy Irons) who establishes a church in the hostile jungles of Brazil and then finds his work threatened by greed and political forces among his superiors. Robert De Niro is briefly effective as a callous soldier who kills his own brother and then turns to Irons's character to oversee his penance and conversion to the clergy. The narrative and dramatic forces at work in this movie should be more stirring and powerful than they are--the problem being that Joffé is too removed from them to allow us in. --Tom Keogh
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