Product: The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (Region 2) (1999)
Rating: 1.0
A 'Vulgar Film'
I suppose I should know better than to present a historian's view of a film of this sort, but such is what I do.While the scriptwriter, Andrew Birkin, has said that he made sure the end result was far more historical than what director Luc Besson and distributor Sony had originally planned (don't ask...), and Birkin seems to have had good motives, the end result nevertheless bears little resemblance to the time period, people, or events in question. Nor, good motives aside, is it respectful of the heroine: both the director and scriptwriter have confirmed that the film's intent was to show, in essence, that Joan allegedly betrayed her religion by leading an army (hence the lurid "Thou Shalt Not Kill" message, the scene with a bloodied Jesus figure who asks her why she's hurting Him, the business with her "conscience" (played by Dustin Hoffman) at the end, and so forth). Luc Besson had the following to say about the film's take on the subject: "If she wanted to be a good Christian, a good person... even if her motivation was good, to have her country free, it was wrong to participate in the massacres. 'Thou shalt not kill' - that's a commandment." Actually, the commandment is believed to be "Thou shalt not murder", a distinction no longer made by the modern "Woodstock Christianity" which is here being inserted, ironically enough, into a war film about a medieval military saint who lived in an era in which the Church itself had many orders of "warrior clergy". But, having determined that all warfare is condemned by the Bible, the film's creators decided, according to the scriptwriter, that Joan must have been motivated by revenge, for which they inserted an entirely fictitious rape and murder scene near the beginning in order to give her a reason for seeking vengeance against the English - in stark contradiction to the evidence in the original documents, in which her compassion for English soldiers is repeatedly described by the eyewitnesses. This evidence also contradicts the film's version of Joan as a twitchy, hysterical neurotic, which has led many viewers to come away from the film with the notion that she was insane - despite the fact that, as many scholars have pointed out, we can prove that she certainly did not suffer from schizophrenia or other form of mental illness. In fact the eyewitnesses said repeatedly that, far from being the out-of-control figure portrayed in the film, she, quote, "speaks little, [and] demonstrates remarkable prudence in her speech"; she was able to hold her own against trained theologians and devise "new stratagems that two or three of the most experienced commanders could not have done", etc. The film's version, on the other hand, was aptly described by one viewer as "a Valley Girl on methamphetamines".Along similar lines, Besson has said that he made the character to look as androgynous as possible, thereby dredging up another bit of slander leveled against her by her enemies but contradicted by the eyewitness accounts. Based on Besson's comments in "Le Monde" and elsewhere, he was apparently attracted to doing a film about Joan of Arc because he thought she was androgynous like the character played by his (then) lover Milla Jovovich in "The Fifth Element", and so he found them both "sexy". One reviewer, Kathryn Norberg, dryly commented that this seems a pretty thin premise upon which to make a movie about Saint Joan.The film is no more respectful of history than it is of Joan herself. Despite claims by the distributor that the movie was based upon careful research, very little of it is true to the period. The dialogue is pure late-20th century. The battlefield sequences have little in common with 15th century battles, and neither do the weapons. Some viewers were impressed by the bloody mess created as giant spinning propellers lop off the heads of any soldier unfortunate enough to get in the way (ah yes, it was those giant propellers which made the late-medieval battlefield the brutal arena that it was); some even made absurd comparisons to Spielberg's excellent "Saving Private Ryan". But whereas the latter movie featured reasonably authentic tactics and weapons, and the characteristic wounds produced by those weapons, Besson's film is merely gory for the sake of being gory. Whereas Spielberg's use of first-person camera footage (with drops of blood and dirt spattered on the lens) was meant to suggest the military cameramen who did in fact accompany the troops onto the beach that day, Besson's similar tactic of showing blood spattering on the camera lens is merely a hopelessly anachronistic gimmick - is the audience being asked to believe that cameramen accompanied 15th century armies? Apparently, Besson decided to borrow a technique he thought would be seen as "chic", without taking any account of the change in time period from World War II to the Hundred Years War. And whereas Spielberg's film is a sympathetic and sensitive attempt to portray the nightmare that the actual troops had to endure and to honor their sacrifice, Besson's fantasy portrayal of battle, and his stated opposition to (if not outright contempt for) those who fight wars, results merely in a trendy bloodfest that cheapens the subject rather than educating the public or honoring the fallen.The relatively few critics who praised the film mostly praised only the "hip" filmmaking prowess of the director himself, which is perhaps what the director was after.While we've all become resigned to silly Hollywood films that distort history, the shameful treatment of La Pucelle in this one marks a low point for the genre. Film critic Charles Taylor has said that "The Messenger" was the only movie he has ever called "vulgar", which is perhaps as good a way of summing it up as any.