Not suprised per say, but still moved by one of my favorite movies that I just watched again the other night.
The Mission
Probably my favorite movie I've seen Robert DeNiro in. Then you have Jeremy Irons and a younger Liam Neeson. And of course Ennio Morricone's score including the annointed "Gabriel's Oboe" theme.
I just discovered a new favorite scene and dialogue in the movie: The Catholic emmissary goes to visit Jeremy Iron's mission in the jungle at the Jesuit priest's request. The emmissary is taken back at how beautiful and successful it is and how the people's live's have been changed and enriched. But there are unfortunate political decisions already made in the emissary's mind that favor the interests of Spain and Portugal, specifically with the slave trade, and the successful Christian missions actually threaten these faction's success and fortune. (The decision to abandon the Jesuit priest's mission above the falls in the jungle means access to these lands and people by the slavers and certain death for the people)
The emmissary asks Jeremy Iron's character, "Why can't they just go back into the jungle". Irons replies "Because the mission is their home, they live here". Then two little children come up to Irons and speak. He interacts and talks to them. The emissary then asks, "What did they just say"? Irons says, "They said they do not want to go back into the jungle. They say the devil lives there". The emmissary asks, "And what did you tell them"? Irons replies, "I told them that I'd stay with them."
Beautiful writing and acting. With all of the failures and sins of man toward man, political and religious leaders acting not on behalf of what is right and certainly not what God instructs, them giving in to the selfish agendas of other political and religious-political entities, you have this little Jesuit priest behaving more like Christ in this one moment than any one of these other "official" religious individuals and so called "good" Catholic political men of ingenuine stature.
Great movie, very sad. Beautiful music and acting.
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" Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure...are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments." Charles Carroll - signer of the Declaration of Independence
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