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Thursday, February 19. 1987 / University Daily Kansan
'The Mission' is beautiful,not brainy
Film offers scenic but unrealistic portrayal of 18th-century colonial S. America
"The Mission," is playing at Hilcrest Theatre.
Ninth and Iowa streets, at 2:40 p.m. and 7:25
p.m. daily and at 12:20 p.m. Saturday and
Sunday.
"The Mission" is a sultry film that uses scenery as a crutch for what it lacks in character, formation and plot.
The story is about two men, a missionary and a slave trader, who initially fight each other, but eventually unite to battle the forces of two European empires in South America in the mid-18th century.
Rodrigo Mendoza, played by Robert DeNiro, is a mercenary who earns a living by capturing and selling Guarani Indians. Father Gabriel, played by Jeremy Irons, is a young Indian who is trying to convert the Indians.
The filming is good. In fact, it dominates the movie because the clichés are overused.
The seemingly insufficient motivations of some characters make them unbelievable.
John Benner
Columnist
The most extreme case of this is found in DeNiro's character. Mendoca becomes jealous that a young widow he has been seeing has fallen in love with his brother. He kills his brother and is imprisoned.
Mendoza, in a ridiculous Calvary of his own, lugs a rope sack loaded with armor and swords up the falls. Upon reaching the summit, he even looks like Jesus and is immediately forgiven by the Guariani Indians, who he has spent years slaughtering and enslaving.
Father Gabriel, for some inexplicable reason, arranges Mendoza's release so that he may accompany the Iguaçu Falls above the Iguaçu Falls in Argentina.
Though the political dealings between the Portuguese and the Spanish are complex, the plot is much more complicated. Both boys win Indians, boys lose Indians.
Ray McAnally, as Altamirano, an emissary of the Pope, narrates the story. He has been dispatched to South America to oversee the transference of territory to the Portuguese
He must also, in effect, decide the fate of the Jesuits worldwide. Portugal has sworn to expel Jesuits from all its territories if they do not leave the missions near the falls. Altamirano fears that such an action might spur other nations to bar Jesuits from their colonies.
By 1750, roughly the time of the film, the Spanish had outlawed slave trade in its colonies, but Portugal had not.
The territory in which Mendoca and Father Gabriel live has been
contested by the two governments. In 1750, a treaty adjusts the boundary so that a block of Spanish territory that contains seven missions must be given to the Portuguese.
The Portuguese warn the Jesuits to abandon the missions and the Guar-
After spending years with the missionaries, Mendoza decides that he would like to become a Jesuit. Father Gabriel accepts him, and the teams for the final conflict solidify.
The filmwork near the falls and the scenes shot in Cartagena, Colombia, are magnificent. Roland Joffe directed the movie, and it is every bit as photographically intense as his film debut, "The Killing Fields."
Another redeeming factor of the movie, other than the scenery, is that it considers a historical topic that is relevant today.
Designer's sets are simple but effective
By JERRI NIEBAUM
Staff writer
Simple. A giant ball under a cloth is a hill. Direct. In the sky, it is the sun. Imaginative. In the dark, the same ball is the moon. Children accept these designs. Clubs are learning to accept them.
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Jaroslav Malina, a Czechoslovakian scenographer who is visiting the University of Kansas this semester, is one of the most noted set designers in his country. He has taught his audiences to appreciate sets that bring reality and fantasy together, and at the same time, interact functionally with the actors.
"I don't like to design conventional and just normal things," Malina said.
A wooden platform is a boat. Put a cloth over it, and it is a table. Cut a hole in it, and it is a grave.
In Malina's favorite set, a foam rubber floor covered with a huge white cloth, provides a playground suit. But the ground isn't as it seems.
The fairies disappear through holes in the rubber. Strings connect the floor to a white cloth skin, which Malina said created a metaphor for the play's theme of earth and heaven meeting Malina the set for William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Malina called this set his most simple and clever design, so simple that he spent three years working on it.
Delbert Unrul, associate professor of theater and media arts and director of KU's scenography program, met Malina more than two years ago while on sabbatical at the University of Kansas. She was impressed with Malina's designs and decided to try to bring him to the University of Kansas.
Malina's country gave him permission to come here under a cultural agreement set up by the Russian government to houselovskoi Ministry of Culture.
The department of theater and media arts and University Theatre are sponsoring Malina, who came to the University on Jan. 18. He then attended Unai until mid-March. Then he will return to Czechoslovakia.
Sketches and photographs of Malina's designs will be on display in the exhibition gallery in Murphy Hall until March 13.
Malina said he created his art without limiting himself to conventional designs.
Malina designed a stage-wide iron curtain for "Cabal and Love," by Friedrich von Schiller. Espionage, betrayal, love and death are strong tragic themes that Malina captured in his brutally cold set.
"I am not limited to express my crazy ideas sometimes." he said.
To make the harsh tone of the play more clear, Malina added a romantically lit tennis match with an overcast contrast before the play started.
"It's not written in Schiller's script," Malina said. "It's our fantasy."
Malina said the play was so stark that the audience didn't clap at the end. Instead they cried "It's awful. It's vulgar. It's wonderful." "This is what I like, of course," he said.
Malina specializes in action design, the simple, functional set design style that he and his contemporaries started about 15 years ago. At that time, many European designers were creating ornate sets designed by Malina, but she sets that Malina were competing with the actors for attention.
"They were totally lost," Malina said about the actors. "It was just too huge, too decorative."
Malina said he thought theater patrons preferred his simple designs.
"It's almost fashionable," he said.
He said that he was impressed with technical lighting and staging devices used in the United States, but that he didn't like the mechanical way in which they were used
“It’s just gorgeous,” he said.
“But sometimes you don’t know how to use it. Broadway is clocked in at 8 a.m. to be perfect that it’s almost cold.”
Malina is staying with Unruh and his family in an old house that he said was like his own.
The two men will work together to stage "Antigone," to be performed by the KU theater department April 30 through May 3.
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1987 Rock Chalk
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