The artisans who made the cannons would be hard-pressed to imagine that the sounds of European cannons would ring in the rainforests of South America. The sound of the cannon was like thunder, piercing the red and black chests of the tribe. Seeing this scene, the naked indigenous girl cringed for the first time, her shoulders trembled slightly, and her once proud expression was forever replaced by terror.
But the soldiers firing the cannons will soon tremble at the might of South American nature. The canoe swayed in the turbulent current, and at the end of the turbulent stream was the roar of waterfalls, and the bottom was a deep valley. The camera is raised and zoomed out, the canoe swoops down, the exclamations of the passengers are lost in the raging waves, and several imperial caps fly into the air.
The mission point of San Carlos above the waterfall is where the film strikes at the issue of "reconciliation". At first, the Jesuit Gabriel climbed the rusty iron-colored, criss-crossed cliff, and the waterfall where the last monk was buried was to his left. A few monks who watched him go away stood in the distance, and the young asked the old: "Can you still see him?" The answer: "I can't."
Later, the disheartened slave trader Mendoza volunteered to suffer on the wrong way from the waterfall to the mission site, dragging his heavy armor to follow the Jesuits through rapids and jungles. At the end, the tribe cut off the rope on his shoulder, and threw the armor of the old world into the water. He knelt in the muddy water and cried and smiled, and finally saw the appearance of redemption, which is the appearance of his reconciliation with the past.
De Niro played Mendoza and performed the realm of "sorrow and joy". When I saw him hug Gabriel like a lost self-esteem, I shed tears for the first time over this actor's performance. Mendoza, like Shi Tiesheng, cannot choose to be born and cannot change the past. For them, "finding a reason to live" is the most urgent and heavy cross. At the top of the waterfall, he found his own reason.
But the Empire is not flesh and blood, it seeks expansion without seeking reconciliation. Or, every step of the expansion of the empire crushes some traditional ecology and develops a land that has been cultivated for a long time, but insists on telling the world that this "virgin land" can only be developed by itself. This is true of the North American colony that was directly named "Virginia" (Virginia, meaning virgin), and so is San Carlos.
Of course the aborigines rose up to resist, and of course the resistance ultimately failed. The same is the manpower. The manpower of the empire has been remembered in history, the manpower of the Jesuits has disappeared from time to time, but the manpower of the aborigines has been roaring and scattered, like the sound of cannons in the rainforest, gradually blurring.
Gabriel can save a Mendoza, but his love has no place in the confrontation between imperial power and violent resistance. He walked at the front of the queue with the Eucharist in his hand, facing the firing squad's guns. The sanctuary was burning behind him, and his clansmen kept falling, until his own chest was also pierced, and the white sacrificial robe was stained red with blood.
At that moment, he fulfilled the old monk's words: a believer in search of "reconciliation" in Christ climbs under the waterfall, and no one can see him anymore.
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