This is a movie about Gladys Aylward, a missionary to China. It’s a good introduction to her life, but as is to be expected from a movie, it’s rather Hollywood-afied. The ending isn’t quite the same as her real life (in the movie she gets the guy and lives happily ever after, whereas in real life she broke up with the guy and had pretty bad health for the rest of her years).
The biggest problem I had with this movie was not the romance (which was in her real life, they just overplayed it, and besides, IT’S A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE, OF COURSE THEY AMP UP THE ROMANCE) but the underplaying of Aylward’s Christian values. Aylward goes to China… well, just because she thinks she needs to go there. She stops foot binding… because it’s the right thing to do. She goes into the prison thinking how God actually won’t keep her safe because “it doesn’t work like that”. And most annoying to me was the fact that on the march they don’t sing hymns, or any other Christian music, but instead sing “This Old Man Came Rolling Home.”
However, it is an interesting movie, and there are a lot of moving scenes from her life – such as her rejection from missionary agencies, her trip overland to China and the different dramas it entailed, and the prison scenes. It’s well made, mostly consistent with Aylward’s life (except for the examples I’ve already specified), and very watchable. I recommend it, especially as a movie for young Christians or pre-believers to get them interested in missions and missionaries.
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