Very disappointed :(

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I really really enjoyed this film. I had to watch it more than once to really understand the subtext of what was going on (its biggest weakness was its incoherence). I can't even begin to explain EVERYTHING going on in this movie. Watch it yourself.Essentially the film revolves around 2 families of evangelical missionaries trying to "passivise" a tribe of Indians in the Amazon by converting them to Christianity. The Catholics had tried unsuccessfully to convert them and it had resulted in their deaths. The reason they have to be converted is their land is valuable and the people want them to leave it.I felt that (Kathy Bates) as Hazel Quarrier was absolutely mind-blowing in her role as a fearful fundamentalist who suffers destructive self-hatred. Her agony and her unhappy marriage to her husband Martin Quarrier played by (Aidan Quinn). She feels that she is too ugly for him and that he is in love with another man's wife.I didn't really like Aidan Quinn in this role. I felt there would have been better choices for casting. He doesn't really convey his shaken faith or his sorrow when his son unexpectedly dies from Blackwater Fever. It just wasn't buying it. He did have some good scenes but none of them really felt like they belonged in the film. The tone didn't match very well.The Huben's played respectively by (John Lithgow) and (Daryl Hannah). I was surprised at well Daryl Hannah acted. I think she was more subtle than Aidan Quinn was. John Lithgow was okay. Normally I am a huge fan of his. I have seen him on Broadway a few times and I have really liked nearly everything he's done. I wasn't a huge fan of this performance - he seemed to be phoning it in. Then there are times when he just was like its too hot and I don't give a $hizz.Then there is (Tom Berenger) who I think was the real star of the film. He was Luis Moon the half-Indian who goes the village of the natives to try to repel the invasion. His journey there was the most interesting sub-plot of the film and was not given enough screen time. But that leads me to the biggest problem with the film.The screen play is littered with half-formed subplots, unnecessary characters, and incoherence. The screen play doesn't seem to know what it wants to do or be. Is it a love story? Is it a story about exploitation? Its is a story about relationships and loss? We don't know most of the time because it bounces around so much.The multi-thread approach works as long as all the threads come together at the climax. But it doesn't all quite happen. But I still enjoy it despite its flaws. The cinematography was amazing. The best part for me was the soundtrack. It was perfect.

God made missionaries so that they could be 'at play in the fields of the lord', harvesting souls so that they (the missionaries) get confirmed entry into heaven on judgment day. No kidding here – check with any religious authority. The only problem is that just how many souls need to be saved or harvested per missionary? That apart, another problem was that what to do with the savages once they had been saved by having accepted the Lord Jesus as the savior? Here there were two choices – either they could 'serve' the missionaries and their political masters for the rest of their lives, but in case they were not suitable for that purpose, or the land they were living on was required, then the best solution was to kill them, because the perfect logic was that once their souls had been saved, they had no need for their bodies any longer. The important point to note is that they must be saved first and then only must they be killed, otherwise who knows where their souls might escape to, never to be harvested? Again I am not kidding, check the History of the 'conquest of paradise'. The Amazon forests are the last of the 'fields to be harvested', because they are difficult to access. Although systematic cutting of the forests is now well under progress, the speed at which it has been done earlier without machines was quite slow. The basic storyline is that the government hires half Native American pilot Lewis Moon to bomb the wooden settlement of the nearby Niruna tribe so that they run away and the land can be used by the government, as also gold has been found there. There are two missionary couples who want to 'save' the tribal people before they are made to run away by the government. When Moon takes his plane over the settlement, a highly charged and unafraid tribal leader shoots a futile arrow towards him. Shaken by this experience, and with the help of the local drug something snaps inside him and he refuses to drop the bombs over the settlement, dumps his job and goes to live with the Niruna who accept him as some kind of person who has 'power'. Meanwhile the missionaries reach there and try to befriend the Indians by giving them gifts. Moon tries to warn the Indians that they should have nothing to do with the missionaries, and that any kind of contact is going to be fatal for them.But fated it is already, as disease first consumes the son (Billy) of the sincere missionary Martin. Billy has become close friends with the natives, and when he dies, they are also heartbroken and try to figure out who killed him, rather than accept the civilized man's 'fact' that malaria was the cause. Through their religious visions they conclude that Billy was killed by the other missionary Leslie, who flees.Subsequently, disease hits the Indians as they are infected by flu carried by Moon, and they have no immunity against it. The religious leader of the Indians begins to suspect that Moon is a fraud, and Moon feels he is trapped between two extreme world views which cannot be reconciled because there is no common ground between them. One world view is that of civilization grounded in material science as well as organized religion of monotheism, the other world view is of raw nature in harmony and hidden entities as causes or controls, and Moon is in the No Man's Land between the two. The settlement is bombed and destroyed, the Indians flee into the forest, and Moon is confronted by the native religious leader who calls Moon a 'white man' before he dies.Moon is left 'all alone in the world with nothing but folly' (Carlos), the movie ends with him determined to live his life in the forest, all alone if need be. In a very strange way Moon reminds me of a real life character caught in the No Man's Land between organized religion and primordial personal religious experience that makes that individual all alone in the world confronting the monumental follies of man. Kierkegaard roamed the streets of Copenhagen all alone 'at play in the fields of the lord' and his harvest was that of volumes of creative writing that probed the true meaning of religion.

I don't really have a problem if a reviewer, that is, a Siskle or Ebert type wants to give this a bad rating. That's what they are paid for - to find fault in movies.But everyone I know loved this film, well, maybe loved isn't the best word. It was at times painful, but it was very beautiful and very vivid and one of my favorite films.I was surprised when I looked for this on Netflix and it wasn't available. With all the junk on DVD, this is a beautifly filled, intense movie with a real story. I don't know why it doesn't have more recognition.

This is a ten ton turkey. It's absolutely painfully bad. Watching all of those wannabe stars like John Lithgow, Tom Berenger, and Aidin Quinn overact brought pain to my eyes. Watching all of those Indians crawl and grovel around dragged on and on, making this seem like hours to squirm through. Kathy Bates looked like a complete fool when she apparently went mad and danced in those Indian garments half naked. How degrading and embarrassing is that! And Tom Berenger also suffered dearly. I'm surprised he agreed to do closeups in frontal nudity, because there wasn't much to look at. That Aidin Quinn character was just gross and pathetic. Watching him with those nerdy spectacles, overgrown and dirty fingernails and ugh! He was gross. And the overacting to top it off. Darrell Hannah just looked like some lanky nymph prancing around in the nude. The result of this intentionally serious film is that every character looks foolish. If they were smart, they would try to forget this disaster as much as possible. This should be renamed "At Play in the Fields of the Bored".