The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc

The Fashion of Joan of Arc

Carl Dreyer’s 1928 French silent La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc is one of the greatest films-- French, silent, otherwise-- ever;  Luc Besson’s 1999 The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc is possibly one of the silliest-- French, epic, otherwise-- and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Such is progress.

Dreyer’s film is an astonishingly spare work, essentially a hundred and ten minutes of gigantic close-ups strung together and little else. No fat nothing extraneous-- each shot adds to the film’s sense of inevitability, each cut (1,500 of them) accelerates momentum. Besson’s at two hours and twenty minutes has little meat-- as if Besson had tossed in everything learned in grade school but stopped before freshman year. Dreyer’s has the courage of a consummate artist with an idea of what he wants to present to the world;  Besson’s has the courage of a consummate hack, piling special effect upon special effect in the hope that heat and pressure would build inside his digitally enhanced big-budgeted compost heap and ignite to yield a vision.

And it is a vision, sort of. Jeanne at a young age, swinging her walking stick at daisies (she must have been a terror at flower shows); an older Jeanne, hacking off her hair and screaming orders at her Neanderthal soldiers; finally, Jeanne in prison, talking over defense strategy with an imaginary legal counsel (a woefully miscast Dustin Hoffman). It’s a Jeanne’s Greatest Hits, safe-as-houses epic filmmaking, except that Besson tries his damnedest to make the picture his own by cramming the first half with signature action sequences. As for Jeanne’s visions: Dreyer only suggests what she sees, Besson actually shows them-- marauding wolves, a bleeding Christ (he yells occasionally, but is otherwise a nice guy), time-lapse photography of flowers crawling all over Jeanne’s breasts (Jeanne presumably having seen Peter Gabriel’s "Sledgehammer” video).

Dreyer’s film is in love with textural contrasts-- the oval smoothness of the girl's egglike face against the corduroy harshness of the judges’ own; the Spartan simplicity of Jeanne’s military uniform against the judges’ elaborate robes. Besson isn’t so much concerned with textures as he is with textiles-- his King Charles of France (a startling John Malkovich) leans against stone like a practiced lounge lizard wearing the latest in Medieval chic while his mother (a terrifyingly bald Faye Dunaway) wears huge gowns and headgear so elaborate she must be able to receive signals from the HBO channel. Everyone wears his clothes no matter how dilapidated with a sense of style; everyone is allowed at least two to three costume changes over the course of the film. Even Jeanne has her wardrobe, from Extreme Peasant to Rusty Armor to Rough Prisonwear-- each worn with awardwinning aplomb.

To play Jeanne Besson cast his wife (now ex) Milla Jovovich, and the logic is impeccable-- who else to star in a bigscreen supershow but a fashion supermodel?  Dreyer found his Jeanne, Maria Falconetti, on the theater stage, doing light comedy; he bullied her, tormented her, demanded endless takes involving excruciatingly exact instructions, and the result is one of the great performances in the history of cinema, a vivid Jeanne whose large eyes express either terror or ecstasy. Falconetti found the experience so memorable she never acted in another film for the rest of her life.

We can’t pretend Jovovich even begins to seem adequate for the role-- she’s a great camera subject, but her voice suggests a panicked mouse. So what? Realism isn’t the point, neither is artistry-- style is all and in the end what The Messenger's all about. Besson isn’t out to glorify Jeanne but to cremate her and scatter the ashes; if anything my main complaint isn’t that he goes too far, but doesn’t go far enough. Would have liked campier dialogue (script is about as taut as overcooked spaetzle), maybe a prize Gallic insult or two (“I fart in your general direction!”). Would also have liked a musical number in the spirit of History of the World, Part I tossed in (Hoffman tapping Jovovich’s knees with a pair of wooden mallets comes to mind).

Film critic once called Besson’s La Femme Nikita 'the Death of French cinema as we know it.' In a sense Besson’s movies from The Last Battle through The Big Blue to his latest is one long descending spiral-- the inevitable Hollywoodization of the French industry, its reduction to 'kiss-kiss, bang-bang' product. Besson does 'kiss-kiss, bang-bang;' he does them unashamedly (except perhaps here-- the stretch marks show where he tries too hard). Punchline is, Besson does it better-- with more grace and elan-- than practically any other Hollywood (or French) hack alive.

French critics or critics in general might not like that; they’re likely squirming in their seats. They’d rather die than give Besson even that much credit. The Death of French cinema As We Know It? You bet, and you’re all invited to the memorial dinner afterwards. Don’t forget ze whine.

First published in Businessworld 3.10.2000