The Mission

Robert Bolt finished the script in 1976 as Guarani; Paramount passed and producer Fernando Ghia spent 10 years raising money. David Puttnam, fresh from producing The Killing Fields, recommended that film’s director, Roland Joffé, and joined as co-producer. Once on board, Joffé had the priest rewritten from an older man into a young one. Filming began in April 1985, mostly in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, with Mendoza’s monastery shot in the Fort Amherst tunnels, Kent. Cannes gave it the Palme d’Or and the Technical Grand Prize. At the 59th Academy Awards it took 7 nominations and won one, Best Cinematography for Chris Menges. At the 40th BAFTAs, 3 of 11 nominations became awards: supporting actor Ray McAnally, editing Jim Clark, original music Ennio Morricone. At the 44th Golden Globes, Bolt took screenplay and Morricone original score. The money ran the other way: Goldcrest put in £15.13 million, got £12.25 million back, and the loss fed the company’s collapse. A good fit if you want Bolt’s decade old script and the moral question built between two priests. Not for anyone waiting for the Guaraní to hold their own history; James Schofield Saeger, writing in the journal The Americas, calls it “a white European distortion of Native American reality” and says the Guaraní are treated as “mission furniture”.