This felt so much longer than 1h45.

The visual style is experimental but a failure. It's not in black nd white but it _feels_ black and white, and not in an good original artistic way, just in a looks old and boring kind of way.

An evangelist goes on an island to convert the local pagan tribe. Some follow him, some don't, not sure how or why it changes. It centers mostly on his conflict with another man (not clear where he came from) that first saved his life and helps him, then turns into a a kind of religious prophet for the tribe (though he seems to also try to bring them to catholicism, in a more peaceful way). The story is slow and boring, nothing much happens, and apart from the trial by fire action (by the way how hard must it be to stand longer in fire than a guy dressed in highly flammable beast pelts ?), most changes in characters and the situation seem to come out of nowhere.

It has apparently been compared a lot to Valhalla Rising. I can see why, there are obvious parallels, but the results are night and day. Valhalla was beautiful, hypnotic, spiritual, and whatever The mute tried to copy on it, it failed miserably: it's ugly, boring, and can't see much spirituality in it. You can see they tried though. Let's say the actors are ok and the tribe is interesting.

One message that you could retain from it is that so called men of god are just in it for the power it gives them. In the end the mute succeeds where the evangelist fails, having even baptized one of the tribeswoman. But because it was not him that did it, the evangelist's reaction is to attack the tribe and try tor burn her to the stake. Wow, what a normal reaction for a servant of god. Anyway the final scenes show that religion is just an excuse for conquest and massacres, so the whole thing was useless anyway. Not sure that's the message the movie wishes to convey though. Anyway, not worth going through the movie for that.