The Mission
American Christian missionary John Chau was murdered when he tried to illegally contact and convert some of the world’s last uncontacted indigenous people. Through exclusive interviews and archival footage of John’s journey, THE MISSION explores themes that strike deep at the heart of religion, colonialism, and anthropology, questioning where we draw the line between faith and fanaticism, exploration and exploitation, imagination and destruction.
- Released: 2023-10-13
- Runtime: 103 minutes
- Genre: Documentaries
- Stars:
- Director: Jesse Moss, Amanda McBaine
Comments
- maddiejayne-57292 - 10 January 2024
Glorifies religious arrogance while ignoring the North Sentinelese
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. - aquab409 - 11 December 2023
Interesting and provided more context about why he did it
Let me start by saying I'm not religious whatsoever so that's not why my rating is higher than others. When I first heard of this story I was just perplexed of course as to why he would do what he did... figured he was just naive and did it all on a whim. The film is very detailed showing WHAT exactly lead him to not only go to the island, but to keep pushing as much as he did: his upbringing, high school/ college mentors, personality and so on. Not saying it was smart to do, just interesting to know why.
Was not a fan of the animated portions.
Lastly as someone who thinks the North Sentinel island is fascinating along with other similar islands/ tribes left in the world, this was cool to watch. I didn't get the "glorifying his actions" vibe at all, even the one ex- missionary guy said how dumb he was.
