Product: The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (Region 2) (1999)
Rating: 4.0
When an Angry God Screams In Your Ear
Milla Jovovich is astonishingly good in her performance as Joan of Arc. The supporting cast is excellent as well. Cinematography, sets, costumes are all perfection. Mystical sequences are suitably bewildering...are they from the mouth of God or madness? The seemingly endless battle scenes, the thick dark brutality of 15th century warfare, the ruthless machinations of power and betrayal are filmed mercilessly to great effect. The blunt, relentless savagery bludgeons us as we are plunged ferociously into the fray, urged on by a frenzied, schrieking berserker with an angel's face. Regardless of whether you prefer to see Joan's story as myth or history or a combination of the two, this film is a powerful depiction of the mayhem and miracles of martyrdom that can occur when an individual's voice of conscience and reason are lost in the blast of an angry god's screams of retribution. Whether manufactured by religion, manipulated by the state, morphed from some secret personal madness, "holy war" has never been the work of the Creative and Loving Spirit that moves the Universe. Suffering and the horrors of war come from people. I didn't see this film when it was in the theatres, but saw it on VHS three years later. It stikes me that the people behind the 9/11 tragedy, the people who clamored for the death penalty the moment the D.C. snipers were caught, the kamikaze pilots of World War II, and all those down through history who call upon death with a righteous voice have a little of Joan of Arc within them. Who spoke to Joan...the God or the Satan of her religion? Or were the voices from the deep well of her own psyche twisted and turned about by the times in which she lived? Can it be that Bin Laden and Joan of Arc are cut from the same cloth? When will it end? When will it ever end? This movie asks powerful questions that need asking today more than ever.