filmbay
Savagery accelerates. It took European immigrants several centuries to "pacify" - convert, slaughter and segregate - the native populations of North America, but Brazilians have accomplished the same feat in less than 50 years. It is estimated that by the end of the century not a single native in the state of Amazonia will be living under traditional conditions. The issue is almost academic: Thanks to European-introduced diseases, forced relocations and outright genocide, relatively few natives will be around to live under any conditions.That's the subject of At Play in the Fields of the Lord, adapted from Peter Matthiessen's prescient 1965 novel, and it's an extraordinary one, but Brazilian director Hector Babenco's three-hour, $36-million morality play trivializes it with caricatured performances and crowd-pleasing comedy. Babenco, best known for Pixote and The Kiss of the Spider Woman, has said that Matthiessen's novel was "critical and intense" when dealing with two white missionary couples, the Hubens and the Quarriers, but that the Indians, a fictitious composite tribe called the Niaruna, were "cartoonish." Hence, Babenco has evened the score: in his film, the natives are presented with intensity and the missionaries are cartoons.Although put into production before Dances With Wolves and Black Robe were released, At Play combines their story lines. The Dances With Wolves scenario is played out by the half-Cheyenne mercenary Lewis Moon (Tom Berenger); hired to bomb the Niaruna, he instead parachutes into their compound and becomes one of their near-naked, idyllically happy number.Meanwhile, the missionary couples enact a Protestant version of Black Robe. Leslie Huben (John Lithgow) is a ridiculously rigid martinet who dismisses the Catholic Church as "the opposition" and even tries to wrest a statue of the Virgin Mary from the arms of a native convert. His wife Andy (Darryl Hannah) has no personality - she appears to be present to give voyeurs in the audience something nice to look at. But toward the end of the epic, she goes skinny-dipping and then - still starkers as the day she was born - sticks her tongue into the mouth of the now thoroughly native Lewis Moon, who has conveniently popped up to ogle her long-limbed nudity. (In the concupiescent camp sweepstakes, the scene rivals The Blue Lagoon.) The embrace has dire consequences. It gives Moon a minor case of the flu, which he in turn passes along to the Niaruna, who have no immunity to the disease. Talk about kiss of the Spider Woman.The other couple, Martin (Aidan Quinn) and Hazel Quarrier (Kathy Bates) , have other problems. She is a puritanical hysteric - "Everything here is dirty," she screeches of a town on the border of the wilderness, as if a would-be missionary would expect anything else - who is anxious that her child, Billy (Niilo Kivirinta), retain his Midwestern mores. Her husband, however, is a somewhat sensitive true believer (like the priest in Black Robe) who is anxious to help the natives without harming them. This is the single complex character in the film, so it's no surprise that Quinn gives the single multidimensional performance.Babenco's attitudes toward Hazel Quarrier, as a character, and toward Kathy Bates, as an actress, are inexcusable - Bates' weight and Hazel's hysteria are callously used for comic relief, even after Hazel undergoes a nervous breakdown brought on by grief. Compared to what Babenco does with her, director Rob Reiner treated Bates as a sacred object in Misery.At Play in the Fields of the Lord is not without rewards. The aerial Amazon vistas, shrouded in mist, are startlingly beautiful; the daily life of the Niaruna is depicted with a glossy, picturesque clarity that brings to mind National Geographic; and the sequences in which the boy Billy goes native are sweetly humorous. But the tribe remains an enigma - we understand far more about the 17th-century native cultures in Black Robe than we do about these contemporary people. With the exception of the inappropriately Christological conclusion (I am being deliberately vague), we are never encouraged to understand the missionaries, only to laugh at, detest and feel superior to them. Surely it's not that simple. Endeavouring to bring salvation, they brought only suffering; there should be a tragic human drama there. Endeavouring to bring insight, At Play in the Fields of the Lord brings only obfuscation; there should have been a great movie there. Benjamin Miller, Filmbay Editor.
Chris Daniels
I think this movie is one of the most incredibly un-noticed movies I've ever seen. It has some awesomely spectacular cinematic scenes, a great 'play' and dialogue script. Emotionally driven and wonderfully shot, taking you into the minds of the ensemble of characters, yet leaving you hanging on the edge of insanity. Tom Berenger is a perfect cast as Lewis Moon. All the principle cast; John Lithgow as Leslie Huben, puts in the usual stellar performance one would expect from Lithgow. Aidan Quinn and Kathy Bates just are the roles they portray as Martin Quarrier and Hazel Quarrier, Tom Waits as Wolf is just another piece of master casting and even Daryl Hannah as Andy Huben is convincing in this particular role, who knows, perhaps she can act. Essentially it is just an all round marvelous piece of stimulating and provocative entertainment film making. Why this movie is not well known and why it is so hard to get hold of is beyond me.From One Movie Maker to another; Congratulations Hector Babenco and Jean-Claude Carriere and their brilliant cast ensemble.
rwmacevoy
I purchased the video of this film after it passed through the theatres so fast I was unable to see it. I had read and reread Peter Matthiessen's award winning book and still gift it to friends and family. The film remained true to the novel. No film can truly portray in three or even in five hours all the complexities that a good writer can express. This film did however do an exceptional job for the time it had.Some have said this film is anti Protestant, or just anti missionary. That is just too simplistic and misleading a label for this story. There is far more to digest than those labels could ever suggest. Here is the deliberate forced movement or destruction of a tribe to gain gold mining opportunities. This is happening with local government officials looking the other way ignoring current federal obligations to the native population. There is a built in irony that Moon (Tom Berenger) is part Cheyenne Indian. The current South Dakota reservations came about by our government reneging on deals in order to get access to gold in the Black Hills. The result was an ecological and cultural disaster for the Sioux nation.This film was as about the symbiosis of culture and environment. Missionaries in Micronesia told the islanders in Yap that taboos on fishing were just superstition. An island bio-system that could once support 10,000 people can now not even support 1, 000. Missionaries tell South American tribes that their occasional drug inspired journeys are pure evil. There are ways these ancient cultural traditions can be kept without any threat to Christian doctrine. Instead, especially for western protestant missionaries, conversion is often more about cultural than religious conversion. This results in the ultimate economic and ecological destruction that follows.Everyone should see this film, and better yet read the incredible book that inspired it.
jimm_56
Its an excellent movie. Films made in the jungle or in forrested regions that contain creeks, waterfalls, rivers, ponds or lakes, always make me feel better just to be watching them. In this movie all criteria have been met. You have a bunch of missionaries on a quest to convert the Indians of the amazon. An Indian who has left his native people long ago and now wishes to return. Evil men who are hoping for a land grab for financial reasons, and absolutely beautiful scenery as you travel up the amazon and into the jungle. My only complaint would be not enough nudity. General nudity (in my opinion), not having anything at all to do with suggested sexual content, can be quite beautiful and natural. I would like to see more movies made like "At Play..." The director really knew what he was doing. The film portrays real life events whether fiction or non-fiction about the feelings and lives of individuals in circumstances of the choices they've made or had forced upon them. If you haven't seen it, you really should. Films like "Emerald Forrest" or "Madita" are other films I would recommend.
