Film On Slain US Christian Missionary Misses An Opportunity For Empathy
(REVIEW) Sometimes, a real-life religious story captures the imagination of both the religious and the secular worlds.
That appears to be true of John Chau, the American man who died trying to preach the Gospel to North Sentinel Island — home to a tribe cut off from the outside world and one that is illegal to enter, to protect its chosen isolation.
Alex Perry’s article for Outside Magazine, titled “The Last Days of John Allen Chau,” inspired the documentary “The Mission” (which I reviewed here when it came out). Now, that film has inspired a feature narrative film directed by the legendary Justin Lin (of the “Fast and Furious” franchise).
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In the fall of 2018, John Chau, a 26-year-old American missionary, kayaked out to North Sentinel Island hoping to convert an indigenous tribe shut off from the world. A day later, his body was spotted on the shores of the remote island. Soon, the story became viral global news, prompting widespread criticism (with many calling him an unwavering martyr and others an unhinged zealot).
“I’m not religious, so I couldn’t wrap my head around someone's motivation to kayak to a remote island, potentially bringing disease and other dangers with them,” director Justin Lin recalled, only hearing about the story when he saw the news break at an airport bar screen. Then, an image of John appeared on-screen.
“It was a young Asian American male,” Lin said. “Something just hit me: who am I to judge someone so quickly? I have a 16-year-old son. I thought, that’s somebody's kid, that’s somebody's brother. That twenty-second judgment I made led me to a three-year journey to make this film and examine not only John Chau’s life but my own biases. I knew from the beginning I wanted to tell John’s story without judging him.”
Lin has definitely made a movie that shows he cares deeply about Chau and his story. But the film never ultimately puts aside its own secular biases enough to connect with Chau beyond the surface, leading to a scattered and unfocused script that is at once too judgmental and not judgmental enough. This is sad, because religious and non-religious people need opportunities to understand each other better.
The film follows Chau (played by Sky Yang) as just another young and idealistic college grad raised in a devoted Christian home, butting heads with his doctor father, Patrick (Ken Leung). As soon as Chau enters medical school, he abruptly changes course, dropping out to become a missionary. The film toggles between his final days — during which Meera (Radhika Apte), an officer off the Indian coast, races against the clock to uncover Chau’s whereabouts — and his formative years as he becomes the person with the tragic end everyone knows.
There are plenty of compelling things in Chau’s story that the movie highlights: the relationship between a father and a son with very different relationships with their faith. His father sees it pragmatically, as a community. Chau sees God as a living Lord who calls him to do great things. The missed connection between the two of them is a palpable tragedy — when it’s given focus, driven especially by a layered and heartbreaking performance by Ken Leung as Chau’s father.
Meera’s attempt to chase John down brings a thriller element to the story, and the various people who challenge Chau for his beliefs bring the debate about the ethics of missionary work to the forefront. Many of the shots of the outdoors and places Chau visits are gorgeous.
But the film never ends up coming together. It has too many threads it’s trying to follow. Is it about what drives Chau? Is it about his real-life journey to try to convert the North Sentinel Island people? Is it about the policewoman Meera trying to stop him? Is it about Chau and his father? The film throws a lot of these threads at us, but never truly develops any of them.
Part of the problem is the arbitrary-seeming nonlinear storytelling. The two timelines and character arcs don’t clearly parallel each other either logically or emotionally. So one constantly feels like the two storylines are interrupting each other rather than complementing each other.
The deepest problem is that it takes way too long — if it ever happens — to get a compelling reason to connect with either Chau or Meera. We understand Chau’s motives through snippets of other people preaching Christian talking points at him, or Chau parroting those talking points, or a vague sense of calling. But we always feel like we’re looking at Chau from the outside, trying to figure him out like an alien species. It feels, watching this film, that Lin simply never quite made it past that initial alienation he felt from Chau and their differences in worldviews.
This is why we need Meera as our way in: because she’s trying to figure John out, too. But we’re given no details about her — who she is or what drives her — until the very end of the film. The reason we discover she has such a chip on her shoulder about Chau is powerful. But by then it’s too late for that to invest us emotionally in the story. So we have two protagonists, but no emotional anchor throughout the whole runtime.
Watching this as a Christian is an interesting experience. I’ve been a Christian all my life. And it’s been interesting watching the way that non-Christians portray Christians evolve onscreen. In America, it used to be that — while the non-religious might clearly not agree with religious people — they existed enough in a Christian culture that they understood religious people well. But now, I increasingly see secular storytellers depict religious people with a sort of puzzled curiosity, as if we were an alien species they struggle to understand.
One of the most striking examples of this is how secular people now discuss missionaries. Obviously, I don’t expect non-religious people to agree with Christians trying to convert other people to Christianity. But it’s puzzling to me that they would treat it as if it’s such a foreign concept to try to convert other people and cultures to their beliefs. Every feminist, every believer in racial equality, every woke warrior believes the same thing. And yet, “Last Days” treats Chau’s mission to spread the gospel as a deep psychological mystery.
Movies can be a great opportunity to have opposing groups understand each other better. But while “Last Days” gives voice to the strongest anti-missionary arguments, it never does for the pro-missionary side. One person in India tells Chau that, despite all the Christian missionaries there, “Do I look saved?” One girl calls Chau awful for being a missionary because of the practice’s legacy of imperialism. Meera likewise argues that people converting others to their religion makes their lives worse by destroying their way of life and imposing bigoted rules on sexuality. Chau responds by giving stock Christianese answers or pointing out hypocrisy, but never real counterarguments.
But it doesn’t take much research to realize that there are very compelling comebacks to these criticisms of missionary work.
There’s a lot of evidence that spreading Christianity made the world a better place. One qualitative research study by Robert Woodberry, a political science professor at the National University of Singapore, found that “areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.”
I obviously don’t expect a non-Christian filmmaker to promote Christian missionary work. But if one is going to bring up the debate around an important topic, one should present the substance of the debate accurately — particularly since the debate is so interesting and worthwhile. It would also assist us in bringing empathy to Chau, someone the filmmaker claims is trying to understand.
Ultimately, “Last Days” seems to be trying to have it both ways. It wants to present itself as being nonjudgmental about Chau, and yet it is constantly judging him — calling him “lost” and “searching for identity,” and having him say nothing good when he’s being berated.
It’s not judgmental enough to make Chau a defined character, but it’s too judgmental to actually see why Chau’s views are deeply plausible and relatable regardless of belief. In doing so, it squanders an opportunity for believers and non-believers alike to see our shared humanity and build bridges we desperately need to.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.