Product: The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (Region 2) (1999)
Rating: 1.0
Shame on you, Luc!
8 out of 10 for technos; 3 out of 10 for drama; 1 out of 10 for history. Besson's Joan is a raving vengeful femme and bears no resemblance to the real Joan of Arc, so well documented by dozens of scholars. Don't for one minute be fooled by his revisionist Joan; the real woman was a real star and a saint. I was left with a feeling of anger, as if a fraud had been perpetrated, because Besson's Joan simply cannot have achieved the heroism that the real Joan so patently did. Her trial and life are among the most well-documented of any historical figure, and Besson's Joan disavows or ignores what the best scholarship has long established. A modernist gothic horror it might be, but it's cheap cinema (because this Joan is just not credible) and even cheaper fiction. Don't infect your children with this a-history.