The Mission

The artifact that I chose was a movie. The movie was called, “The Mission” and it was playing in the Fine Arts Center. The movie is about a Jesuit Priest who is setting up missions around the Spanish states. He then moves deep into the South American Jungle to start another mission for the Guaraní Indians. At the beginning there is a man named Rodrigo who goes into these jungles and captures the native Indians and makes them as slave. When Rodrigo went back to his home town to sell the natives, he ended up getting into a large fight over a girl with his brother and ends up killing him. Because he killed his brother he felt so much shame and ended up going to the church. Father Gabriel decides that Rodrigo should travel to the mission and as his punishment carries a large sack of armor with him. They reach the mission and Rodrigo falls in love with the people. However, there is controversy as to whether the missions should stay or not, and in the end, the court decides to destroy all the missions. However, the mission deep in the jungles, where Rodrigo is decides to fight back. The entire mission gets destroy and the Spanish and Portugal people end up killing all the people who were in the mission. Even though the movie is very sad, at the end we see a little bit of hope. There is a small canoe filled with about six young children, which leaves us to belief that the mission and the Guarani Indians will continue.

This movie can be related to the class because we see that at the end of the movie the empire ends up winning. We can also relate it to the “engaging Gods Word” text. In that book we here about the creation, fall, and redemption. In the movie we see the missions being create and working well, and then we see the entire mission and everything that the priests had created be destroy. However, in the end we see a glimpse of redemption with a generation of young Guarani Indians who survived the attacks on them.