Beyond the Gates of Splendor, part 2

Yesterday, I posted on Beyond the Gates of Splendor, a documentary film telling the story of the killing of five US missionaries in Ecuador in 1956. I have now seen the rest of the film, and the last half was better than the first. (It's not a two-part film -- I just didn't have time to see it all at once.) The End of the Spear was released later, and is a dramatization of the same events. It has the same director as this documentary. The documentary relies heavily on eye-witness testimony by participants, and also on graphic material, including some home movies, from the 50s.

The second half tells more of how Elisabeth Elliot (who has since re-married) and Rachel Saint, wife and sister of two of the murdered missionaries, went to serve the Waodani people. Elliot's service was for a couple of years, but Saint was there for a long time. She worked on translation and Bible teaching. Elisabeth Elliot, in an interview, tells how Saint prepared a woman to preach to the people every Sunday. (Saint is dead.) Elliot took her small daughter with her, and she was, basically, a Waodani kid.

Steve Saint, son of Nate Saint, also spent years with the Waodani. Many things that only God could have done are shown in the film. Steve Saint's son, who had lost one of his grandfathers, developed a grandson-grandfather relationship with one of his grandfather's killers.

The son of the Waodani man who lied about the missionaries, leading to the attack on them,
became a missionary pilot himself, although within his own culture.

I found the interviews with the Waodani, including some who participated in the murder, to be the most interesting part of the film. (There are English subtitles.) They are great actors, they understand that they have come out of great darkness, and they show us, through their eyes, some things about North American mainstream culture that aren't pleasant to see. They are also funny -- natural comedians.

Thanks for reading. I'm glad that I checked this out of our local library. It is still for sale, apparently.

Beyond the Gates of Splendor

I happened to see a DVD entitled Beyond the Gates of Splendor in one of the DVD racks of the local branch of our public library. I had never heard of it. I checked it out, and have seen most of it, certainly enough to recommend the DVD. It was released in 2002.

The film is a documentary, using interviews. It also uses photos, and videos, taken in the 1950s by the missionaries who attempted to reach the Aucas (also known as Huaorani and Waodani -- don't ask me which is correct) of the Amazon jungles of Ecuador. Five male missionaries were killed in 1956. Jim Elliot and Nate Saint are the best known. Elisabeth, Jim Elliot's wife, went to live with these Indians as a missionary some time after the killing. She has been an important author and speaker, and is still alive. One of her books is Through Gates of Splendor, which is about the events of 1956.

All five of the wives of the dead men are interviewed, as are other relatives, a missionary and a US soldier involved in the investigation of the incident, and several of Indians, including eyewitnesses of the events of 1956.

There doesn't seem to be much doubt that the Waodani are better off because of the efforts of these, and other missionaries. An anthropologist describes them, as they were in 1956, as perhaps the most violent society on earth -- some 60% of the ancestors of Indians he interviewed back then died by murder.

One idea that I had never heard was the reason given for the killings, by one of the Indians. He said that a man and a young unmarried woman, with an older woman as chaperon, came to visit the missionary men. (There are photos of these three, at the site, with the men.) The man and the young woman went back to the Indian camp without the chaperon, which upset some of the men at camp. These men were told that the chaperon wasn't with them because the foreigners had threatened them, which was a lie. The Indians, it was said, attacked because of this.

This is a moving movie. The recollections of the wives are sometimes funny, sometimes heart-wrenching. The Indians (with subtitles) are sometimes dramatic and sometimes matter-of-fact about some terrible events in their lives, but always interesting. I haven't seen anything about conversions of Indians so far, and probably won't -- this is from Twentieth-Century Fox, not some Christian organization, which, in a way, emphasizes the interest and importance of the story.

The director, Jim Hanon, went on to make The End of the Spear, a dramatized version of the same events, which had rather wide theater distribution in 2005. I guess I'd choose the documentary, if I had to select one of the two. Apparently Beyond the Gates of Splendor is still for sale.

Thanks for reading.

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March 7th, 2008. An additional post is here.