One had been so very lost in life. Even the lowest one can go. No direction, no life, guilt, sorrow, despair. One wallowed in inaction and hopelessness in a cloud of depression. As unlikely as it may have seemed a solution came clear. The solution seemed incomprehensible, but a lost life is reclaimed and then begins a new life. This is the point of a redemptive movie.

Redemption in “The Mission”

The Mission (1986) is a powerful religious and human interest drama.

On the borderlands of South America in 1750, comes Rodrigo Mendoza (Robert de Niro), a slave trader.

This slave trader becomes a Jesuit priest.

A slave trader’s conversion may have seemed unlikely, but he is taken through a process of redemption to begin a new life.

Rodrigo has a reason to need the way out. He killed his brother, a brother he loved. He was jealous of a woman’s love for his brother.

“So me you do not love,” he says to the woman. “Not in the way I love Felipe [Rodrigo’s brother]”, she replies.

In the heat of a moment, Rodrigo kills his brother.

But he falls into remorse.

For six months he exiles himself from life in self-imposed confinement. A priest goes to him. “For me there is no redemption,” Rodrigo tells the priest.

“But there is a way.” Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) believes in redemption for lost souls. Certainly, sorrowful Rodrigo is in need of it.

The Mission is one film that uses the redemptive theme. The film is also about church and state and compromise, things which come around to put a different shade on Rodrigo’s new life, a new life borne out of redemption.

Rodrigo’s change of heart is genuine. The redemptive thread in The Mission I remember well. There are others, but this one comes to the top of my head. It’s powerful, moving and meaningful, as redemption should be. It’s inspirational. That this new life that came out of redemption had to face serious challenges is a pity.