The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc | | Cast : | Milla Jovovich, John Malkovich | | Director : | Luc Besson | | Studio : | Columbia Tri-Star | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | November 12, 1999 | | DVD Released Date : | October 30, 2001 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 20, 2005 | | Summary | Rank | Content
 | This movie was bad. I watched it because I've always loved the stories about Joan. This movie was sloppy and poorly done in everyway. I thought the rape scene was terrible and I couldn't get that 'scene' out of my head because it was fused to my brain while I was watching the rest of the flick. Of course it didn't help much because later they repeated the scene...WHY?? Then they made the character Joan a complete nut case that she couldn't make a decision without going ballistic. This is a complete nil for me. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 08, 2005 | | Summary | A movie worth watching! | Content
| The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc brings to the screen one of the most well known Western European historical figures. It is a rather long movie, but that is to be expected considering who the movie is about.
The year is 1420. The English and the French are vying for control over France, with the French being at their lowest point yet; the heir apparent (the Dauphin) is bankrupt, the French are divided and some factions support the English side, militarily they are on the defensive and are losing, while Paris, Orleans, Reims and other cities of importance are in the hands of the English. It is at this critical moment of desperation and vulnerability that Joan of Arc appears to rally the French behind her banner and the "Word of God," in an effort to send the English "back to their island."
Milla Jovovich and the rest of the cast carry out their performances very well! The only setback is in relation to the parts where she, yet again, finds herself trembling/twitching/hurting/screaming etc. Have mercy on us please... Can we have a movie with Milla Jovovich not acting like that (i.e. EXACTLY as she does in the Fifth Element, and in the two Resident Evil movies)? Is that too much too ask??? It gets so tiring after a while!!!
Needless to say, John Malkovich, Vincent Cassel, Dustin Hoffman, and the rest of the cast have truly outdone themselves with their performances, which are outstanding to say the least! All the actors, without exceptions, give it their 100% and it really shows (the chemistry is AMAZING)! Consequently, they have done a superb job of providing an entertaining film that can be watched over and over again.
The movie is action packed, while the plot, the setting, the dialogues, the special effects, and the battle sequences are all excellent.
There is a wonderful feel of History; the clash between the English and the French is as fascinating as the conflicts between the different French factions, and both are presented very well in the film.
History, Battles, Swordfights, and Intrigue, are all about.
The film combines drama, action and adventure making it one of the best of its kind!
On the negative side, the film is rather biased against the English portraying them as overly evil, while the French are presented much more favourably and with a stronger sense of honor (even having a better sense of humor).
In a nutshell, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc will surely provide for an evening's entertainment. It is a movie definitely worth watching, especially for those with a soft spot for History. 4½ Stars |
| Rating | | | Date | May 03, 2005 | | Summary | A Beautiful Mess | Content
| (...)
The story of Joan of Arc (or Jeanne d'Arc as they call her in France) is well known just about everywhere. Joan is a poor peasant living in a small village in France during the Hundred Years War with England. She begins seeing heavenly visions that tell her she is God's messenger to rid her country of the bloody English. Somehow she convinces Charles, the Dauphin with visions of being king, to give her an army to storm Orleans. Using unconventional methods she leads her army to victory. The Dauphin is crowned king and mostly forgets about Joan. She leads an unsuccessful siege on Paris is given over to the English, tried and burned at the stake, several hundred years later she is sainted by the Catholic church. The Messenger covers most of this relatively faithfully, and beautifully.
Luc Besson is a talented director filming such classics as Le Femme Nikita and The Professional. His talent is presented here in his ability to create interesting and beautiful shots, but is lost in creating a cohesive story. He doesn't seem to know what to do with the story about the young saint. In parts it seems earnest in it's recreation of this revolutionary with heavenly visions, but then it sinks into near parody of itself and in the ends sinks towards a reinventing of the events themselves asking Joan herself whether or not her visions were real or mere psychosis.
Milla Jovovich is a pretty face who has mostly been in forgettable, silly comedies and the Resident Evil franchise which might as well be considered a silly comedy for all its worth. Here, she has two modes of acting, a strange amphetamine delivery of her lines as if she couldn't spit them out fast enough, or a snarled scream as if acting was merely being the loudest person on the set. It is not a nuanced performance. For the entirety of the film she seems completely out of place.
The battle or Orleans is tame at best. There are virtually no scenes of real ambitious spectacle. We are given nothing to inform us of her revolutionary forms of combat. Instead her method seems to be screaming a lot and jumping a horse over the enemies fence. Later the storming of Paris is so humorous it is sad. Joan screams and screams that she needs back up while a few soldiers randomly knock on what must be the Paris gates. These soldiers are so bewildered a pathetic looking they seem more out of a Monty Python sketch than a serious film about war.
Beyond the visual elements the only saving grace is Dustin Hoffman's performance as the Grand Inquisitor or Conscience. It is a fine performance from a fine actor, but it is a peculiar character. He spends his time questioning Joan's own sanity. Could her visions in fact be some form of psychosis or fantasy? Could crucial moments in her life like finding a sword in a field in fact be simple coincidence? Good questions in the history of the real Joan of Arc, but they seem out of place here. Nowhere in the film are we led to believe Joan is nothing but the real thing. Why bring these questions into play during its climactic ending. The film would have worked much better believing whole heartedly in Joan's purpose and vision. Or questioning her visions from the beginning, a revisioning of the myth could be very interesting. Instead it kicks its legs out from under itself by bringing her into question so late in the film.
What we get in this portrayal of Joan of Arc is some pretty visuals and a find performance from Dustin Hoffman. Try renting one of Luc Besson's earlier films and pick up anything from Hoffman's hey day in the 70's, they will be worth your dollar and your time far more than anything thing to be found here.
(...) |
| Rating | | | Date | April 27, 2005 | | Summary | Great film! | Content
| Historically, I do not know how accurate this film is, however that does not take away from the greatness of this film.
The battle scenes were spectacular and the film was well acted and directed by all. Milla Jovovich did an incredible acting job too. She is quite good in this movie and personally I think she, this film, and the director should have been up for a number of awards! |
| Rating | | | Date | March 29, 2005 | | Summary | Divine Message or Hysterical Delusion? | Content
| It is 1425, and France is a corpse-strewn battlefield. Since 1337 the land has been ravaged by the Hundred Years War between the English, the French, and fickle barons and dukes willing to shift their loyalties for gold, titles, and land in Perfidious Albion, north of the icy Channel. English soldiers, brigands, and madmen roam the countryside, burning, looting and pillaging everything in their path.
It is a time of frenzy; it is a time of ecstatic vision.
It is a time in which the messianic Joan la Pucelle, later known to history and fate as Joan of Arc (played in wide-eyed wonder by the gorgeous Milla Jovovich), emerged, born into an ensanguined world and bearing the word of God Himself on her lips to the future King of France, the hapless Dauphin Charles.
It is this fiery, faith-driven, brink-of-madness world which Luc Besson attempts to conjure up in the uneven "The Messenger", which shares a little of the fevered madness of its wild-eyed heroine.
What is the true nature of the Divine? How does He talk to His servants? How do you know the voice of God is really the voice of God---and not something else, something malignant, the voice of a demon or possibly madness? To his credit, Besson plunges deep into this dilemma, and the opening sequences in which Joan's young visions come heralded by unearthly winds and a vision of a glowering, leering (and ultimately aging, decrepit, and senescent) Christ are unsettling and horrible, suggesting that the source of her zeal may not be divine in nature.
Besson has always had a flair for visual artistry, and "The Messenger" is no exception. The imagery, assisted by veteran cinematographer Thierry Arboghast (who worked with Besson on "The 5th Element" and also served as Director of Photography for the lush "Ridicule), is rich, striking, captures the feel of the 15th century battlefield, and throws the viewer into battlefields and siege trenches fertilized with gore and muddy pastures turned into rancid abattoirs with the blood of the dead.
The battle sequences are handsomely mounted, vivid, compelling, and brutal, particularly the Siege of Orleans. A sequence introduced by a shot from a trebuchet (a piece of medieval siege artillery) is at once remarkably faithful and dramatically awe-inspiring.
Fashion model Milla Jovovich does a fine job with a challenging role, and makes "The Messenger" her movie; her expressive face says more with a glance or a turn of the mouth than lesser actresses could with 100 pages of dialogue.
John Malkovich is at his purring, brooding best as the Dauphin; Faye Dunaway brings history to life as the devious Yolande D'Aragon; Tcheky Karyo provides the heavy weapons support and uniformly stolid jawline as the phlegmatic, doubting, faithful Dunois; Vincent Cassel seems to be having the time of his life as the laughing Gilles de Rais; and Dustin Hoffman has a shadowy, skulking, gloriously contemporary little part in tempting, tormenting, and confusing Joan.
For all of its pageantry and scope, this is a decidedly intimate little film that has far more to say about the nature of Faith and Things Larger than Oneself than it does, necessarily, about the historically enigmatic and ambiguous St. Joan.
This ultimately makes Besson's sins (all those of excess, the very best kind) forgivable, because this final inquisition between Joan and her hooded tormentor makes the film so much more accessible to all us, beset as we are by our fears and doubts.
The final question, once all the fire and blood and plunder and ruin of "The Messenger" succumb to night and silence, is this: do we hear the voice of God because we finally allow ourselves to listen---or because we so desperately want to hear?
JSG |
|
Picture 01 (20)
