On the face of it, The Mission would seem like a surprising choice for Australia’s favourite piece of film music in 2013.
As far as the film world goes, Roland Joffé’s colonial drama about a Jesuit mission on 18th century Guaraní land has today been largely forgotten. Music aside, TheMission rarely appears on retrospective lists or tops critical favourites. At the time of writing, the film is surprisingly unavailable to watch in Australia on any digital service, whether that’s streaming or for purchase, and readers wanting to see the film will have to turn to DVD. And that’s if indeed they do want to see it at all: a quick internet search for the film and its director turns up 112,000 results. By contrast, the same search for the number two entry in the 2013 list (Star Wars and Lucas) returns roughly 52 million. On the cinephile social network Letterboxd, The Mission languishes as the 36th most-watched film from the year 1986 — just behind Howard the Duck (oof)and Friday the 13th: Part VI (yikes).Re-vote for the Classic 100: Music in the Movies
However, the triumph of The Mission in the Classic 100 is not so surprising once you listen to its music. Ennio Morricone is a composer of prodigious output — some 400 scores so far, from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly to Cinema Paradiso — and for many, The Mission sits atop that formidable list.
The answer to The Mission’s popularity in part lies in “Gabriel’s Oboe”, a soaring main theme for the film written in a post-Renaissance style, full of ornamentation and intricacy. It is not an insult to The Mission but a compliment to Morricone to say that a great many more people have heard this piece of music than seen the film it was written for. “Gabriel’s Oboe” has lived a long and graceful life beyond The Mission, from the concert hall to formal gatherings and the everyday background of people’s lives.
A great soundtrack, undoubtedly. A film in its twilight, possibly. But there’s more to The Mission, Morricone’s score, and its complex legacy.
Posted from: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/classic/read-and-watch/music-reads/ennio-morricone-music-for-the-mission/11876172