Last Days, directed by Justin Lee, is the story of a man who was lost, or rather who didn’t fit in the world, and decided to go to Port Blair to do something that has never been done. Sometimes, when I watch a film, I really hope that it was not inspired by a real-life story, because I can’t even begin to imagine what would have happened to the real person when merely watching the dramatized version made me feel so terrible from within. Something similar happened while I was watching Last Days, as I witnessed the quest of a boy who was under the illusion that he was the Messenger of God and that the onus of saving the world lay on his shoulders. So let’s find out if all that’s shown in the film happened in real life and where the makers took certain creative liberties.
Spoiler Alert
Is it based on a true story?
Yes, Last Days is based on the real-life story of John Allen Chau, an evangelical Christian missionary who went to Port Blair to spread the word of God on Sentinel Island. To give some context, the Sentinelese tribe has no contact with the outside world, and they are in voluntary isolation. They don’t understand off-island language, and they are quite hostile, especially when they realize that somebody is trying to trespass on their territory. John was born on 18th December 1991, and he was merely 26 years old when he was killed by the tribe in 2018. John’s parents, Lynda Adams Chau and Patrick Chau, blamed a Kansas City missionary bootcamp named All Nations for the demise of their son. Yes, the bootcamp shown in the film does exist, and apparently they give hands-on training to those who wish to spread the word of God and join the movement. I mean, I wouldn’t have imagined that such an organization exists and operates openly in the 21st century. They taught their students to survive in the wilderness, as apparently they had a list of tribes whose territory they needed to infiltrate and convert the members to Christianity. As shown in the film, John went to South Africa, Mexico, and Kurdistan on missionary trips. I believe that the boy might have felt that if he was able to make contact with the Sentinelese tribe, his legacy would live on forever and he would achieve the status of a pioneer in his community. Well guess what? Nothing of that sort happened. John knew that the government of India had prohibited travel to that island for obvious reasons. Yet he tried multiple times to make contact and ultimately succumbed to his own foolishness. He believed that Sentinel Island was the last stronghold of Satan (I mean, can you imagine the brainwashing the boy must have gone through?). He was an educated individual, but still he chose to leave his common sense behind, instead believing in what he called his faith. So basically one could surmise that most of the major events shown in the film happened in real life, but I believe that the makers took some creative liberties pertaining to the character of Radhika Apte, who gets quite invested in the case and makes it the purpose of her life to track down the whereabouts of the missing American man.
How did John become a fanatic?
John’s father, Patrick, who was a medical practitioner, wanted his son to become a doctor too. But John had other plans. He wanted to go on a missionary trip to Kurdistan, and he did go there in 2015. John met two other missionaries named Chandler and Kayla, and he got pretty close to them during that period. I believe it was there he realized what he actually wanted to do in his life. Going to North Sentinel Island and trying to convert the tribal people was like the highest feat one could achieve in the missionary world. It was like winning an Oscar, the only difference being that nobody till that day had won it. It was because the Sentinelese tribe was known for their violent behavior, and nobody who went there came back alive. They apparently killed infiltrators and then crushed their skulls. I noticed that even when Kayla and Chandler educated John about the nature of work, and what he could do differently to leave his mark, they themselves never went to that extreme. In fact, Kayla got married and settled happily, as she found spending her life as a missionary to be very challenging. There came a time when John went to visit Chandler while he was on a trip in the Amazon rain forest, and the latter advised him against going to Sentinel Island. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that John was brought up in a heavily religious environment, but even his parents were not so extreme that they would undertake such a deadly mission. But still, I think John’s upbringing, combined with the experiences he had at a later stage, had a lot to do with the kind of sensibilities he developed. Patrick, John’s father, was right when he told his wife that they should have stopped him. In fact, Patrick did visit his son during the boot camp, and he told him to come back home, as he felt that what he was doing there was way too extreme. But the train had passed by then, and there was no going back for John.
How did John reach Sentinel Island?
Sub-Inspector Meera Ganali got to know about the missing American boy when she realized that the American consulate had asked the local police for help. Meera gave a call to Steve Simon, her point of contact in the American embassy, and that’s when she started her investigation. After performing quite well in the Anchorites Boot Camp (originally called All Nations), it seemed as if John had found a real purpose in his life, something that he could look forward to. He found somebody in Jaipur, India, who assured him that he could take him to Port Blair and get him in touch with some people who would take him to the prohibited island. As stated earlier, Chandler did advise him to not go there, but John didn’t listen. He reached Port Blair and then met a man named Raz, who made arrangements and took him near the shore of North Sentinel Island.
At every stage of his journey, people told him that he was wasting his life and that his fanaticism wouldn’t lead him anywhere. But John was just not ready to entertain another point of view and he was hellbent on visiting the island. According to the film, the first time he reached the shore, the members of the tribe gathered, and they attacked him. John made a near escape, and in fact, one arrow pierced the left side of his chest. He later found out that he survived because he had kept a Bible in his pocket, and the arrow couldn’t penetrate it. Instead of learning from his mistake, John believed that the Almighty saved him, and so presumably he was on the right track. That’s why I say that faith, devoid of logic, can prove to be a lethal thing. During this period, John met a girl named Melanie, and she too told him that what he was doing was foolish. It was Melanie who informed the authorities about John, as she knew that the boy needed help. She told him that he was risking the safety of the entire tribe by exposing them to pathogens. She tried to make him understand, as bluntly as she could, that he was no messenger of God and that he’d been brainwashed into believing that conversion was the most virtuous thing he could ever do. But the 26-year-old had left his prudence behind the day he decided to become a religious fanatic.
Was Sub-inspector Meera Ganali able to find John?
Meera Ganali was never given the respect she deserved by her boss, Sonny. Sonny, deep down, questioned the character of the woman, since she had left her husband and decided to serve her post in Port Blair. Her reality was that Meera loved a girl, but the latter’s religious beliefs and her family didn’t give her the permission to be with a woman. Meera was lost, just like John, and so she came to Port Blair, as she wanted to cut off from everybody. She saw a bit of herself in John, which was probably why she got so invested in the case. Sonny didn’t want to investigate, and he told Meera to just state in her report that the boy had died. But she couldn’t let go of the case without finding out the truth. She hoped that she would catch hold of John before he committed the blunder of signing his own death warrant. But unfortunately, that couldn’t happen.
By the time Meera tracked down John, it was already too late. She even had a big argument with her boss; he got so irritated with her that he fired her from her position. But that too didn’t stop Meera. John stepped onto the North Sentinel Island, and apparently he made contact with the tribe. He wrote about those trips in his diary, which was later retrieved by the police officers from the fishermen who dropped him near the island.
John was killed by the members of the tribe, and his body was buried on the shore itself. The Indian authorities (in real life) tried to get the body, but even after multiple attempts and a violent clash between the officers and the Sentinel tribe, they were not able to retrieve it. At the end of Last Days, the question that came to my mind was, whose fault was it at the end? Who was to be blamed for the death of a 26-year-old boy? The All Nations called him a martyr, but how would you justify his death to a grieving father, who lost everything that day? Will they also tell Patrick Chau that John was the first one to reach heaven, and so it was all justified? Or will they tell him that his son broke the last stronghold of Satan? Well, I believe that reason was the biggest antidote against the disease of religious fanaticism, but unfortunately nobody was there to instill some logic in John’s mind while he was alive.
