At Play In the Fields of the Lord
(Hector Babenco, 1991)
IMDB link
A very special movie with a crummy title. I image people passed this movie by because they believe it's a Christian themed movie, it's not. A movie title can kill a movie and
At Play In the Fields of the Lord was only released in 25 theaters before the studio pulled the plug on it. As a result it was not well known. Luckily with streaming, these days you can watch it on Fandago and AppleTV and other places as well.
Unlike so many movies that are cinematic roller coaster rides,
At Play In the Fields of the Lord slowly unfolds a tale of indigenous people in the Brazilian jungles and how the encroachment of well meaning missionaries and western civilization ends up causing these gentle people of the jungle big problems. The movie was entirely shot in Brazil, that was so appreciated by me. It looks amazing.
I usually wouldn't quote someone else's review but Roger Ebert said everything I wanted to say:
...Roger Ebert, who had read the novel and believed the film is true to its themes, awarded the film 3 and a half out of 4 stars.
Ebert wrote, "Watching it, we are looking at a morality play about a world in which sincere people create unwitting mischief so that evil people can have their way. The movie essentially argues that all peoples have a right to worship their own gods without interference, but it goes further to observe that if your god lives in the land and the trees, then if we destroy your land, we kill your god. These messages are buried in the very fabric of the film, in the way it was shot, in its use of locations, and we are not told them, we absorb them."
I agree that this is a movie that requires one's full attention as it's subtle story telling. I rate the movie
I think it will be along time until I see such an intelligently filmed story.
90s movie watched: 1
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But now I'm catching up on all those great 90s movies I missed.
The actor Michael Wincott was good as a hyper evil baddie dressed in all black with matching long black hair and a devious look in his eyes, but it was all too cartoonish of a character for the subject matter.
