Written and directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, 26-year-old American missionary John Chau was killed as he attempted to make contact with an Indigenous group off the coast of India, one of the last communities on the planet still living in isolation.
When you’re diving into the topic of such unbreakable faith with a laser focus on one goal, those who are themselves religious may be able to empathise but to anyone else, it can sound like complete and utter madness. However, even those with a strong Christian background could surely see that what John Chau was trying to achieve was short-sighted and highly unnecessary.
One of the things that’s somewhat missing from The Mission is a deeper dive into the psychology of John Chau, what drives a person into feeling such drastic measures are their purpose in life. Especially as a lot of the people featured come from a similar, if not the same, background as Chau. Using his diaries to explore his journey does indeed give us a direct line to his perspective, but it would have been fascinating to know more of how it was shaped.
Although, The Mission doesn’t take a very hard line on how their religion and those in positions of influence hold blame for Chau’s untimely end, so it feels unlikely that the filmmakers would have taken the time to unpack their negative impact. Ultimately, that’s a big part of what’s holding the documentary back, it’s journeying through John Chau’s memories but never going much below the surface. It’s not getting to grips with all the failures that had to come together to allow this naïve, young man to throw away his life. How he was allowed to walk this insane path because it was built on his faith.
It’s not the only issue that The Mission has, another big part of that softer feel is the style of editing and use of archive footage. Even purely in the opening few scenes, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss are injecting so many unnecessary film clips, in an attempt at clever segues or adding personality. Unfortunately, it just makes the first impression a very messy one, it’s a chaotic mixture of tones and styles. It does improve as time goes on but it never finds strong footing.
The Mission feels as though there was an interesting story to tell, one of reasoned madness and religious fanaticism, ego and blinkeredness but they couldn’t do it justice. The style is too casual and muddled, the tone is too softened and the true sadness and culpability of John Chau’s story get lost in the fray. It pays tribute to the young man instead of getting to grips with the real causes behind his tragic end, and whether it could have been prevented.
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