12. Ennio MorriconeThe Mission OST
This is one of the greatest soundtracks, and obviously, given what I do, I’m a big fan of soundtracks. I met Morricone once before one of his concerts, and got a selfie with him because I was so excited. He didn’t speak English, or at least they said he didn’t. One minute – that’d be a good way to get through the night, wouldn’t it, to just pretend you can’t speak, so you can’t talk to people!
The Mission is the sort of film that doesn’t get made anymore, about the Jesuits going to Latin America, to the jungles. Robert De Niro plays a character who’s murdered someone, and the only way his soul or his psyche can survive is to pay a penance, which the priests work out for him, which wouldn’t be an exciting subject for producers today. But it’s excellent, and I love ‘Jacob’s Theme’ in the film, which Jeremy Irons, the actor, ‘plays’ on the recorder. The melody is lifted into the score, and then it rises. And because it’s about Jesuits in Latin America, the soundtrack combines European Catholic choral music with Latin American rhythms and singing. It’s like wild music, but it has a holy, sacred element to it. It’s just an incredible combination.
