THE MISSION (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

The Mission, National Geographic Documentary Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2023

Almost a month before his 27th birthday, John Allen Chau was killed during an act of what some would call the ultimate display of religious faith and others would generously refer to as an act of reckless disregard for his own safety. That seems to be the central question of The Mission, a documentary about Chau and his horrifically failed attempt to be a Christian missionary. However, directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss see Chau's story as part of a larger history and as a means of asking deeper questions about the role of missions, the dehumanization of indigenous peoples, and how much a colonial mindset defines the general view of voluntarily isolated tribes.

All of that could also define Chau's perspective, which developed from reading fictional and real adventure stories as a kid, while playing in the woods with friends and pretending to be explorers in some uncharted place. Chau's life is at the forefront of this film, with his father Patrick, a psychiatrist who's still struggling to make sense of why his son did what he did, and various friends and acquaintances detailing his childhood, his college years, and his move toward the missionary work for which Chau believed he was divinely called.

The kid seems so ordinary, playing make-believe based on the stories he loves. The high-schooler seems so normal, uncertain of what he wants to do with his life and posting on social media about feeling lonely, bored, and without a sense of purpose. Even the young man, who would eventually travel to North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean with improbable and illegal plans for converting a group of indigenous people there, seems like any other.

Chau had friends, to be sure. At least one co-worker at a national park where he worked before his attempted mission found him quite attractive and appealing, so it's not as if romance was out of the question for him. He had a vocation, which he worked hard to accomplish. Some of those who don't agree with Chau's actions find them admirable or even enviable to some degree, because it's only a certain kind of person of such a young age who has so much of one's life figured out in the way Chau seems to have.

The risk here, perhaps, is that the filmmakers might portray him with such sympathy that it transforms his death into a denouncement of or a rallying cry against those who killed him. After all, it's not as if the Sentinelese, a community of maybe a couple or few hundred people living on that government-protected island, are able or willing to provide their side of the story as to what happened when Chau arrived unannounced, uninvited, and unwanted to their land.

This is a group that lives a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, as they have likely done for their entire history. They have survived that entire time without the aid or influence of anyone else, and that, in theory, should be the end of the story of outsiders attempting to offer aid and coerce or force influence upon them.

Much of the story of the Sentinelese people, then, amounts to theorizing, based on contact with similar groups in the past and brief encounters with them over the past few centuries. The challenge for McBaine and Moss is to provide a sense of understanding for this group that matches the same level as the film's for Chau.

We have Chau's entire life, basically, to learn about—through stories, letters, and his diary, which Chau's family made public after his death. The film gives us re-creations of major events by way of animated segments, which give them a certain bright-eyed, unreal quality. Chau saw his mission in a romanticized way, as if he was one of those historic explorers or created adventurers he so admired, and the animation mirrors that perspsective.

The Sentinelese perspective, though, comes in an indirect way, from scholars, including a former missionary, whose work in the Amazon led him to a crisis of faith and a greater sense of conscious and conscience for indigenous peoples, and another who dissects historical accounts of "scientific" studies of nearby groups for what they really were. Through their interviews and an assortment of archival materials, the filmmakers pick apart long-standing assumptions and prejudices about isolated communities like the Sentinelese, and we're not just talking about records from hundreds of years ago, either. There are news reels and nature documentaries from the 20th century that inherently speak of and portray these groups as something outside the realm of humanity.

Side by side, Chau's biography, up until his final trip to North Sentinel Island, and this history play out in the documentary's narrative. The examination of Chau's growing religious fervor—to the point that he starts to sound as if he has a savior complex—is haunting, and the filmmakers hint at some of the people who might have influenced his beliefs, which his Christian father started to find extreme, or ignored warning signs of some psychological issues—not to mention that his plan was dangerous and illegal. There's something sinister about that latter part, as if certain people and/or groups had their own plans in mind for how to exploit Chau's death, if that should be the result.

By the end of The Mission, though, the Sentinelese point of view becomes about as clear as is possible under the circumstances. It's a simple matter of survival, as plain and human as can be. The question then becomes why Chau couldn't and those like him can't comprehend that.

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