JOAN OF ARC: THE MESSENGER

After hitting pop culture and cinematic gold together with ‘The Fifth Element’ (1997), acclaimed French director Luc Besson and star Milla Jovovich reunited for an even more ambitious project, taking on one of the most mysterious and controversial figures in history - an uneducated peasant girl who led France to victory against the English in the 1400s, claiming she was a messenger from God. Jean d’Arc had been brought to the screen before, most notably in Carl Theodore Dreyer’s silent masterpiece ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ (1928), but what Besson mounted in 1999 was a mighty production, with a major international cast and enormous resources at his disposal. The result, deeply flawed yet deeply haunting, was ‘Joan of Arc: The Messenger’, one of the strangest works of epic cinema.

The film charts the rise of Jean (Milla Jovovich), from early childhood in rural France to her arrival at the court of Charles VII, the Dauphin of France (John Malkovich). With France under the power of the English, Jean promises Charles that she will return the kingdom to her, even though she has no military training or education. All she carries is a message, that she has been sent by God himself to free France from the clutches of the English.

Rather than taking the more subtle approach of filmmakers before him, Besson dispenses with subtlety and crafts an enormous, highly ambitious production, that somehow manages to balance the complex material and period setting with his distinctive modern sensibilities. The cinematography is frenzied, the editing is erratic and the performances are pitched to the heavens. This doesn’t always work; the film occasionally too strange and brutal and melodramatic for its own good, but what ultimately saves it is Besson’s radical approach to Jean herself. Rather than totally accepting her divinity, the film presents Jean as a deeply troubled young woman. A question resides over ‘The Messenger’ - was Jean d’Arc truly a messenger from God sent on a diving mission to save France, or a deeply disturbed young woman suffering from staggering delusions and taken advantage of by the men of power around her? History offers no solution, and neither does Besson, choosing instead to offer a fractured and frantic portrait of the saint. In a film full of vaulting ambition, this is the most ambitious stroke of all, and your enjoyment of the film rests on your ability to buy its fractured nature. Benson contrasts the enormous battle scenes with sudden flashes of unnerving and disturbing images bourn from Jean’s troubled mind, much of it based around warped religious iconography. The result is a kind of unrelenting, confusing fever dream that spins you around and spits you out. It’s not difficult to walk away from ‘The Messenger’ impressed, but it’s also not entirely satisfying. By going for something bold and uncompromising, ‘The Messenger’ might just be too ambitious for its own good.