CULTURE CLASH ALONG THE AMAZON

Peter Matthiessen’s novel “At Play in the Fields of the Lord,” published in 1965, was set in Peru near the Brazilian border. The movie is set in Brazil and updated to the 1970s.

Leslie Huben (John Lithgow), a supercilious Christian evangelist in Brazil, is a legend to his followers in the United States. He and his loyal young wife, Andy (Daryl Hannah), are joined in the Amazon by the Quarriers--the idealistic Martin (Aidan Quinn), wary and fragile Hazel (Kathy Bates) and their excited 9-year-old son Billy (Niilo Kivirinta)--of North Dakota.

The two missionary families rendezvous in Mae de Dios, a jungle trading center that is headquarters for a corrupt official (Jose Dumont) who is trying to coerce a pair of American gun-runners--the half-Cheyenne Moon (Tom Berenger) and his foul-mouthed sidekick Wolf (Tom Waits)--into flying bombing missions over the land of the savage Niaruna, the Indians that the Hubens and Quarriers have come to convert.

Moon, aided by a powerful hallucinogenic native drink, will soon have a spiritual awakening of his own, feel a kinship to the natives of the rain forest and scuttle the bombing mission to go among the Indians as a holy man fallen from the sky. The Hubens and Quarriers will restore a Catholic mission in the jungle and set about erasing the memories of Catholicism from the minds of the Niaruna and bringing them their own brand of Christianity.

Confrontations with the Niaruna will challenge the faith of the four missionaries, and put their lives at risk.

What will Moon learn from the Niaruna, and they from him? Will he help them if the gifts and the promises of the missionaries turn out to be disease and death, or will he go to the aid of the missionaries? Will Leslie deserve the faith put in him by the Quarriers, or by Andy, or by himself? Will Martin give in to his lust for Andy? Will Andy give in to her lust for Moon? Will Billy survive a bout of blackwater disease?

Producer Saul Zaentz has always saved the distribution rights to his movies until they were finished, and says he plans to make a similar deal for “At Play in the Fields of the Lord.” He says he’s had interest from several studios, but because of his past relationships with the management at Warner Bros. and Mike Medavoy, the former Orion production chief now running Tri-Star, he is likeliest to make a deal with one of them. The film is scheduled for release late next year.