{"id":41994,"date":"2023-12-10T06:56:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-10T11:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=41994"},"modified":"2023-12-10T06:56:08","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T11:56:08","slug":"the-mission-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/10\/the-mission-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mission (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Director Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine\u2019s Nat Geo film \u201cThe Mission\u201d is one of the most frustrating movies of the year. It\u2019s a documentary that tip toes through its subject matter to its detriment, and avoids the outright reality of a situation that should have never happened and a life that should have never been taken. In 2018 American missionary John Chau was murdered in an illegal expedition to preach his religion to the isolated village of the Sentinelese tribe off the coast of India.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Although the grim details of how he died and what happened to his body were never really clarified for the public, his diary was fetched. This allows us to kind of peek in to the mind set of John Chau and that\u2019s where \u201cThe Mission\u201d falters.<\/p>\n

Directors Moss and McBaine worked closely with Chau\u2019s parents to explore the events leading up to his horrible death, thus the movie spends too much time trying to idealize him. He\u2019s established as an adventurer, an idealist, and someone whose own sense of daring made him someone worth admiring in a sense. During the second half the movie finally drops the veil to explore not so subtly how John Chau had built up a Messiah Complex. John\u2019s alleged best friend Levi even speaks about Chau\u2019s death with pride more than caution, a peculiar aspect of the documentary that was downright eerie.<\/p>\n

John managed to build on the delusion with the help of the predatory church he belonged to that, quite openly, instilled delusions of grandeur in their missionaries. As a clear example of their intentions toward Chau, the interviewees working for Chau\u2019s missionary program explain in deadpan how much they encouraged his preaching of the gospel. They then refused to admit any fault or guilt when the conversation of his death arose.<\/p>\n

They even somewhat throw him under the bus, refusing to divulge the identity of Chau\u2019s mentor, who likely sent Chau on his mission, but conveniently didn\u2019t go with him. Where were Chau\u2019s parents the entire time? Why didn\u2019t they try to discourage him more? Why didn\u2019t any of his siblings attempt to talk sense in to him? Does John\u2019s parents blame his \u201cbest friend\u201d Levi? Were there legal repercussions for the Mission program John was apart of, or his family?<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, \u201cThe Mission\u201d is a stark and grim portrait of another victim of the urge to preach \u201cthe gospel.\u201d Though, it may not offer many answers, nor provide a ton of insight, it successfully tackles the sociopathic, often sickening urge we continue to have to colonize, and proselytize.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now Streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Director Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine\u2019s Nat Geo film \u201cThe Mission\u201d is one of the most frustrating movies of the year. It\u2019s a documentary that tip toes through its subject matter to its detriment, and avoids the outright reality of a situation that should have never happened and a life that should have never been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,292,834,1013],"class_list":["post-41994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-biography","tag-documentary","tag-religion","tag-suspense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41996,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41994\/revisions\/41996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}