In November 2019 John Chau made a final entry in his diary. “I think I could be more useful alive,” he wrote. “But to you, God, I give all the glory of whatever happens.” Within hours he was dead. He was 26.
Despite repeated warnings from the people of North Sentinel, in the Indian Ocean, to stay away, Chau, an evangelical Christian, was determined to bring the gospel to the island’s estimated population of about 150, an “uncontacted” tribe. At least one of them shot the unwanted interloper with an arrow.
The incident made headlines around the world. The Mission, a new documentary made by Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, brings understanding and context to the rash actions of the fervent young proselytiser.
“We read about the story in the newspaper when it became global news, but for sure it was a meme – and still is a meme that lives on,” McBaine says. “There’s a surface retelling of the story: I’m John going to North Sentinel Island to meet unknown people. We knew there was going to be more to the story. I don’t think we knew how much more. You pull the thread on John Chau or the Sentinelese and suddenly there’s this whole history of colonialism and mythology and anthropology from what was initially a story about a very religious person in a radical phase.”
The film, which is tipped as an Oscars favourite, is a corrective to the cruel jokes that circulated in the weeks after Chau’s death. Hundreds of fake TripAdvisor-style reviews of North Sentinel swiftly appeared, lampooning Chau as a crazy Christian supremacist. His Instagram account became an overnight sensation. One mean-spirited TikTok video has amassed more than 200 million views.
“There was a piece of stand-up comedy by a British comic that was so shocking and brutal about what had happened to John that it took us some time to process it,” Moss says. “It was a joke about his penis being split by an arrow. Part of our project was to approach John as a complicated human being and a person of sincere faith. He had friends. He was popular. He was a mountaineer. He loved the outdoors and camping and fishing. He’s not necessarily a crazy person, although the question is posed in the film: what is the line between faith and madness?”
There’s an evolution from Cannibal Island – the film we show from the 1930s – to the idea that we can learn from the equilibrium of indigenous communities
— Jesse Moss, documentary-maker
John Allen Chau was born in Alabama, the third and youngest child of Lynda Adams-Chau, a Christian ministry organiser, and Patrick Chau, a Chinese-American psychiatrist. Growing up in Washington state, he developed an outdoors sensibility and a keen interest in adventure stories such as Robinson Crusoe and The Sign of the Beaver. As a teenager, when his peers were queuing to see The Avengers, he was enjoying End of the Spear, a 2005 faith film based on an ill-fated mission to Ecuador in 1956, when five American missionaries were killed attempting to evangelise the Waodani people.
“We use this yellow plane as a motif in the film,” Moss says. “It’s the plane that went to Ecuador in the 1950s, which inspired John and so many others. The plane has a second meaning, which you see in other ways in the film. It’s the idea that we’re so enlightened and so modern. We’re going to fly in with our helicopters and their aeroplanes and values, because our enlightenment is so superior to theirs. And yet now we’re recognising that the way we live in relation to the natural world is totally f***ed up. There’s an evolution from Cannibal Island – the film we show from the 1930s – to the idea that we can learn from the equilibrium of indigenous communities. But we are still objectifying and thinking in archetypes when we need to reframe how we think about other cultures.”
Much of the film unfolds through John’s diary entries and social-media posts and a sorrowful, circumspect letter from his father. Patrick Chau, who is also a Christian, is critical of the evangelicals and extremists who inspired his son to travel to North Sentinel, a protected part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands that is off limits to visitors, in part to avoid the introduction of diseases to its population. He is particularly scornful of the way their interpretation of the religious doctrines of the Great Commission and the Rapture. According to John Chau’s understanding of Matthew 24:14 – “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” – the Great Tribulation can occur only once all uncontacted peoples have heard the gospel.
“How this… predestined suicide came about, how it was seeded and germinated, as a psychiatrist I pick up my professional tools to review and draw some conclusions from our 26 years and 11 months father-son relationship,” Patrick writes in his letter, which is read by an actor. “How come such an intelligent, seemingly well-prepared explorer committed such a reckless mistake? This is for the benefit of all parents while raising their children.”
“His father is very sceptical about how much those ideas have been used and abused to justify acts of colonialism by the West,” McBaine says. “And I think it is really interesting the amount of incredible conversation they had with each other about just that. Patrick’s letter was a key thing for us as both film-makers and parents. It was a point of connection and a way to understand the different experiences of a family that are very religious.”
It’s all adventure and colonisation and exoticism, whether that’s embedded in Tintin or Robinson Crusoe or a National Geographic magazine feature
— Jesse Moss
The film is being distributed by National Geographic, an organisation that the film-makers incorporate into a larger narrative about exoticism and the lure of the unknown.
“What’s surprising is that it wasn’t a battle,” Moss says of National Geographic. “They said, ‘Look, we get it: feel free to look at us.’ We weren’t sure that they would live up to that commitment once they saw the cut, but they did. There was a self-awareness that the conversation was not just about religion. It’s all adventure and colonisation and exoticism, whether that’s embedded in Tintin or Robinson Crusoe or a National Geographic magazine feature. How we look at and think about indigenous communities, the power relationships, the imposition of our values and our culture on them, and their eradication in many cases. This film is a story about stories. Not just the New Testament. And how the stories we tell ourselves require scrutiny.”
“I had all the National Geographic magazines. I read Tintin. I watched King Kong,” McBaine adds. “Where did that all come from, the idea that these people are cannibals, or the idea that they are living in the Garden of Eden? I needed to rethink all of that. I didn’t expect that to happen when we first started working on this story.”
The mindset that McBaine describes has been fatal for various peoples. Illuminating testimony from the historian Adam Goodheart, who made his own youthful excursion to the island, relates a tragic history of the Sentinelese, with chilling extracts from a history of the people written by 19th-century British colonial officer Maurice Vidal Portman. Goodheart remains visibly regretful that John Chau consulted his work ahead of his trip.
He goes to language school, even though no one on earth knows what language the Sentinelese speak,... And there was a kind of magical thinking that, because he has a divine blessing, somehow he will overcome their weariness and scepticism
— Jesse Moss
Chau was certainly well prepared for his attempt on what he called “Satan’s last stronghold”. He had already taken part in missionary trips to Mexico, South Africa and Kurdistan. In 2017 he was accepted on a boot camp run by All Nations, a Kansas City charity that works to see Jesus “worshipped by every tongue, tribe and nation”.
“He was a smart guy,” Moss says. “He had written a 26-page manifesto in which he talks about what he knows about the Sentinelese and what he intends to do. He has read their history and yet it doesn’t deter him. He does things like quarantine in a safe house in Port Blair” – on South Andaman Island, nearby – “before he goes. He inoculates himself. He goes to language school, even though no one on earth knows what language the Sentinelese speak, or even what they call themselves. And there was a kind of magical thinking that, because he has a divine blessing, somehow he will overcome their weariness and scepticism. And I think that’s one of the paradoxes of John. There was courage of conviction but also some self-awareness.”
The Mission opens in cinemas on Friday, November 17th
