The future Charles VII claims the French throne for himself the English claim it for their infant king Henry VI. At 17, she enters the court of the Dauphin, Charles (John Malkovich), a French royal on the verge of losing a war against the English. Joan (Milla Jovovich) first begins to hear voices when she is 13 years old.
#THE MESSENGER THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC MOVIE#
And Joan's legacy lives on: in the hit song "She's So High," pop singer Tal Bachman groups the virgin warrior with sex symbols Cleopatra and Aphrodite as paragons of femininity Leelee Sobieski starred in a TV movie about the maid from Lorraine last spring and now Luc Besson has released his medieval epic The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.īesson, whose last film was the hyperchaotic sci-fi adventure The Fifth Element, traces the basic outline of Joan's life well enough. The Nazi collaborators compared the Allied planes bombing France to the English invaders who had executed Joan centuries before, while the resistance saw in Joan a freedom fighter who could throw off the German yoke. During World War II, both sides used images of Joan in their propaganda. In 1920, the church that had once condemned her now declared her a saint. Financial analysis of The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) including budget, domestic and international box office gross, DVD and Blu-ray sales reports, total earnings and profitability. Joan the woman quickly became Joan the icon, a beloved subject of paintings and sculptures and, beginning in 1899, films.
#THE MESSENGER THE STORY OF JOAN OF ARC TRIAL#
Her heroism was celebrated during her lifetime, and her ongoing popularity compelled the church, which had condemned her as a heretic in 1431, to take a second look at her trial and rescind its verdict only 25 years later. Joan of Arc is one of the most famous women in the history of Christendom. There is no evidence in the historical record that this. It begins with the child Joan witnessing the brutal murder and rape (in that order) of her sister Catherine by marauding English soldiers. Not content with ignoring the facts, the film invents its own. The difference between a story of a young girl visited by specific saints and one who witnesses wind and clouds is the difference between the real-life Joan of Arc and the fictitious marionette of this film. But, these filmmakers are not interested at all in taking Joan at her own words, nor in the testimony of anyone else who knew her as transcribed in voluminous first hand accounts in the trial of rehabilitation conducted just twenty years after her execution.
Nowhere is Joan recorded as saying anything of the sort. Why then is this never said in the film? Instead, the film presents her voices as nothing more than the wind and the clouds. This is what Joan herself said under grueling cross-examination over a period of months. Among other things, we are never told that Joan heard voices from and saw specific saints (Margaret, Catherine and Michael). In the movie, the historical record of perhaps the most documented trial from the medieval era is mostly ignored. Director Luc Besson attempts to prove what even the best prosecuting clerics of her day could not: that Joan was a demented, misled, hysterical, confused, and guilt-ridden phony but, even with the power and money of Sony and Gaumont behind him, he is no more convincing than the inquisitors of Rouen. The French ecclesiastics delegated by the occupying English power to the thankless chore of determining whether Joan of Arc was an imposter or a heretic guided by Satan would love The Messenger.
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