Customer Reviews

The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc

5 star:		(98)
4 star:		(50)
3 star:		(50)
2 star:		(42)
1 star:		(71)

 

 

This is a rather irreverent and disturbing look at the life of Saint Joan of Arc. The portrayal of her early life was very good, giving her a sincerity and piety that made the child Joan an attractive character. However, once Milla Jovovich took over as the teen Joan, she became a raving lunatic. Clearly, this was no accident. She and director Luc Besson are husband and wife, and it is obvious that this is their combined interpretation of Joan.

The problem with this portrayal was that Joan was made to be appear so demented that she lost credibility as a believable character. Her belief in her voices was depicted more as mad fanaticism than unshakeable faith. Personally, I have no problem with this interpretation, since I am more apt to believe her voices were the result of an unbalanced psyche than the voice of God. The problem I have is believing that anyone, even in the 15th century, would give an army to someone who is so obviously over the edge. Moreover, it is a stretch to believe that even the most desperate of simple minded men would follow such a character into battle.

If the portrayal were just a little more balanced, with moments of piety, sincerity and lucidity, the viewer and the other characters around her might be justified in saying, `Is she divinely inspired or simply mad?' Only when that question resonates has Joan been portrayed effectively. In this interpretation there was never any question. She was clearly a madwoman. It was almost a relief when they finally did away with her.

That being said, I must say that from a technical standpoint this was a brilliantly directed film. Luc Besson has produced a compelling visual work of art. The opening scenes of young Joan running through the fields were exquisite. The battle carnage was authentically grisly and the action realistic. The costumes were wonderful and the locations and sets well chosen and well crafted. His camera perspectives gave great impact to every scene. His imagary of supernatural events was electrifying. In every regard, other than Joan's character interpretation, this was an inspired work.

Milla Jovovich gave a superb performance as Joan The Mad. Though I don't agree with the interpretation, I can't imagine such insanity delivered any more effectively. She really seemed well suited for a jacket with wrap around sleeves. In every scene she exuded white hot intensity, especially in the battle scenes. Her performance was truly tour de force.

Faye Dunaway was fabulous as the cunning Yolande D'Aragon. She was so nefarious and in control, deliciously evil and conniving.

John Malkovich did an excellent job portraying Charles VII, however he was a bit old for the part. Charles was born in 1403 and met Joan in 1429 at the tender age of 26. Malkovich has trouble passing for 46 (his actual age) no less 26.

Dustin Hoffman's minor role as the conscience was also quite well done. Unfortunately, it lost some effectiveness because he was never really put in context. Was he another of Joan's creations or an actual being? A little defining dialogue would have helped develop his character better.

This is a fine film with a fatal flaw. If the story is to work, Joan must be a beloved heroine. In this portrayal, she does not endear herself to the viewer. Contrarily, she is a disturbing and off-putting character. For this reason I rated it a 7/10, though it easily qualified as a filmmaking 9 or 10.

I have seen the movie twice within a week, and will see it acouple of more times. I was shivering through the whole movie, it wasso real for me. ... how 'clean' Joan was. First, at the beginning of the film it turns out that she had been to the priest for the third time that day, to confess. Later on the knights do not understand her when she says 'I want to confess. I have not confessed ... today yet' - if your really pay attention, for the environment this is very strange. And, at the end of the movie, she confesses her 'crimes' again. What I want to point out that she had a very strong conscience and she intended to keep it clean. This makes her a candidate to be Saint - as she was given this title 500 years later.

This movie IS about reality, the betraying of Joan included. This is what I liked the most (the film being so real).

Further on, every split second of the movie is communicating something. If you watch closely, the faces, the looks of the actors, the music, are constantly telling you a part of the story, a message. Perfect timing features the cutting of this film. The conflicts are precisely designed. The actors are perfectly matching their roles. I admit, that the ending is a bit long, but basically it stresses the suppressive behaviour of the inqusition of that time.

Milla plays just perfectly. In this version of the Joan of Arc movies she is what she is and that is it. Luc Besson had an idea in mind and she realises it.

If you like Luc Besson, Milla Jovovich, Eric Serra, history, middle age, or if you are a rebel, this is a must for you.

The more you appreciate art the more you are going to like this movie.

Finally: this movie is fine art in itself, a classic piece. But you have to like the style Luc Besson paints...

This year I have seen three films on Joan of Arc and there are reportedly more versions out there. First I saw the Leelee Sobieski depiction of Joan which provided an interesting, if conventional view of a saintly Joan. Next I viewed the outstanding Criterion Collection DVD of Paul Dreyer's classic "Joan of Arc". While in black and white, it may be one of the finest movies ever made. Dreyer's script follows fairly faithfully the trial of Joan. He depicts a saintly, yet human Joan who is suffering greatly. Renee Falconetti's performance is unforgettable in this silent film (to which has been added a beautiful score, "Voices of Light").

Finally I got to see Luc Besson's version. I was fully prepared by prior reviews to give this movie a miss. Well, forget the reviews. This is a thinking person's Joan of Arc. Bresson is really exploring what may have motivated Joan. Much of this is conjecture, of course, but then again, this is a "movie" and not "lives of the Saints". Besson speculates that from childhood Joan may have had psychotic episodes where she extrapolated meanings from random events. Her psychosis may have deepened when Joan experienced a traumatic experience, like the death of her sister at the hands of English soldiers. Her voices then told her to drive the English from France. Seems logical. Milla Jovovich's depiction of the young, innocent Joan, the avenging angel Joan, and finally the doubting Joan was very fine throughout the film.

I particularly liked the character of Joan's conscience (the anima to the vengeful Joan's Id). The role is played by Dustin Hoffman. He punctures Joan's "balloon" of religiosity, questioning whether or not God really told her to attack the English. With this Bresson appears to be questioning not only Joan's source of divine inspiration but the justification of any religeous war. This may explain why the battle scenes are so horrific and graphic...so that the audience subequently gets the point that Joan wasn't fighting a battle with God on her side.

In summary, what we find from Luc Besson's movie is not the divine view of Joan but the human view. It is a valuable contribution to the various depictions of Joan of Arc's life. Why is there so much controversy over Besson's version? Is it because many of us like the certainty of the official version and find it difficult to "think" about an alternative, an all too human Joan of Arc?

There is a movement of late for the French to ATTEMPT to do (many) things a la Amerique, especially in movies by trying to capture the grande epic style of film that America does so well.

Although Besson's film, "Le femme Nikita," is one of my top five favorites, he failed here; and I fail to call myself his fan.

Here are the problems:
La pucelle was NEVER raped.
Jehanne was compassionate towards English soldiers, peasants, etc
She was not insane, schizoid, or mentally ill in any way.
She was very eloquent and could debate with the most learned men.
The dialogue represents the 20th C.
Weapons are wrong.
Technical work is second-rate.
Even the hair colour was wrong (she had black hair).

Besson uses La Pucelle as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement, and it was a poor attempt at that.

This movie is so painfully inaccurate, one could assume it was written by someone who not only has no notion of who Joan of Arc was historically, but also has no reverence for her as a saint. Joan of Arc had two brothers, not a sister. Domremy was not attacked by the Burgundians or the English, as it was already English territory. Joan heard the voices of Saint Catherine, Saint Margaret, and Saint Michael. Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret were the dominant voices. She also spoke of the voices comforting her, not terrorizing her for following their direction. I despise this representation of Joan as a broken, pathetic, and incredibly insane antihero. Anyone who has given the time and thought to reading her trial transcripts would know that she was so much more than this film could possibly pretend to portray.

I have seen three films based on the life of Joan of Arc, the Ingrid Bergman film from the late 1940's, the video verison of the recent mini-series and this one, and this is, by far, the worst of the three. Historically, it is a farce, (Joan did in fact have a sister named Catherine, but she was not in any way harmed by the English, in fact, Joan's village apparently only suffered one minor raid during the entire war)...Bishop Cauchon, far from wanting to "save Joan's soul" was the spearhead of the plot to completly discredit her and have her burned. Neither did she sign with an "X"one of her letters to the English garrisons around Orleans still survives in a museum and the signature,Jeanne, which is what she called herself is plain...All period sources agree on how even tempered she was, becoming upset only on very rare occasions. The Joan of this film seems closer to a lunatic than the peasant girl who led an army. I will admit that the costuming is superb, as good as any I have ever seen. Joan's spiritual side in this film is almost non-existent, shown only by her requests to hear Mass during her imprisonment. As it stands, I only give this film two star based on the cimenatography and the costuming...The great "Joan of Arc" film is still to be made....

I have read like three books on Joan of Arc and I have seen the mini-series on NBC, starring LeeLee Sobieski (I love you!). Everything I have seen or read about Joan of Arc, Jean d'Arc, was better than The Messenger. Joan was a kind, wonderful person but this movie made her look like a maniac that should be put away. Though I have to say Milla Jovovich played a wonderful crazy person. Joan's visions weren't even correct. In the movie she saw some man that looked like Jesus, while in life she saw Saints, such as St. Catherine. The war scenes were gruesome, but I liked them; they were realistic. Another thing wrong was how Joan found her sword. She didn't find it in a meadow, as if someone dropped it there and she found it. Her voices told her that the sword was in St.Catherine's temple around the alter, so she sent some of her men to the temple and they found it buried by the alter just as she said. No one else knew it was there before. I was so upset after watching this movie, because it didn't show the true Joan of Arc. I would recomend reading Joan of Arc by Mark Twain to find the real Joan of Arc.

Gosh, this film disagreed with me. Overlong, extremely shallow and with a tone that varies from comical slapstick to brutal fight sequences, watching this film at that cinema was a mind, heart and buttock-numbing exercise. Confirming the suspicion that Luc Besson is essentially a grown-up man with a child's understanding of cinema, it's stylish, inconsistent, and with no depth of any kind. The film seems like a terrible waste of talent - Jovovich's edgy, verging-on-madness portrayal of the title character, whilst never particularly subtle, nonetheless explodes with gusto, and the battle sequences are highly entertaining in a grim and gritty, post-'Excalibur' style. The rest of the film is a mess, though. Jeanne's heavenly visions contain the worst kind of cliched mid-80's pop video imagery imaginable, not a single line of dialogue stands out (except for the well-known transcriptions of Jeanne's trial, taken from court records of the time), and Eric Serra's music sounds rooted in the 1930's, when it isn't using a 'Fifth Element'-style breathy 'thrum' noise. The tone veers alarmingly - the opening sequence features Asterix-style comic English soldiers, pantomime crooked teeth and all, brutally raping and murdering Jeanne's sister. Later on, Jeanne's expedition to attack Paris is reduced to a 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'-style 'attack the castle' fiasco, whilst the ending tries a stab at indie art, with Dustin Hoffman as Jeanne's 'conscience'. And it's much too long.

This film follows the story of Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the leader of the greatest army France had ever seen, later tried and burned for heresy.

The way Luc Besson (the 5th element, the big blue, and many others) portrays medieval France is spectacular. The grittiness of life in Europe around those times can almost be tasted throughout the movie, and the acting of the stellar cast (John Malcovitch, Fay Dunaway, Milla Jovovich, Dustin Hoffman etc..) is nothing short of perfect.

Juggling themes of political intrigue, religious fervor, psychological scars and greed for power, Besson shows us the human side of a period in history too often remembered for its epic battles and digs deep into the complex character of Joan.

If two great film artists, Carl-Theodore Dreyer and Robert Bresson, saw fit to restrict their talents to Joan of Arc's "passion" and "trial," then what on earth Luc Bresson thought he could do with her whole story is sheer megalomania. An action film director, he simply hasn't the skill to capture one of history's greatest enigmas on film - even with a large budget and an international cast. And he is clearly besotted with Milla Jovovich - else why would he cast her in The Fifth Element as 'the perfect human?' She is so out of her depth in this role that she's embarrassing to watch - turning poor Joan into a complete neurotic. The film suggests that the real puzzle of history is not that Joan of Arc led a French army into battle - and won - but that the Dauphin and his ministers actually permitted this apparent nut case to do so. She obviously hadn't the imagination - neither did Besson - to look deeply into this young woman's soul and find something authentic - like a 15th-century peasant girl made so ecstatic by her visions and voices (made ridiculous in the movie) that she convinced enough of her countrymen that she was sent to liberate them. I can think of maybe two or three living actresses who could pull it off, but they're far too old to play a 19-year-old. Viewers should purchase the newly restored and gloriously remastered Passion of Joan of Arc to get glimpses of what art can do with the enigma of Joan.