+1/2
What do you do when God speaks to you, but says He is a figment of your imagination? That's the question this film -- the revisionist story of Joan of Arc -- poses, even though the real Joan, so far as we know, never questioned her sanity and certainly not her faith. Here, the poor farm girl is clearly nuts. We know that because Milla Jovovich plays her as a twitchy shake-voice schizophrenic of whom it is hard to imagine anyone following her to the milking barn, let alone to war. (Critics complained of Jean Seberg's performance in Saint Joan; Jovovich's is infinitely worse.) Having dispensed with theology, Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin go about the task of motivating Joan with imaginary events from her life, like the one that starts it all: the murder followed by the rape of her sister by an invading Englishman, to which little Joan is a witness. Common vengeance is the best they could come up with for an uncommon woman who claimed to be directed by saints from Heaven. The real Joan, of course, heard voices; here, she has visions -- not of saints but of a single male, suggesting she believed she had a direct line to Christ himself. When does historical accuracy matter? When the alternative is the construction of one straw man after another so that you can fob off a lie as modern understanding. With, unlike the earlier Saint Joan, long battle sequences replete with beheadings and dismemberment, some misplaced and misguided humor, and Dustin Hoffman as Joan's vision of the god of self-help psychiatry.
What do you do when God speaks to you, but says He is a figment of your imagination? That's the question this film -- the revisionist story of Joan of Arc -- poses, even though the real Joan, so far as we know, never questioned her sanity and certainly not her faith. Here, the poor farm girl is clearly nuts. We know that because Milla Jovovich plays her as a twitchy shake-voice schizophrenic of whom it is hard to imagine anyone following her to the milking barn, let alone to war. (Critics complained of Jean Seberg's performance in Saint Joan; Jovovich's is infinitely worse.) Having dispensed with theology, Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin go about the task of motivating Joan with imaginary events from her life, like the one that starts it all: the murder followed by the rape of her sister by an invading Englishman, to which little Joan is a witness. Common vengeance is the best they could come up with for an uncommon woman who claimed to be directed by saints from Heaven. The real Joan, of course, heard voices; here, she has visions -- not of saints but of a single male, suggesting she believed she had a direct line to Christ himself. When does historical accuracy matter? When the alternative is the construction of one straw man after another so that you can fob off a lie as modern understanding. With, unlike the earlier Saint Joan, long battle sequences replete with beheadings and dismemberment, some misplaced and misguided humor, and Dustin Hoffman as Joan's vision of the god of self-help psychiatry.
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