The Story of Joan of Arc

I suppose, again, that there’s no accounting for tastes. I enjoyed the film immensely, and was enthralled for two and a half hours. My wife Angela fell asleep about three quarters of the way through, finding it long, boring and drawn-out.

Supposedly I give nothing away if I say that the movie begins with a young girl finding a sword in a field and having visions, and ends with a bonfire in the marketplace at Rouen. In the meantime we see her (Jeanne, here called Joan in the English-language fashion, played by Milla Jovovich) convincing the Dauphin Charles of France (John Malkovich) to provide her with an army to relieve the siege of Orleans (a process that seems to take over half the film), failing to convince the new King Charles of France to provide her with an army to retake Paris, being betrayed to the Burgundians, being turned over to the English, being tried, being tortured, and having fortunately not-overlong discussions with an enigmatic and to all others invisible monk-like figure (Dustin Hoffman).

Luc Besson, who made the film, not too surprisingly treats the English occupiers quite unsympathetically (the French of the period felt much the same way about them, calling them “bigods” and “godams” for their language, a facet of their culture that Besson makes quite evident in the film). The most complex characters are, surprisingly, some of the members of the ecclesiastical court that tries Jeanne; a few of them appear to be trying to find a way out for her, though others seem to be most upset that she is intruding on their special and unique relationship with God. The most likeable character is the young student-turned-archer Gilles (Vincent Cassel — did I get this right?), a minor member of Charles’s court who is assigned as her constant companion and protector, and who evidently falls in love with her. Unfortunately, when I checked the credits in the IMDB I discovered his full name — Gilles de Rais, a name which would later become synonymous with the word “monster.” ⁽¹⁾ Other French officers are largely folks with “funny hats” rather than full-fledged characters, though the Duke of Alençon’s exasperated resignation is rather enjoyable. Yolande of Aragon (Faye Dunaway) seems to exist only to manipulate her malleable son-in-law Charles in any direction he doesn’t seem to want to go.

Hoffman’s role confuses me, and I am still not sure what he was meant to be. IMDB names him “The Conscience,” but he struck me as, more likely, an agent of Satan, attempting to convince Jeanne that her messages from God were nothing more than the left side of her brain attempting to impose some kind of rationality on the stimuli coming from a chemical imbalance in the right side, so give it all up, kid. Though at the end, his actions suggest that he might also be an agent of God himself. Maybe there’s no difference…

All in all, I liked this film, and would recommend it to anyone who is willing to sit through two and a half hours of costume historical for the sake of a good story. For myself, if I’d been there and had heard Jeanne scream at Orleans: “If you love me … follow me!” I would have followed without hesitation. One caveat: if you can’t stand the sight of blood (heads and arms being lopped off, etc.), avoid this film like the plague.