Sundance 2022: The Mission
sundance 2022Every year, more than 60,000 missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints travel the world to teach the word of the gospel and hopefully build solid bases of new followers. Many of these individuals are young men and women who are sent on 2-year missions that see them rotate partners and cities. Streaming as part of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Tania Anderson's debut feature The Mission follows a select number of these individuals as they travel from the United States to Finland. Including both tales of success and failure, The Mission is an honest and unbiased insight into this journey that finds a complex and, at times, contradicting emotional message that matches the overdetermined experience that is the whole of the missionary journey.
When tackling religion on film, it is hard for both the creator and audience to leave bias at the door. Based on whatever experience that individual has had with religion, a bias of either good or bad tends to shine through causing the subject to often be one of the most tender and personal seen within art. Unlike a documentary such as Jesus Camp, which clearly went in trying to find a certain angle and message, The Mission is just about as objective a documentary surrounding the subject can be. Simply allowing these kids to speak for themselves without editing out any of the good or bad they experience along the way, the audience is treated to a diverse array of ideas and takeaways that feel authentic and worthwhile. Through this diversity, the film is able to find multiple messages that will resonate differently with each individual audience member.
One of these lenses portrays The Mission as one of the most haunting films of the year. Stripping these kids from anything they know and giving them a platform of systematic instability as they have to switch partners and locations every few months, multiple kids begin to doubt themselves and see their mental health deteriorate. One individual boy especially faces incredible hardship to the point where he openly expresses that he is experiencing suicidal thoughts and extreme depression, yet the church does incredibly little to support or help him. This ends in a truly haunting finale where he accepts these emotions to be part of his life forever and even shows joy that they are present as he believes they make him a better Christian. There is an overwhelming and almost suffocating sadness and horror throughout much of the film that sees the church feel more like a cult than anything else and the inability to simply reach through the screen and give these kids a hug and help to find a better future is truly heartbreaking at times.
The film however is careful to not let this dominant the entirety of the runtime. The runtime wisely also dedicates time to those who are thriving because of their relationship with the church and this experience. The Mission never invalidates these emotions or attempt to show them in a patronising light but instead gives them space and time to shine. It is making no judgment and shows there is no easy judgment to be made. Every kid is different, as is every experience and emotion. If one was to condemn the entire system, it clearly would be hurting these children, yet to validate the system gives validation to the trauma it is giving others. There is no simple answer and by simply showing the truth of the situation, the film expresses that in a poignant and incredibly effective manner.
This does however lead to a runtime that is hard to truly find a strong message in. By showcasing these experiences with little to no voice or direction, the film itself feels somewhat frustrating as it ends with little closure or thesis. It gives the tools to the audience instead to build a takeaway and while this will undeniably work for some, it will also feel forgettable and lackluster to plenty. There is also a strange distracting weight given to the film due to the latter half of the feature taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eagle-eyed viewers will notice early on in the feature that the 2-year terms these young individuals serve will take them into the pandemic which is reinforced as the second half features plenty of masks and social distancing, but the film never takes even a second to address this. There is no noticeable marker when the pandemic itself actually hit and, while this might not at first seem important to the actual focus of the film, it is hard to take the revolution of society that followed March 2020 out of the experience these kids are facing. It is naturally interesting the morals of pushing on with this assignment during a pandemic and seeing how this radical shift in life affected their journies feels like a naturally rich evolution for the film to take in a similar vein to a documentary like Homeroom, which debuted at Sundance in 2021. While this might not directly affect the narrative the film is trying to focus on, it is yet another aspect of the film that simply feels underbaked and like it could be used in a much more rewarding manner.
When it comes to religious documentaries, The Mission might not be the best in the world but is undeniably worthwhile. The film is a poignant yet incredibly casual capturing of these kids and the journies they go on, which gives the audience enough material to find something meaningful to take away from the project. If nothing else, the complexity of religion and trying to find a single judgment on the subject is an idea executed excellently and might just be the best-crafted piece of the film overall.
