Peggy Maddox, Department of English
Fulbright College, University of Arkansas
Abstract
Joan of Arc's fascination for cinematographers began in 1895. Until
1999, Joan was presented in essentially religious and heroic terms,
but then came Luc Besson's The Messenger. Besson's Joan, portrayed
by Milla Jovovich, is neither heroic nor saintly. Besson's nontraditional
interpretation of the historical facts, and his studied manipulation
of archetypal imagery, redefine Joan of Arc as an unbalanced woman
explicable by Freudian psychology. In stripping Joan of her heroism
and final certainties, the Besson film works to extinguish her value
as either religious icon or female role model. More than a review,
the following essay on The Messenger is an analysis of the
way in which this film completely reshapes the popular image of Joan
of Arc.
Two Views of the Maid
[1] For close to 600 years Joan of Arc has been an inspiration to
women and girls. She was an independent, unattached female who achieved
success in a male arena thanks to exceptional ability and unshakable
self-confidence. These qualities caught the attention and admiration
of Christine de Pisan, France's--and Europe's--first professional
woman writer and an early champion of women's rights. Christine believed
that women could be the moral and intellectual equals of men. In 1399
she wrote a defence of women in response to Jean de Meun's misogynistic
continuation of The Romance of the Rose, and she proved her
own ability in the male realm by authoring an extremely popular treatise
on warfare called Feats of Arms and of Chivalry. This
treatise was addressed to men, but Christine believed that women too,
in a crisis, should be capable of making sound military decisions.
In her Book of the Three Virtues, she described the qualities
necessary in a noblewoman who might be called upon to defend her estate
in the absence of her husband:
...she should have a man's heart, which means that she should know
the laws of warfare and all things pertaining to them so that she
will be prepared to command her men if there is need of it, knowing
how to assault and defend, if the situation requires it....She should
try out her defenders and ascertain the quality of their courage
and determination before putting too much trust in them, to see
what strength and help she can count on in case of need; she should
make sure of this and not put her trust in vain or feeble promises.
She must give special attention to what resources she would have
until her husband could get there...(Willard, 150)
[2] Christine de Pisan fled her home in Paris in 1419 when the Burgundian
party took the city and systematically slaughtered all the supporters
of the disinherited Dauphin they could find. Nothing is heard of her
until 1429 when the French victory at Orl’ans brought her out of retirement
to write a sixty-one stanza poem in praise of Joan of Arc for having
done what no man had been able to do:
Hee! quel honneur au f’menin
Sexe! Que [Dieu] l'ayme il appert,
Quant tout ce grant peuple chenin,
Par qui tout le règne ert desert,
Par femme est sours et recouvert,
Ce que cent mille hommes [fait] n'eussent,
[Oh! What honour for the female sex!/ It is perfectly obvious that
God has special regard for it /when all these wretched people who
destroyed the whole Kingdom /- now recovered and made safe by a
woman, something that 5000 men could not have done] (Quicherat,
I,13)
In that same year of 1429 an unknown Burgundian diarist, known to
us only as "the Bourgeois of Paris," described Joan in very
different terms when she tried to regain Paris for Charles VII, calling
her "une cr’ature en forme de femme...qui ’tait-ce, Dieu seul
le sait!" [A creature in the shape of a woman... what it was,
God knows.] (113). Thus began Joan's bifurcated history as both divinely-inspired
heroine and "unnatural" woman.
100 Years of Joan in Film
[3] Five hundred years later, in 1895, Joan's remarkable career became
a subject with cinematographers and continued in popularity all through
the Twentieth Century.[1]
Generally speaking, the old films present Joan in heroic terms, even
while limiting her accomplishments by casting them in the light of
patriarchal aims. One such aim served by both DeMille's 1916 Joan
the Woman and Fleming's 1948 Joan of Arc, for example,
is the insistence that the only proper sphere for woman is the home.
In Visions of the Maid, film critic Robin Blaetz explores the
uses that have been made of Joan of Arc in order to define the place
of women in relation to war. According to Blaetz, Joan has been a
popular cinematic image because she links romance to war, but at the
same time sends the message that woman's only role in war is self-sacrifice.
Cinematographers are free to show Joan as a heroic figure because
her success in the male sphere is brief and suitably punished at the
end (Blaetz, 50). Although DeMille's Joan, played by robust opera
diva Geraldine Farrar, projects strength and courage, her heroism
is attenuated by giving her a sweetheart at whom she casts loving
glances in the thick of battle and because of whom she is captured.
The viewer is left with the impression that the only reason she goes
to the stake at all is because her lover failed to rescue her. In
Blaetz's words, DeMille's Joan "dies for love rather than principle"
(52). Thirty-two years later in the Fleming film, Joan's death is
depicted as a happy escape from complicated masculine concerns that
are beyond Joan's understanding. Underlying both films is the patriarchal
warning that women who dare, for any reason, to forego their domestic
destinies as servants to men and mothers of children, will be unhappy,
unfulfilled, and tormented by regrets.
[4] Even when films about Joan of Arc treat her story in heroic terms,
showing her in armor, on horseback, and leading troops of men, the
heroism is qualified as "female heroism" and defined according
to contemporary social concerns. For example, at the close of World
War II there was a perceived social need to clear the workforce of
women in order to make place for returning male veterans. In 1948,
therefore, the kind of heroism that Joan stood for was "a retreat
from battle and a return to conventional roles. (Blaetz, xii). In
1916, a time when women were on the verge of winning the vote and
were demanding information about birth control, DeMille seems to have
defined "female heroism" as sexual restraint. He said that
his intention was to depict Joan as "a woman of flesh and blood,
whose heroism was as much a victory over herself as a victory over
the English"(Blaetz, 54).
[5] The religious aspect of Joan's mission is both acknowledged and
unquestioned in the early films. DeMille uses special effects to show
Joan's saintly and angelic guardians and to illustrate her powers
of prophecy. Fleming bathes Ingrid Bergman in heavenly light as she
dreamily receives revelations from her Voices. Even Preminger's 1957
Saint Joan, based on Bernard Shaw's irreverent play in praise
of common sense, includes incidents that can be taken as miraculous
proofs of Joan's supernatural credentials. At Vaucouleurs Sir Robert
de Baudricourt's reluctant hens begin laying as soon as he agrees
to help Joan on her way to Chinon. At Orl’ans a contrary wind changes
to accommodate Joan's entry into the besieged city. It is not until
1999 that a film maker casts doubt on the religious validity of Joan's
mission.
[6] The fact that Joan heard voices that she attributed to saints
and angels was not a problem for earlier, less sophisticated audiences
who were largely unacquainted with popularized notions of psychosis.
When Ingrid Bergman communicates with her saints in the 1948 film,
she can be seen merely as a very religious woman who has a vivid prayer
life. Her motives and sanity are never questioned. Modern film makers
and audiences, however, confronted with a character who hears voices
that no one else can, tend to seek an explanation in schizophrenia.
In 1999 movie audiences were introduced to a new kind of Joan of Arc
who may very well define the Maid for the current generation the way
that Ingrid Bergman did for hers. This is the Joan of Luc Besson's
international film epic The Messenger. Besson's Joan, portrayed
by Milla Jovovich, is neither heroic nor saintly. Symbolically speaking,
she is not even a virgin. She is a clinical study in traumatic schizophrenia
and hysteria whose death at the stake is unrelated to motives of religion,
nationalism, or personal courage.
Besson's Archetypal Subtext
[7] Luc Besson uses archetypal imagery and a non-traditional interpretation
of the historical record to redefine Joan of Arc as an unbalanced
woman explicable--and dismissible--by Freudian psychology. In the
first ten minutes of The Messenger Besson manipulates his repertory
of visual symbols to establish a sinister irrationality in Joan's
behavior and to undermine the spiritual aspects of her story. The
symbols are then reiterated and supplemented throughout the film.[2]
[8] Although virtually nothing is known of the historical Joan before
1428, when she was already sixteen years old, The Messenger
begins when Joan is still a child. Our first view of her is through
the grill of a confessional. She is presented as a very young girl,
eight or ten years old, who takes pleasure in running to confession
several times a day. Besson seems to be saying that in the beginning,
Joan was a happy little girl, with a harmless crush on religion. She
tells the kindly parish priest about a certain "he" who
is "beautiful" and who tells her to be a good girl. This
vision could be taken as a part of a pleasant pre-trauma personality
if it weren't for what Besson shows us already exists in her mind.
In choppily-edited, rapid sequences, we see the "he" of
Joan's vision, a boy of her own age. Because of his surly expression,
he is not beautiful at all, but ugly and sinister. Dressed in a white
gown, he sits sullenly on a stone throne in a dark wood, glowering.
Sometimes all we see is his eye. Symbolically the eye is a window
on the world, a link between mind and physical reality. The eye not
only "sees" reality, but shapes it. In one of the most chilling
scenes, late in the film, Joan is sitting on her bed after having
been brutalized by her guards;[3]
her women's clothes have been taken from her and she is dressed again
in men's clothing. She seems to have no eyes at all. The pupils are
altogether invisible; she seems to have two blank spaces where her
eyes should be. She has lost touch with both the physical world and
her own Self.
[9] The next archetypal image is introduced as Joan and the audience
become aware of a sword lying in the grass. The sword is a powerful
archetype and, like most symbols, is multivalent, capable of representing
several different ideas. On one level the sword is an ancient phallic
symbol of male domination. From the beginning of the modern era, its
cruciform has had Christian connotations. Because of the brightness
of the blade, the sword is emblematic of chastity. Its power to separate
has the same association: a sword placed between Tristan and Iseult
convinces King Mark of their sexual innocence. In alchemy the sword
symbolizes purifying fire, another appropriate reading of the symbol
in relationship to Joan. Functionally the sword is an instrument with
the power to wound, and it is chiefly with this significance that
Besson uses it. Joan is lying in the grass, arms spread in the position
of crucifixion, legs straight and together. An aerial shot shows her
in alignment with the sword; because of its shape and the position
of her body, they are seen to be the same: Joan is a sword. Joan is
an instrument of death. Indeed, it is this very sword that will, a
few frames later, kill her sister.
[10] Besson next develops a series of weather motifs that dominate
the film and shape the image of Joan as one who has an uneasy relationship
with an evil divinity. After Joan brandishes her new-found sword at
the heavens, the abode of God, the sky becomes filled with roiling
clouds; the bright sunshine darkens and suddenly, inexplicably, Joan
is no longer in the lush field of grass, but on a barren patch of
ground in the darkening woods, before the empty stone throne of her
vision. The scene is suggestive of a prehistoric, pre-Christian time.
Thunder, symbolic of the voice of God, and lightning, His weapon,
fill the stormy sky. We see a black wolf, frightening enough all alone,
but soon joined by a pack, all of them black, the color of evil and
death.
[11] The wolf, as Anthony Stevens points out in Ariadne's Clue
is "a complex symbol which...carries both positive and negative
connotations" (352). Besson's Joan in the darkening forest is
straight out of a European folk tale. She could be Gretel or Little
Red Riding Hood. In such a setting, says Stevens, the wolf has "an
infernal aspect" 352). Besson transfers this infernal aspect
to Joan by having the fearsome animal accept her presence without
menacing her. Although friendly wolves appear in some stories, Northern
European mythology usually casts the wolf as an evil, dangerous creature
that kills children and stalks battlefields and cemeteries in search
of bodies to devour. Their companion in Germanic battlefield imagery
is the raven, a creature that Besson features following the slaughter
of the English at the taking of the Tourelles. Joan expresses fear
as the wolves race towards her, but they are not attacking her; indeed,
as they swirl around her on either side, she begins to run with the
pack, instead of fleeing as one might expect. Made dangerous by the
sword, Joan has also become a predator. Later in the film, when the
grown-up Joan leads the French against the Tourelles at Orl’ans, Besson
shows her afoot, in the midst of swarms of soldiers who stream past
her, like so many human wolves, on their way to slaughter the English.
Before introducing the traumatic event which will "explain"
the phenomenon of the historical Joan of Arc, Besson primes his audience
by showing in Joan a predisposition for hallucination and savagery.
Joan and the pack reach the edge of her burning village at the same
time; the wolves fall to pulling the flesh from dead villagers, while
Joan rushes to her home with the sword in her hand.
[12] With the flames that destroy Domremy Besson introduces another
motif that is usually associated with Joan: fire. Like the sword,
fire has more than one symbolic meaning. Its significance in the iconography
of Joan of Arc traditionally has to do with divinity, spiritual force,
purification, and sacrifice. However, Besson uses it mostly as a symbol
of the destructiveness of war and the violence of unbridled human
passion. It is almost invariably in the background of his interior
scenes, and frequently present in the exterior shots. A blazing fireplace
forms the backdrop of the scene in which the young Joan refuses to
eat or speak. A fire leaps behind her when she lies wounded at Orl’ans,
dreaming of herself carrying a flaming torch down a dark passageway.
In other scenes the fire is in the form of banks of candles or flaming
arrows or an ignited battering ram. Fire blazes in the d'Arc fireplace
behind the slovenly "English" who eat like beasts as their
sweaty comrade murders and rapes Joan's sister against the cabinet
in which Joan is hiding. Outside thunder sounds, lightning flashes
and rain falls.
[13] Rain, for Besson, is a symbol of heavenly displeasure; it falls
whenever Joan experiences disappointment or when her life is about
to change for the worse. Her moment of glory, the coronation at Reims,
cuts abruptly to a grey scene in front of the walls of Paris where
rain falls relentlessly, soaking her and her few remaining followers.
It is not coincidence that rain is falling outside as Joan hides in
the cabinet during the murder and rape of her sister. Nor is it simply
the Bessonian penchant for creating sordid images of human depravity
that gives us a scene in which a man rapes a dead woman.[4] Because the sister is insensible, Joan becomes
the one who experiences the rape. She is the one face to face with
the rapist as she watches through a slit in the rhythmically shaking
cabinet door. By making Joan the object of the rape, if only symbolically,
Besson deprives her from the outset of her most significant personal
and religiously validating attribute: her virginity.[5]
[14] Before completing his preliminary set up, Besson adds another
archetype not usually associated with Joan of Arc: blood. Like fire
and sword, blood is a symbol with many meanings. It represents life
and soul; red, it can be equated with passion. For Besson blood is
savagery, vengeance, irrationality, the instincts. Our last glimpse
of Joan as a child is before the altar where she has drunk blood-red
sacramental wine in such a frenzy that she has spilled it all over
her mouth and throat. Symbolically she is one with the corpse-eating
wolves. This scene is reprised after the taking of the Tourelles when
Jean d'Aulon handles her face with his bloody hands, leaving even
her hair soaked with blood. With all these negative images, plus those
of a bizarre Christ figure, Besson plants early in the film the idea
that there is something ominous about Joan's spirituality. The feeling
is intensified with shots of churning clouds and a skewed belfry in
which a huge bell swings without sounding.
[15] Thus in the first ten minutes of The Messenger, Besson
establishes Joan as a deranged, sullied, vengeful individual with
a warped religious strand to her personality. This concept is reinforced
throughout the rest of the film by the acting of Milla Jovovich. After
the rape, the child Joan goes to confession where she screams her
hatred of the English. The priest says "Calm down, Joan!"
These words become a refrain as Besson transforms the calm, stoic
peasant maid of tradition into an edgy, shrill virago constantly on
the verge of, or in the throes of, hysteria. [6]
Joan as Sinister Figure
[16] With Joan's first appearance as an adult, Besson introduces
another significant archetypal symbol, that of a hooded figure. A
hood or cowl is often used in literary texts to suggest social apartness
and the unknown. In film versions of A Christmas Carol the
shrouded, hooded figure of Christmas-yet-to-be strikes terror in both
Scrooge and the viewer. The mystery and danger of Tolkien's wizard
Gandalf is emphasized by having him hooded at his first appearance
in The Lord of the Rings. A hooded figure often represents
Death, as in drawings of the Grim Reaper. When Joan arrives at Chinon
shrouded in a brown monkish cowl, at least some of these associations
are at work in the viewer. To be sure, such a garment for travel was
not unusual in Joan's time. Fleming, for example, clothes Ingrid Bergman
in a hooded cloak for her journey from Vaucouleurs to Chinon. The
different effect lies in the fact that Fleming has already introduced
us to his gentle Joan and he also permits us--and adoring villagers
along the route--to see her face within the folds of the hood; Besson's
Joan remains completely hidden long after one might expect her to
throw off the hood at the end of her journey. The timing makes Besson's
shrouded Joan into a ominous figure, disquieting to the bystanders
in the film who cast frightened glances at it, and disturbing to the
viewer who is impatient to see the grown-up Joan of Arc. This ominous
brown cowl worn by Joan at Chinon also serves to identify her with
the identically clothed and eerily ambiguous figure played by Dustin
Hoffman in the final scenes at Rouen.
[17] Quite apart from the spoken script, therefore, Besson's use
of archetypal images loads the character of Joan with associations
of evil, horror, and cruelty, all of which erode her value as a religious
icon. In addition, his interpretation and manipulation of the historical
records contribute to the erosion of her value as a model of the autonomous
woman who transcends cultural stereotypes of female alienation, ineffectualness
and irrationality.
History vs Artistic Licence
[18] While it can be argued that historical documents are open to
any interpretation one might wish to give them, the records that we
have of the historical Joan of Arc do present a fairly consistent
picture of a personality more in tune with sanity and sociability
than the one depicted in The Messenger. The Joan in this film
has neither family ties nor female friendships. The historical Joan
maintained a correspondence with her mother and father, both of whom
attended the coronation in Reims. Two of her brothers joined her army
and one of them, Pierre, was captured with her at Compiègne.
Unlike Besson's creation, the historical Joan was not always in the
uneasy company of soldiers. During the fortnight she spent at Tours
getting ready for Orl’ans, she made friends with the daughter of the
man who painted her banners and later was instrumental in obtaining
100 ecus for her (Quicherat III, 154). At Orl’ans she lodged with
the family of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duke of Orl’ans and
shared a bed with Mme Boucher and her young daughter Charlotte. These
women helped Joan with her armor on at least one occasion (Quicherat
III, 68). Evidence exists that Joan had friendly, even affectionate
relationships with women of high rank, including some on the enemy
side.[7]
[19] Joan's ease in conversing with people of all classes probably
had a great deal to do with her rapid mastery of the craft of warfare.
At Orl’ans she spent time with Maîître Jean, a gunner
of reputation who was from her own country of Lorraine. Twenty years
after Joan's death, deposing for the trial of rehabilitation, the
Duke of AlenÎon told how Joan's knowledge of artillery placement saved
his life at Jargeau (Quicherat III, 96). Both AlenÎon and Dunois,
son of the Duke of Orl’ans, attested to her military ability. To his
credit, Besson does not present Joan as a mere military mascot futilely
waving a sword or a banner as do Fleming, DeMille, and Duguay, for
example. His Joan performs an amazing feat of horsemanship at Orl’ans,
leaping the enemy defences and slashing the rope that holds their
drawbridge. Proof that Joan of Arc possessed this kind of personal
courage and daring can be found in the testimony of Jean d'Aulon.
When the French forces hesitated to cross to the English side of the
Loire to do battle, Joan was as much the leader as the redoubtable
La Hire:
[La] Pucelle et La Hire passèrent tous deux chascun ung
cheval en ung basteau de l'aultre part d'icelle isle, sur lesquelx
chevaulx ilz montèrent incontinent qu'ilz furent pass’s,
chascun sa lance en sa main. Et adonc qu'ilz apperceurent que lesdits
ennemis sailloient hors de ladicte bastille pour courir sur leurs
gens, incontinent ladicte Pucelle et La Hire, qui tousjours estoient
audevant d'eulx pour les garder, couchèrent leurs lances
et tous les premiers commencèrent à fraper sur lesdits
ennemis... (Quicherat III, 214).
[The Maid and La Hire both crossed from the other part of that
island in separate boats, each with a horse; they mounted their
horses as soon as they had crossed, each with his lance in his hand.
And when they saw that the enemy had come out of the bastile [the
Augustins] in order to charge their men, the Pucelle and La Hire,
who were constantly in front of them [their troops] to protect them,
immediately couched their lances and at once began to strike the
enemy...]
While there is much in the record that is ambiguous and open to various
interpretations, there is still much to indicate that the historical
Joan of Arc was a woman of intelligence who, possessing unusual gifts
of leadership, held her own in a male-dominated world, if only for
a short time.
Thoroughly Manic Milla
[20] Besson's Joan is barely sane. Milla Jovovich plays her as an
unbalanced woman who is always on the brink of an hysterical outburst.
Only occasionally does she speak rationally. Such moments are striking
for their straightforward sanity, as when she chides the red-headed
Englishman for calling her a whore, and when she tells Dunois to lend
a hand with the siege tower or go back to bed. Mostly, however, it
is difficult to feel sympathy for the Jovovich Joan in the way one
could with Ingrid Bergman's Joan or even Jean Seberg's. Although at
33 she was too old for the part, Ingrid Bergman brought sincerity
and believable saintliness to the role. Jean Seberg, who was
the right age, has been castigated by critics for her lack of acting
ability, but her youth and beauty are very appealing. [8]
Her delivery at least has the virtue of being coherent. The Jovovich
Joan prefaces her message to the Dauphin at Chinon with a jerky, incoherent
recitation of her visionary experiences as a child. Her bizarre "narration"
is intercut with images of bells, clouds, and a repellent, bug-eyed
man dressed like Jesus. The message itself, however, that she has
been sent to take Charles to his coronation, is delivered in clear,
comprehensible sentences.
[21] At Orl’ans the Jovovich Joan flies into a rage when Dunois meets
her on the wrong side of the river. Inside Orl’ans, she slams a window
shut in the faces of townspeople hungry for a sight of her, and when
Dunois and the other captains do not include her in their battle plans,
she screams at them and strikes LaHire across the face for swearing.
[9] Back in her room, she hacks furiously at her hair with a dagger
because Dunois called her a "girl." [10]
After the taking of the Tourelles, her face slimy with blood, she
emotes with heavy breathing, spastic facial tics, and incoherent speech.
What clever and courageous actions she accomplishes during the battle
are cast in terms of her ignorance and her tendency to rush into situations
without thinking about consequences. Even in the trial scenes, which
include Joan's actual words from the transcripts, Besson manages to
make Joan come across as a pitiful, hysterical victim of mental illness.
The Bessonian Vision
[22] Some historical inaccuracy in making a film about actual events
can hardly be avoided. Telescoping time, for example, or placing widely-scattered
events in one location, are common distortions of the facts that do
not necessarily alter the artistic truth of a depiction. Some of Besson's
tinkering with historical fact is of no great consequence. Transforming
Burgundian raiders into English renegades, for example, does not change
the fact that Joan's village was attacked during the Hundred Years'
War. The change even makes events less confusing for viewers who may
not be not clear as to the role of the Burgundian French in the English
take-over of France. What does matter to the concept of Joan of Arc
as a religious icon, however, is Besson's invention of the necrophilic
rape of her sister by pillagers. This invented incident provides a
psychological motive for Joan's psychotic hatred of the English and,
ultimately, establishes grounds on which to discount the religious
basis of her mission altogether. Then, by jumping directly from the
childhood trauma to Joan's arrival at Chinon, Besson excludes the
context in which the historical Joan of Arc persuaded the community
at Vaucouleurs of her divine mission as prelude to obtaining an escort
to the Dauphin's court. Besson's Joan is a therefore a solitary, anti-social
figure who emerges from the darkness with no better credentials than
her own incoherent description of her visions.
[23] In his interpretation of the historically documented facts of
Joan's life, Besson also exercises considerable artistic licence.
He portrays the Grand Inquisitor, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais--by
most historical accounts a self-serving hypocrite with a particular
animus against Joan-- as kindly and soft-spoken, concerned only to
save Joan's soul and body. [11] Besson apparently wishes to emphasize Joan's
irrationality by depicting her adversary as a good and patient man.
He uses the same device in the scenes before the battle at Orl’ans,
contrasting Joan's hysterical displays with the slow, patient utterances
of Dunois and her keeper Jean d'Aulon. Nevertheless this "kindly"
Cauchon deceives Joan into signing a recantation by promising to hear
her confession with no intention of doing so. Unable to confess to
Cauchon, Joan's only spiritual outlet is to confess to the hallucinatory
Hoffman character. As a matter of history, Joan of Arc was permitted
to receive the sacrament before her execution. Like the invented rape
of Joan's sister, the refused confession provides Besson another opportunity
to undermine the religious significance of Joan's life.
Ding Dong, the Saint is Dead
[24] It is in the trial sequence, interspersed with conversations
with the cowled Hoffman figure, that Besson completes his work of
discrediting Joan of Arc as a religious figure. Once or twice, speaking
the words of the actual trial transcripts, Milla Jovovich responds
to her accusers confidently and rationally, quite in the spirit of
the written record. For the most part, however, even Joan's own words
are delivered in such a way as to inspire doubts about her sanity.
For example, responding to questions about the banner, Jovovich falls
into the spastic mode with which she tried to convey her visions to
the Dauphin at their first meeting. We get the clear impression that
she is lying about having preferred her banner to her sword. [12] Back in her cell, when she isn't being beaten
by her gaolers, she must submit to the verbal and psychological abuse
of the Hoffman character. Under his barrage of sarcastic accusations,
Joan rants and grovels, defending with waning conviction her belief
that she is God's messenger.
[25] Before her capture, in one of her few lucid conversations with
Jean d'Aulon, Joan seems to have a Jungian concept of the Self.
[13] When Jean asks
her if it is possible that the "voices" are in fact coming
from her own mind, she responds without anger: "They are me.
That's how God speaks to me. You could hear them too, if you would
listen." In her conversations with the Hoffman figure, Joan finally
relinquishes the belief that she was the instrument of a divine mission.
At his implacable prodding, she confesses to having misinterpreted
ordinary happenings as "signs." She confesses to having
been "vain, stubborn, selfish, murderous, and cruel." When
there is nothing left of her visions, her cause, or her integrity,
he gives her absolution. Instantly the scene jumps to the terrified
face of Joan at the stake. We see her engulfed in flames, her feet
on fire, and her burning clothing fluttering from her charred body.
Instead of a crucifix, thought to have been the last object that the
dying Joan looked upon, the final frame shows an empty cross, which
recalls the empty pagan throne in the woods. Behind the uninhabited
cross, visible through the smoke, is the blank blue sky. The story
is finished. The Heavens are empty and the misguided, arrogant, vindictive
peasant girl is dead.
Conclusion
[26] With a systematic use of archetypal visual imagery, selective
manipulation of the historical record, and an hysterical acting style
on the part of Jovovich, Luc Besson succeeds in stripping Joan of
Arc of her significance as a religious icon and neutralizing her value
as a model of the capable woman. For viewers of The Messenger,
the Maid of Orl’ans has been "explained" in terms that a
largely nonreligious public can accept: her already flawed personality
was traumatized by a childhood sexual incident; her voices were symptoms
of schizophrenia, and her death was an unfortunate result of her insanity.
Thus Joan is explained in terms of twentieth century pop psychology.
The Messenger becomes a medieval A Beautiful Mind and
viewers come away with a notion that fifteenth century mystic Joan
of Arc can be understood as a kind of John Nash who hallucinated about
saints and angels instead of CIA agents.
[27] After this powerful demystification of Joan of Arc by Besson,
one can only speculate as to whether the Maid of Orl’ans will continue
to attract film-makers in the twenty-first century. Two major directors,
Steven Spielberg and Ron Maxwell, announced plans for filming Joan's
story and had proceeded as far as casting in the year 2000, but at
this writing, neither film has been released. [14]
Perhaps Spielberg and Maxwell sense that audiences need time to recover
from Besson's clinical devaluation of the Maid before they can appreciate
films that present her again in heroic terms. Or, with the United
States sending occupying forces to the Middle East, perhaps the image
of a Warrior Maid fighting to rid her country of invaders is not politically
timely.
[28] In stripping Joan of her sanity and her final certainty that
her mission was from God, the Besson film has, at least for the moment,
extinguished her cinematic value as either a religious icon or as
a role model for women. If her image is to be rehabilitated in the
future, it will probably be at the hands of a director who is interested
in exploring the historical Joan of Arc as a mystic, a genuine military
leader, and an autonomous woman who was at least as sane as the men
who followed her.
Notes
[1] The Internet Movie
Data Base lists Joan of Arc films for 1895, 1899, 1928, 1948, 1954,
1962, 1988, and 1999 (two). Robin Blaetz lists 33 Joan of Arc-related
films that she finds worthy of comment. (249-261)
[2] Many of the following
interpretations of various symbols and archetypes come from my readings
of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Anthony Stevens, and the articles in
Man, Myth, and Magic. Some derive from my own conclusions based
on readings of myth and literature.
[3] Whether or not
she has been raped is not clear.
[4] Besson's body of
work is inspired by a sordid vision of the depths of human depravity.
La Femme Nikita is about a woman who must learn to be an efficient
and brutal killer. Leon/The Professional, features a
sympathetic assassin and a deranged murderer who leaves nauseating
carnage in his wake. The Fifth Element presents a dystopic
future in which human life is debased and snuffed out by a variety
of sadistic techniques. It is hardly surprising that Besson would
assign Joan of Arc the persona of a killer.
[5] Most people probably
assume that Joan of Arc was canonized as a martyr or warrior saint,
but that is not the case. She was canonized in 1920 "not for
her patriotism or military valour, but for the virtue of her life
and her faithfulness to the prompting of God's grace." (Penguin
187). Henri Guillemin quotes Jean Guitton's succinct caveat against
referring to Joan of Arc as a "martyr":
"Joan cannot be considered a martyr, in the strict sense of
the term, by Catholic thinking, for it was a regular Church court,
in a regular trial, that condemned her to death..." (257).
[6] I have counted
at least eight utterances of this plea for Joan to calm down. Obviously
the effect is to establish more firmly the idea of her irrational
and hysterical nature.
[7] At her trial Joan
spoke of affectionately of "her Queen," (the wife of Charles
VII), and the three ladies who looked after her during the months
that she was the prisoner of Jean of Luxembourg. She said that if
she had been willing to put on women's clothing to please anyone,
it would have been for those women. (Brasillach 68).
[8] Jean Seberg, a
seventeen year old unknown, did not do badly, considering that her
only previous experience had been in high school plays. In my view,
her acting does not seem any worse than that of veteran actor Richard
Widmark, who was woefully miscast as Shaw's childish Dauphin. Besides,
Jean Seberg deserves some kind of recognition for the most realistic
burning at the stake. During filming, something went wrong with the
gas jets ringing the pyre. When Seberg is shown recoiling from the
flames, she is actually being burnt.
[9] All of these incidents
can be supported by the historical record. Joan did express displeasure
at being brought to Orl’ans on what she considered to be the "wrong"
side of the river. She did try to discourage the common people from
regarding her as a miracle-worker. She did object to swearing, especially
La Hire's, and she was often excluded from important councils of war.
My objection is not to the incidents per se, but to the sustained
hysteria that pervades them.
[10] From this point
onward, Joan's hair enters a phase of changing color. As a child and
at her first meeting with Charles, Joan's hair is long and blonde.
After the haircut it is long and blonde in her visions and dreams,
but short and variously blonde, red, black, and streaked in "real
life." Hair too is an archetypal symbol, but Besson seems to
be using it as an indicator of the state of her soul, rather in the
way medical doctors analyze hair to discover physical abnormalities.
In the thick of battle, Joan's hair is red. When she is in a state
of hysteria, it tends to be streaked blonde and black. As she enters
the courtroom at Rouen, her hair is very dark; at the stake it is
still dark, but highlighted by the flames.
[11] Cauchon was
a worldly cleric who held multiple benefices and accumulated a huge
fortune from them and from his diplomatic service to the English crown.
He pursued Joan from the time of her capture in May 1430 until he
finally succeeded in concluding her purchase about six months later.
[12] I have to concede
that, like Besson, I find it hard to accept at face value Joan's often
quoted assertion that she never killed anyone. Consider, for example,
Jean d'Aulon's description quoted in š19 above. Another indication
that Joan had more than a passing acquaintance with the use of weapons
is her praise of a sword that she took from a Burgundian. She liked
it because it was good for "bonnes buffes et bons torchons"
(Brasillach 52) "bonas alapas et bonos ictus" (Quicherat
I, 77) i.e., thrusting and striking horizontally. Joan probably was
lying. What I object to in Jovovich's performance is the deranged
manner in which she conveys the lie.
[13] According to
Jung, the concept of God originates in the Self (Stevens, Archetypes
223; On Jung, 248, 249).
[14] The two films
are Ron Maxwell's The Virgin Warrior with Mira Sorvino as Joan
and Stephen Spielberg's The Company of Angels with Sinead O'Connor
as Joan. In her "filmography" section, Blaetz describes
the Maxwell film as being in postproduction in 2000 and Maxwell offers
the script for sale on his current website. However, as of this writing,
to my knowledge, neither film has been released.
Works Cited
Brasillach, Robert, ed. Le procès de Jeanne d'Arc.
(Librairie Gallimard, 1941). Paris: Editions de Paris, 1998.
Blaetz, Robin. Visions of the Maid: Joan of Arc in American Film
and Culture. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia,
2001.
Guillemin, Henri. Tr. Harold J. Salemson. Jeanne dite "Jeanne
d'Arc". Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1970). New York: Saturday
Review Press, 1973.
Internet Movie Database, The. http://www.imdb.com
Joan of Arc. Dir. Christian Duguay. Script: Michael Alexander
Miller and Ronald Parker. Joan: Leelee Sobieski. Canadian Broadcasting
Company. 1999.
Joan of Arc. Dir. Victor Fleming. Script: Maxwell Anderson
and Andrew Solt. Joan: Ingrid Bergman. RKO. 1948.
Journal d'un Bourgeois de Paris à la fin de la guerre de
Cent Ans 1405-1449.Paris: Union G’nerale d'Editions, 1963.
Man, Myth, and Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural.
24 vols. Richard Cavendish, ed. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp.,
1970.
Messenger, The: The Story of Joan of Arc. Dir. Luc Besson.
Script: Luc Besson and Andrew Birkin. Joan: Milla Jovovich. Leeloo
Productions/Gaumont. 1999.
Penguin Dictionary of Saints. Donald Attwater, ed.
London: Penguin, 1965.
Quicherat, Jules. Procès de condamnation et de r’habilitation
de Jeanne d'Arc dite La Pucelle. 5 vols. Johnson Reprint Corporation,
New York, 1965. (Libraires de la Soci’t’ de l'Histoire de France.
Paris, 1841-1849).
Saint Joan. Dir. Otto Preminger. Script. Graham Greene after
Bernard Shaw. Joan: Jean Seberg. United Artists. 1957.
Stevens, Anthony. Ariadne's Clue. Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 1998.
_____. Archetypes: A Natural History of the Self. Quill. New
York, 1983.
_____. On Jung. New York: Penguin, 1991.
Willard, Charity Cannon. Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works.
New York: Persea Books, 1984.
