The Mission

The podcast Behind the B has an incredible series on this event and the history of colonialist and neighboring people involving themselves with the very unwilling North Sentinelese people that was very informative and interesting and made it very clear that these people want to be left alone and reinforcing that what Chau did was reckless, stupid, arrogant and selfish. I highly recommend the podcast if you want to actually learn about what happened, including what John did in the lead up to going to the island that helped him rationalize his decision. This documentary is borderline harmful in glorifying this man and treating him like a dreamer with a calling instead of a selfish moron while making the people he endangered take a back seat to this wannabe colonialist.

The problem with missionary religious groups is that they are raised in a belief system of absolutes.

Pushing a fantasy on new generations that one "must" convert the globe to their way of thinking never takes into account the opinion of those they're trying to convert.

I don't come away from watching this documentary thinking of John Chau as a sympathetic figure in any way, shape or form. He is just another statistic in a long and - unfortunately - unbroken chain of the imperially arrogant devout who feels that their message is the only one worth heeding. A truly elevated and civilized human being doesn't think that way.

The ending of this review is that I've watched two documentaries about John Chau and this is my preferred. Not only does it do a good job showing the arrogance of Evangelical Christianity, it shows how tone deaf the belief system is to other peoples. It does a solid job at presenting its information unbiased but that's the ending of this review.

Now, let's start at the beginning.

Documentaries are a form of literature. They make a stylistic choice that often limits the perspective of the viewer to get a close up view at information. The information, and how it is presented, often reveals the bias and intent of the usage of that information. Documentaries most certainly behave in a way that creates a political conversation around the subject (revealing sides to be discussed).

In the case of John Chau, this is the second documentary I've watched. The first was about "The Persecuted Christian" and was presented by a group of cultists from 'Radiant Church' in Kalamazoo, MI. Their documentary attempted to use the death of John to raise more money to educate us about persecuted John Chaus. They presented the information as if John were a "poor boy, from a poor family, that just wanted to bring the love of Jesus to tribals but was killed for it because tribals hate Jesus."

The reality is that John Chau was brainwashed by an Evangelical Cult that uses a Caucasian Jesus to justify *colonization. John broke international laws, ignored warning shots, and insisted on pushing his religious superstition onto others. He literally dedicated his life to go across seas and make twice the devil as him (*the way Jesus warned against).

This film has a subplot, if we can call it such, about another missionary who learned a tribal tongue so as to evangelize to them. When he finally got around to it, they counted his Caucasian Jesus as (*spoilers). This is a brilliant addition because it juxtaposes the madness experienced at "Radiant Church's persecuted Christian money drive" with the reality that no one has actually met Jesus nor been to heaven or hell (hence it is ALL superstitious brainwashing). It perfectly highlights how the vast majority of Western Christians live comfortably in the nations they colonize (like the USA), while other peoples are met with antisemitic rhetoric to actions within said nations.

Thank you for this documentary and the time spent to get the information right. Thank you for gently presenting the madness of those who believe in Jesus and hope he will return to penetrate them a second time with his trinitarian 'foot-long' pantheism.

Most importantly, thank you for exposing us to the truth so as to avoid tone deaf religions like Christianity in the future.

First, to those complaining this is "too Christian", it's anything but. This documentary tries to ride the line and show multiple sides, but it leans heavier to the "he was misguided" side with some strong digs toward evangelicals and missionary work in general. It is anything but sympathetic to mission work and goes out of its way to highlight all the "damage" done by missionaries, or at the very least, the wasted efforts (by interviewing a missionary turned atheist).

I appreciated the various points of view and the attempt to be impartial, but several things gummed up this documentary.

The animation was not appealing to me. I would have preferred re-enactments or a different animation style. It seemed cheap and cheesy at times, though still effective and better than nothing.

The editing was confusing, leaving me wondering what the point of the documentary was. For a documentary about such a focused and driven (misguided or not) young man, the film it self was far less confident and focused, meandering from non-commitment, to moments of sympathy, then on to scathing appraisals of disagreement, and finally landing with an awkward sense of off-balance closure with a religious, but non-Christian, poem by the dad.

I felt like this film tried to be something everyone could appreciate, but ended up being something that probably won't please the skeptics or the believers. We might assume that's the expected outcome of neutral journalism, but it felt too cobbled together and forced to seem relevant.

The information was fascinating, but the film, for me, was disappointing.

As "The Mission" (2023 release; 103 min) opens, we are introduced to John Chau, an evangelican Christian who is hellbent on doing missionary, the further away and more isolated, the better. Through something called "Unreached People", he sets his sights on the 200 or so resident on the North Sentinel Island, one of the most isolated spots on earth (in the Bay of Bengal)...

Couple of comments: this is the second documentary from co-directors (and real life husband and wife) Jesse Moss and Amanda McBain ("Boys State"). Here they reassess the life and times of John Chau, the evangelican Christian whose mission went horribly wrong. Of course it raises the issue of the assumed superiority by (almost always white) people who are determined to show the rest of the world how it's done and how to live a proper and meaningful life. The thought that maybe, just maybe, this is just insanely arrogant, if not worse, doesn't even enter their universe. All of these themes were also examined in another documentary from earlier this year called "Savior Complex", and frankly better than in "The Mission". (As a complete aside, please do not confuse this documentary with the 1986 movie of the same name starring Robert de Niro. They are completely unrelated projects.)

"The Mission" premiered at the Telluride film festival some months back and it is now streaming on Hulu. If you are curious about the moral pros and cons of religious missionary work by white people across the globe, I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.