The Mission

Consider a situation where a person unbeknownst to themselves suffers a brain haemorrhage or develops a brain tumour and starts pervceiving auditory hallucinations.

Consider also a situation where a person unbeknownst to themselves enters a mentally disordered state of say mythomania.

Consider additionally a situation where a person unscrupulously lies about having a numinous experience in order to gain attention even benefits at the expense of the gullible.

Consider yet another situation where a person lies about having a numinous experience in fear of otherwise being ostracized by their family, friends, educational institution and work community.

Now consider a person claiming to have heard the voice of a god.

Is there a reliable method an outsider could and should utilize to distinguish between the situations mentioned above and thereof choose among the most plausible that also comport to the shared reality of which we have numerous empirically thus unequivocally verifiable examples?

Or should we merely go with what seems emotionally appealing within a specific ingroup of generally wilfully illiterate?

This film is an outsider's look at the everyday life of LDS missionaries in Finland. It is much more about the human experience of being a missionary than it is about an exploration of religious dogma.

Tania Anderson was neither trying to promote the faith of the subjects, nor was she trying to expose them as frauds. She wanted to show what they do and give insight to the challenges they face in a country where people keep to themselves and are largely skeptical in matters of religion. She did so masterfully.

Any LDS person considering serving a mission would benefit greatly from viewing this documentary.

A crew (or perhaps only one person?) follows a few young american mormon missionaires, for 18 months, in a foreign country; my neigbouring Finland. About sprirituality, finding a purpose and coming of age.

To me this documentary is captivating from start to finish, and I learned a lot. Both about the Mormons and about spiritual wanderings more generally. It is v e r y finlandish in style, meaning slow, subtle and tolerant to silence. There is so much going on, but there is nothing spelled out to you. It is not a documentary about the history and practises of the Church of the LDS, it is a portrait of some young people living inside and through that system.

The best documentaries (or, at least the documentaries that stay with me and become works of art, rather than mere education) do not only hand you facts, but put up a mirror. By getting into the minds, hopes and spiritual aspirations of the persons portrayed, with glimpses into the larger social network they are a part of, the viewer is given an opportunity to see their own life and aspirations in a different angle. And perhaps grow a bit, themselves.

Before seeing this movie, I admit, I had a lot of prejudice about the mormon religion and its followers. I still do, probably, and perhaps some of that prejucice would only be set into conviction with further insight into their practise and/or social structure. But as of right now I am humbled in my perspective. I don´t really know what I expected, but what I found were fellow spiritual travellers. And I know I didn´t expect that, obviously, because if I did, this documentary wouldn´t have surprised me like it did.

I suppose I thought I would see numb minds and hollow words and gestures. Fear and repression maybe, or at least a will-less confomity. Shame on me. I do not share their particular beliefs or practises, but after seeing this documentary I fully respect them as means to a spiritual path for the practitioner. And I see the practitioners as my brothers and sisters exploring the landscape of Spirit. That surprised me, and I like being surprised.

It is also, of course, a film about a Rite of passage on a communal level. Something that is to a large extent going missing in modern, secular societies. These youngsters grow up in a community where that is a natural part of the experience of Life.

The crew follows the featured persons closely, figuratively as well as literally, but is made invisible and inaudible in the editing. It´s like they´re not there, still the film emantes this strong sense of intimate trust between the makers and the participants. It´s really nicely done and ads to a sense for the viewer of getting close to the participants.

But there is one scene that makes me question the crew´s honesty, and wonder if that trust has been betrayed: Towards the end there is a group picture with these smiling young missionaries, but with the screen dominated with the sign "creating the future of HEL" (they are on the Helsinki airport). I sort of expected them to make evil eye signs and stick their tounges out like metal fans, but none of them acknowledges the sign. And they didn´t really all strike me as people who would enjoy a joke like that either... Was this frame done with their consent to the joke? I hope so, because if it was done without their knowledge, I feel that would be a breach of trust and a stain on this otherwise flawless film.

Yes, native white men wandered North American continent in the medieval times and Jesus visited them. Oh America is soooo SPECIAL.

Consider a situation where a person unbeknownst to themselves suffers a brain haemorrhage or develops a brain tumour and starts pervceiving auditory hallucinations.

Consider also a situation where a person unbeknownst to themselves enters a mentally disordered state of say mythomania.

Consider additionally a situation where a person unscrupulously lies about having a numinous experience in order to gain attention even benefits at the expense of the gullible.

Consider yet another situation where a person lies about having a numinous experience in fear of otherwise being ostracized by their family, friends, educational institution and work community.

Now consider a person claiming to have heard the voice of a god.

There is a lot of crafty weaving going on here. Using any normal template for accessing the quality of a documentary - The Mission would seem to fall flat. It's not particularly informative in the normal sense. It is certainly not captivating, in fact "boring" would be a pretty good description. And it's slow, very slow, slow to the point of nothing happening. Then, just as you are reaching for the remote to put you out of your suffering, it may dawn on you: The slow paced nothingness, the feeling of emptiness, may be exactly what Tania Andersson was trying to convey. The placing of god in any traumatic or, as in this case, mundane situation is as obvious for some as it is incomprehensible for others. The crafty weaving has, possibly, made this work accessible from both sides - leaving all opinions validated. Maybe being bored isn't always a waste of time...