Let’s look at what was briefly on the radar of the Academy Awards and winning awards at venues like Cannes back in ’86—from Roland Joffe came an epic-length piece starring Robert De Niro and a young-ish Jeremy Irons, tackling topics of colonialism, religion, and power in the way that…led to a bit of a mixed reception back in the day. Was that undeserved, or this one indeed deserving excommunication?
Irons plays a Jesuit priest sent in to proselytize to the Guarani people of Paraguay (though the film was mostly filmed in Colombia, featuring the native Waunana there), winning their trust with an oboe recital as you do—and De Niro is our more ambiguous character as a mercenary turned priest to go with him. While between them a successful mission is soon created in the jungle, things get complicated as treaties are reformed between Spain and Portugal over territory in South America, with a cardinal played by Ray McAnally arriving to try and balance matters of church and temporal politics.
Of course, greedy slavemongers like Chuck Low’s greedy merchant have other ideas, soon turning a difference of principles into something more violent. There’s certainly an interesting enough setup—we do see questions of how far compromise should go with what someone believes in, and how even a sincere faith can be pushed and twisted just for the sake of preserving peace. Irons and De Niro are certainly solid enough to watch as they usually are, and for many, the highlight is Enrico Morricone’s choir-style score, which is probably the film’s main legacy.
All this being said—there is the inescapable feeling of things being simplified a bit, especially under a modern scrutiny. We don’t get really any perspective from the Guarani themselves apart from one converted priest, which the film going a bit overboard to show them as enjoying their idyllic existence, which still needs to be protected somewhat by Europeans arriving to impose their own mores (even if, at least with our lead, it’s good-intentioned). And indeed, the original book was apparently more upfront about the overhanging ambiguity that the film skips around, with alternatives to conversion being slavery—a question of greater or lesser evil.
I suppose you can still apply it to questions of what good one can do in a bad situation—and from priests in guerrilla organizations (even socialistic ones in Columbia, serendipitously enough) to continued questions of native abuse, others have compared it to ongoing events in South America. But while it’s technically well made, many a current watcher will probably find it a bit too on the nose, especially with raised discourse of colonialism in general since it was made (though before we still had the likes of Aguirre). Interesting for those that like to ponder questions of faith, but maybe not all convincing to others.
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