Ennio Morricone’s Mission Accomplished

National Catholic Register, 15 July 2020

The late composer’s score for The Mission is not only a masterful composition, it is truly sacred music.

The death last week of the great composer Ennio Morricone was timely. His greatest work, the score for The Mission, addresses current controversies about missionary activity and indigenous peoples. The Mission is not about Spanish Franciscans in California, Alta and Baja, but Spanish Jesuits in Paraguay. The issues, though, are the same. And Morricone attempted to resolve them nobly with his music.

Whether The Mission is the greatest Catholic film ever made, or second to A Man for All Seasons, is a matter for debate. Both of them were written by the brilliant Robert Bolt, so the credit is due to the same man. But whether Morricone’s score is the best film score ever ought to be a matter of consensus. Not only is it a masterful composition, it is truly sacred music. Moreover, the score is one of the most important characters in the film itself. Director Roland Joffé makes the music central to the initial encounter of the Jesuits with the Guaraní aboriginal people, their battle for dignity and freedom aided by the Jesuits, and the promise of a future touched by grace.

Morricone composed more than 500 scores for radio, movies and television, an astonishing output over nearly 70 years. Awarded first with an honorary Oscar in 2007, he finally won for best score in 2016 for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. He considered not winning the Academy Award for The Mission in 1986 as “a theft.” It was grand larceny.

The “maestro” — the Italian refused to leave his birthplace of Rome and refused to learn English, despite his star status in Hollywood — was best known for scoring Clint Eastwood’s “spaghetti westerns” in the 1960s. His theme for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was his most famous and commercially successful composition. The music was popular across a range of tastes. His The Ecstasy of Gold from the same film opened all Metallica concerts for decades. From heavy-metal concerts to Gabriel’s Oboe performed at the Vatican, his music reached a range of audiences without compare.

The Mission remains his crowning achievement — a score characterized “as so moving that rather than complementing the film, it overwhelmed it.” That’s not quite true. Morricone’s score did not overwhelm the film but amplified it; indeed, it was a character in the film, even its narrator.

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