Product: The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (Region 2) (1999)
Rating: 3.0
Focus on battle scenes undermines story of Joan
Messenger:The Story of Joan of Arc is at times brilliant and at other times chaotic. In a few scenes it is brilliant and chaotic at the same time. How can this be, you ask? It's because it was made by the brilliant but messy French director, Luc Besson. Besson did two of my favorite pop culture movies, La femme Nikita and The Fifth Element. I admired both of these for the same reasons. Both are high-tech, fast-paced visualizations of absurd stories. They are triumphs of style over substance. Nikita is about a young female criminal who is coerced by the French equivalent of the CIA into becoming an assassin. The Fifth Element is a bizarre science fiction story set in the future. In it, Bruce Willis, aided by a truly weird alien girl, must keep the evilest force in the universe from destroying the human race. I think the reason that Messenger is a weaker film is that Besson's unique style does not work well when he deals with a story set six hundred years in the past.You would think that this filming of the Joan of Arc story would be great because this is a French film with several American stars in the cast. [Don't panic! It's in English.] But, beyond Besson's limitations are the limitations of the story itself, which is shrouded in mystery. In the early 15th Century, a young French peasant girl named Joan had visions that she claimed told her she was to lead an Army that would free her people from English rule. The army was raised by the dauphin, the English retreated, and the dauphin became Charles VII, King of France. Afterwards, Joan's reward was to be tried as a heretic and then burned at the stake. This much seems to be accepted by historians. Whether or not Joan actually lead the army is hotly debated. Who actually tried Joan is also not known for sure. Some think it was the English, others think it was the Catholic church. We do not even know the exact nature of the charges against her. We cannot say for sure what events caused the poor girl to go from heroine to martyr. She was basically forgotten about until the 19th Century, when her story was used as a political tool to advance the cause of French nationalism. Five hundred years after her death, the Church declared her to be a Saint.I tell you all this history because it is my opinion that a satisfactory movie about her will never be made, because it is impossible to tell the story in a way that will please everyone. That leaves us to deal with the successes and failures of The Messenger on a purely cinematic basis. Its strong points include its visual richness. The feel of the period is lovingly rendered. The script adroitly sidesteps the issue of Joan's visions. While it does not deny that her messages may have come from God, it also suggests the possibility that she was simply delusional. It concludes that, whatever the source of her messages, the savageness of her trial made even her doubt her sources.One of the movie's weaknesses lays in casting Milla Jovovich as Joan. I have admired her work in other films, but, like the director, she is not the right choice for a historical epic. The biggest mistake, however, was made in choosing to show in detail several gruesome battles. These occupy perhaps a third of the movie's two and one half hours running time. They become redundant and detract from the more interesting story of Joan - her childhood, her visions, her dealing with royal powers, her interactions with the all-male troops, and her eventual and tragic fall from grace. The result is that Messenger is an interesting movie, but hardly a great one.