Curator Watchlist
A visually ravishing, morally serious historical drama with one of Ennio Morricone’s most celebrated scores. It’s imperfect in its colonial perspective and can feel stately, but the emotional force, performances, and craftsmanship make it a strong watch for viewers who value atmosphere and spiritual conflict.
Where to watch: Buy
Sat · 2h 5m
Director: Roland Joffé
Starring: Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally
When a Spanish Jesuit goes into the South American wilderness to build a mission in the hope of converting the Indians of the region, a slave hunter is converted and joins his mission. When Spain sells the colony to Portugal, they are forced to defend all they have built against the Portuguese aggressors.
Roland Joffé
Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally
A visually ravishing, morally serious historical drama with one of Ennio Morricone’s most celebrated scores. It’s imperfect in its colonial perspective and can feel stately, but the emotional force, performances, and craftsmanship make it a strong watch for viewers who value atmosphere and spiritual conflict.
The Mission is one of those films that lingers more as a mood and an argument than as a conventional narrative. Roland Joffé stages the story with immense visual confidence, using the jungle, waterfalls, and mission settlements as both a spiritual landscape and a battleground for empire. The result is often stately, sometimes remote, but rarely less than impressive.
Jeremy Irons gives the film its calm moral center, while Robert De Niro brings a rougher, more volatile energy to the story’s transformation arc. The film’s greatest asset is Ennio Morricone’s score, which elevates nearly every scene and gives the movie a tragic grandeur that has outlived many of its contemporaries.
Its limitations are real: the Indigenous characters are filtered largely through European eyes, and the film’s politics can feel dated or paternalistic. Still, as a piece of epic filmmaking about faith, complicity, and the violence of colonial power, it remains striking and memorable.
David Sims (3.5★) · 780 likes
the whole movie should just be them throwing things down the waterfall
Quintin (3★) · 592 likes
CEO: "Alright I got De Niro ready to go for a new movie, what do you got?" Roland: "Honestly nothing much... I have this medicore story with a pretty beautiful location in mind." CEO: "Hmmmm... that doesn't sound good, we will find something else for De Ni..." Roland slams a CD player on the table. CEO: "What... the..." Roland hits play on the player and the score starts playing. CEO: "Holy mother of God." Roland: "That's right. So why don't
Ethan Colburn (3★) · 441 likes
I didn’t really feel any particular way about this film as a whole. First of all, I legitimately think this is the greatest movie score of all time. Not only that, Gabriel’s Oboe might be the single most beautiful piece of music to ever grace this planet. I’ve played it at multiple weddings and hope to have it played at mine. I adore Ennio Morricone, and this score seems to capture the romantic side of him, it’s a bit of… more
Chuckman (5★) · 275 likes
The Mission is yet another incredibly underrated masterpiece on Letterboxd that does not get nearly enough affection and attention as it deserves. It showcases in heartbreaking fashion when the Jesuit order wasn't a bunch of sellouts, but when they were at the forefront of actual Christianity. The true story of this is devastating and eventually spins into a Come and See style film showing the horror of greed and its relentless pursuit to ruin all things that are good and
henry 💿 (3★) · 217 likes
i hate to say this, but this movie reminded me of celebrities who travel to other countries just to pose for promotional pictures with brown and black kids and then dip. it's just the film version of that. the european perspective here is suffocating, we only hear guarani people's opinions translated in one scene. we don't know any of their names or hear their perspective, we're just made to sympathize with them because we mostly see their (really adorable) children.
A more severe and introspective companion piece about faith, colonial pressure, and spiritual endurance.
Sweeping period filmmaking with lush landscapes, conflict, and a similarly grand emotional register.
A feverish jungle descent that pairs well with the film’s sense of obsession and imperial madness.
A lyrical, visually immersive colonial encounter story with a reflective, elegiac tone.
Another mission-centered historical drama that confronts faith, culture, and survival in the wilderness.
Roland Joffé’s other major historical drama, equally concerned with human cost under political violence.
A majestic historical epic with strong visual design and a tragic sense of history closing in.
For viewers drawn to refined period craftsmanship and emotional restraint under social pressure.
A sweeping, romantic, and mournful drama with a similarly elevated, award-era sensibility.
A meditative war film that treats nature, spirituality, and violence with poetic seriousness.
A different kind of faith-and-empire period piece, lighter in tone but adjacent in subject matter.
For its intense spiritual conflict, austere seriousness, and willingness to wrestle with belief.
colonialism, faith and redemption, missionary work, moral conflict, imperial violence, cultural encounter, spiritual sacrifice, guilt and atonement
historical drama, epic, colonial era, religious drama, jungle setting, moral dilemma, orchestral score, prestige cinema, period piece, tragic