The Weight That Was Cut Away

In the 1986 film The Mission, slave trader Rodrigo Mendoza kills his own brother in a duel of jealousy. Consumed by guilt, he seals himself inside a monastery, convinced he is beyond forgiveness. But Father Gabriel, a Jesuit priest, refuses to leave him there. The priest gives Rodrigo a penance: drag a heavy net packed with his old armor, his weapons, everything that defined his violent past, up the steep jungle-covered cliffs beside Iguazú Falls — to the very people he once enslaved.…