Product: The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (Region 2) (1999)
Rating: 1.0
Joan of Arc, as viewed by an agnostic
I was so upset after watching this film, I had to write a review somewhere to caution people not to watch it. The old silent version is the best I've ever seen of St. Joan, and the other '90s version with Leelee Sobieski did a much better job of showing St. Joan's human struggles as a young girl responding to the call of the divine, but used by and eventually abandoned by earthly powers.Okay, here are my issues with this depiction of the saint's life:1) The rape scene she witnessed with her sister. This appears nowhere in the stories of her life. Yes, we have very little hard facts to go by, but this fabrication made it look like Joan was motivated by revenge for her sister's murder and rape, rather than a holy calling. The rest of the film for the most part supports this view (Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of her "Conscience," for instance).2) The scenes where, after her sister's funeral, Joan refuses to make the sign of the cross, and then removes a chalice of wine from the church's tabernacle, makes the motions of consecrating it, and then pours it down her throat after shouting "I want to be with you NOW!" There are two ways you could understand this behavior: From a secular perspective, she totally lost grasp of reality after her sister's death. From a faith perspective, this is complete heresy, not to mention silly misrepresentation of Catholic communion. There would never have been a chalice of precious blood in the tabernacle (only the Eucharist, the hosts that have been consecrated at mass). If someone ever performed any behavior like this, they would never be canonized as a saint in the Catholic Church. Period.3) The trippy scenes of her visions, where she encounters a slightly creepy Christ figure, and not St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Michael the Archangel. I don't even know where to start with Dustin Hoffman's character. When I first saw him, I thought he was depicting Satan tormenting her in prison (his behavior certainly seemed more in-line with this analysis, although the credits list him as her "Conscience"). Then at the end, he hears her confession and then absolves her of her sin! We know St. Joan was confessed (by an actual human priest) and received the Eucharist, because we have the priest's testimony. Another inaccuracy: They show her finding her sword in a field, and her "Conscience" has her consider all the possible ways that what she interpreted as a sign from God could actually have been just random chance. While it is good to be cautious with interpreting signs, and should be discerned under the guidance of a trusted spiritual director, it is one of the basic elements of her biography that she found her sword in a chapel (I believe it was under a statue of St. Catherine).5)Her death scene, where she is screaming as she burns at the stake, while some random person in the crowd waves a cross about, is very disturbing. Yes the reality of someone being burned to death at the stake is pretty unnerving, but there seems to be something almost mocking about the cross, and her behavior looks more like despair than holy resignation (I know, I could never muster holy resignation while being burned... which is why I'm not a saint). In her biography, St. Joan asked that someone lift up the cross that she might see it as she died, and her last word as she burned was "Jesus."There were a few good moments in this movie. I like that they show her repeatedly insisting that the army sends messages asking for the surrender of the English. I like the scene where she rides across the field of battle to do this, prays for an end to bloodshed, and then the English turn away without fighting. I like how they depicted her discovering the Dauphin in disguise. But for the most part they made her seem like a raving lunatic. It was a patronizing film told like the perspective of someone who does not believe in miracles, taking what I will admit is one of the more bizarre and mystifying saints' lives, and looking down on the ignorant peasant girl with a bit of spirit who got a little too much religion which made her an easy pawn for the political powers of her day. Read the transcripts from her trial and you see a clever and faith-filled woman who is clearly grounded in reality. This film is a gross oversimplification to the point of obfuscation of the real story of an incredible saint.