THE MISSION

Roland Joffé, 1986, UK

Ultimately the missionaries of the European Catholic Church have come to eradicate the Guarani Indians of South America just as much as the slave traders and ruthless Portuguese; but rather than with enslavement and massacres, the Jesuits use the passive-aggressive means of faith and conversion to erode the Guarani way of life. There is cognitive dissonance between the apparent ‘faith’ of the film and what we see: it can create martyrs of the missionaries and claim that the spirits of the dead Indians live on, but this is no consolation for a massacre; it is more like denial of religion’s involvement in genocide - both physical and cultural, as much as mercenary slave traders - and the believing in some vague notion of an afterlife to wave away the horror. The film patronises the Guarani, concerned only with their plight through "The White Man’s Burden", through the angst and sacrifices of its white protagonists. Thus, as movies have always approached the most elusive of societies.

"The Mission" does comes close to something credibly ‘divine’ by casting the jungle as Eden and in De Niro’s salvation by penance and reinvention; but these traits are more to do with the natural generosity of the scenery and narrative’s forgiving Indians. There is little evidence of the friction and likely complex reactions that accompanies religious conversion and scripture. The Guarani simply give themselves over to the Jesuits - that this is ultimately their only way of survival is muddily conveyed (so as not to mitigate the Jesuit good works), and how they feel about this is never addressed. The Jesuits come and provide legal protection against the slave traders: the true enemy here is greed and political corruption, a merciless growth of global consumerism and expanding plunder; the mission in contrast creates an idyllic socialist Guarani factory of production where profits and workload are evenly distributed and put back into the mission. Again, though this appears to be good works indeed, one can assume that the Guarani had an active social and bartering system of their own, long before the Jesuits arrived. This lack of any real understanding of the natives upon which the drama is invested in is a truly grievous absence.

The story runs smoothly, but any depth dissipates into pretty visual aesthetic; the drama squanders death as sentimental martyrdom. Where we should feel outrage and horror, we are pushed more to the moral superiority and redemption of our protagonists. Indeed, it is martyrdom that validates faith. De Niro as Rodrigo Menoza, begins as a slave-trader and murderer, and when he murders his own brother in a fit of jealousy over a woman, he becomes a missionary, a transformation that carries some weight as a tale of redemption. There is also the sneaking suspicion that De Niro may well be miscast, which is offset by a number of small moments where he coveys so much with his eyes.

In fact, it is in small moments that the film resonates. Jeremy Irons/Father Gabriel wooing the Indians with music, for example (it’s a nice moment, although the allusions to the story of "The Pied Piper" also helps to infantilise the natives). De Niro being manhandled curiously, being forgiven and accepted by the Guanari. Jeremy Irons shouting "Jesus is Love!" as if he is telling De Niro to go fuck himself. The Indian boy who has adopted De Niro wordlessly asking De Niro to fight for him by resurrecting the man’s sword. Irons’ loss of faith in humanity is also interesting enough. But greater insights are not recognised: the moment where the Guarani reminds His Eminence that he too is a King ought to speak volumes, but it does not because the film has barely identified this itself. The natives are children of Eden, generic and lacking character; we learn nothing of their ways or the conflicts when integrating with the Jesuits.

And in this way, the film condescends and ultimately insults. When his Eminence states, in closing voiceover, that it is he that is truly dead and that the Guarani live on, and when the final words on screen are for the missionaries that risk their lives for the Guanari rather than the Guanari themselves, one sees how myriad the ways of colonialist self-importance and pious self-congratulation; not only in the moments of truth in this particular fiction, but also in the post-colonial self-regard of white-man’s film-making. John Boorman’s "The Emerald Forest" is a scruffier and pulpier film in comparison, but it is more sincerely dedicated to merging white experience into native culture rather than vice versa, and more respectful too. "The Mission" is a pretty film and not without resonance - and the Morricone score helps - but its ugliness is in using its true victims as a mere branch from which to decorate it’s white guilt and self-regard.

THE GREAT SILENCE

Il grande silenzio, Le grand silence

Sergio corbucci, 1967, Italy/France

In "The Great Silence", Klaus Kinski is Tigrero, the fearful embodiment of unbridled capitalism: he sees people, life and death only in cash value, as opportunities for earnings. And a little sadistic pleasure. He goes through the affectations of charm with his psychopathic politeness and manners, but he is also charmless, fooling no one; both fascinating and totally chilling. A bizarre figure with a light voice, dressed like an old woman with a shawl around the head and a fur coat, topped with a preacher’s hat, it is an unforgettable performance. Kinski is measured and restrained (which he is not necessarily renowned for) that conveys effortlessly Tigrero’s soulless, detached nature, watching with amusement the emotions and mechanics of the supposed civility around him as he goes about his business as a bounty hunter. It is just about as far from his compelling mannerisms in "Nosferatu" and breakdown mania of "Woyzeck" as one can imagine. When we first meet Tigrero, he apologises to the mother of the man he has just helped to murder, saying "Try to understand, madam, it’s our bread and butter." And having orchestrated the final massacre, he says indifferently and yet surely with barely concealed relish, "All according to the law." And he is right.

Spaghetti westerns were always chock full of corruption, torture, amorality, random cruelty and absurdity. Many, of course, came to this through the Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood "dollar" films. Spaghetti westerns were the messy punk reaction to the self-congratulatory stateliness and conservatism of the American westerns. They spit "You lie!" to John Wayne and John Ford. But not even the Leone cynicism and strokes of vulgarity could prepare a viewer for the thorough nihilism and bleakness of "The Great Silence". In this vision by writer-director Sergio Corbucci, the corruption of the privileged and the perversion of the law is so thorough that not even the typical lone mysterious super-gun-slinging hero can beat the odds. The conclusion will devastate anyone so comfortable with western convention and heroics. Also, there is no fair play, no code of conduct between gunslingers: quite simply, the bad guys cheat and get their blood money. It troubles, horrifies and deeply upsets.

The snow-caked carraige is one of the wonderful, not-so-typical and slightly otherworldly visions of this offbeat western.

Our hero is "Silence", also a bounty hunter, but one that preys upon murderers, on other bounty hunters, who will never pull a gun first, who is quicker than all and bears a novelty handgun. But when forced into a fist-fight, he’ll improvise too and grab a log to smack his adversary. No, no code of conduct here at all: just cash and survival. A merciless world, although we wrongly suspect some form of primal righteousness will ultimately prevail. "Silence" comes to the mountains of Utah to the town of Snow Hill, where the local justice of the peace and banker Policutt has driven out almost all the townsfolk and put bounties on their heads. If westerns typically promise hot, dry, sun-drenched sweaty scenarios, again Corbucci subverts this by giving us a world covered in snow, whiteness and bitter winds. The vistas are fantastic and the grubby detail exemplary without drawing attention to itself. It’s frequently beautiful, but there appears little real comfort here. It is both scruffy, as most spaghetti westerns are, and often verges on the ethereal. Out of the white, like an angelic avenger, comes "Silence," evidently on his own mission of vengeance against those that cut out his vocal chords as a boy to silence him as a witness to the murder of his parents.

Into this den of bounty hunters and corruption also comes a sheriff, Burnett. It probably undermines our anticipations when he turns out not to be corruptible but well intentioned, yet he is no match for the forces against him either. If you are not corruptible, malleable to money, then you are expendable, it would seem. There are some strong, beautiful women too, carrying around furious grief and demands to avenge their murdered men. How will it all be resolved? In a showdown, of course. But.

The director Alex Cox loves "The Great Silence" and tells - in his book "10,000 Ways to Die"* - of how Corbucci was inspired by the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Che Guevara. The finale of the film taps into the genuine outrage of people having their idols and heroes stolen from them by overwhelming violence and corruption - but it is not only that: everyone innocent in "The Great Silence" suffers, not only our dubious protagonist, so it achieves far more than a narrow tale of martyrdom. As Cox states, "The message of ‘The Big Silence’ … is that sometimes, even though you know you’ll fail, you still do the right thing." And this, then, is how such a film differs so much from your typical western of any strain. We feel Eastwood’s stranger is too canny and resourceful to truly feel he’ll fail; he’ll take chances, sure, but not failure. It’s the same with the Django films, and there is never any chance of failure with Spaghetti Western cartoons such as "Sabata". We never feel like "Silence" is in total command of events. No, but we do feel that Tigrero is.


"The Great Silence" is somewhat a lost treasure. Obviously but not crushingly politicised, alive with genre nuance and subversion, black humour and relentlessly, shockingly bleak. There is also a wonderful soundtrack by Ennio Morricone and a rather fine love scene. Due to studio indifference and undoubted horror at the tone and endgame of the film, it sunk into obscurity and it can only be hoped that it will claim its rightful place as a remarkable cult item with a new lease of life on DVD.

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* Alex Cox, "10,000 Ways To Die: a director’s take on the spaghetti western", (Kamera Books, Herts, 2009), pages185-193