Mark Reviews Movies: JOAN OF ARC (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 28, 2020

During her trial, Joan of Arc said she was 19. Lise Leplat Prudhomme, who plays the legendary French leader and saint in writer/director Bruno Dumont's Joan of Arc, is most assuredly not that old. The easy response to this casting is a cry against its historical inaccuracy. That's also the incorrect reaction.

Prudhomme has already played Joan, as a child, in Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc. That was a strange, if thoughtful and unfortunately repetitive, movie, which was also written and directed by Dumont. For those unaware of it, the preceding movie was a look at Joan's early years, from working as a shepherdess for her family's farm, to having her first visions of saints, and up until her decision to join the French army in its fight against the English during a turning point in the Hundred Years' War.

The central oddity of that movie is that it's a musical, and making it even more curious, it's a musical with significant heavy-metal influences. In between dialogue and lyrics about faith and destiny, the young Joan was often banging her head to an accompanying guitar riff. Dumont's follow-up isn't a musical, although it features a few songs—minus the metal but with a dreamy synthesizer—sung over the soundtrack as Joan ponders and prays about her next steps. There's also one moment when one of the future saint's judges breaks into song, with an uncharacteristically heavenly voice, about his vision of the girl's post-corporeal fate in Hell. Dumont may have dropped the central gimmick of the previous movie, but that doesn't mean he's made an entirely straightforward sequel.

The main curiosity that passes over to this second film is that Prudhomme's presence in the first movie was replaced by an older actresses once Joan became older in the story. Here, then, we have a kind of backtracking—a reset, if you will—that announces, while this film may look familiar, it's also quite different.

The similarities, beyond the lead actor, include Dumont's thought-provoking dialogue (some of it taken or interpreted from the historical trial), his minimalist aesthetic, and his relaxed sense of pacing. This semi-sequel may be far more clear-cut than its predecessor, but that doesn't mean much in this equation. Dumont previously made a decidedly offbeat movie about this historical figure. The fact that the characters aren't singing and doing awkwardly choreographed dances makes this follow-up completely mainstream by comparison.

We've come to expect certain things from stories about Joan of Arc, depending on the timeframe that those stories cover. There's the trial, of course, which Dumont presents quite accurately, and there are the battles, obviously, which Dumont ignores. Characters mostly discuss them, but Joan's failed attempt to reclaim Paris is portrayed, not in a city, but in a field surrounded on two sides by trees. A few dozen soldiers on horseback never raise their weapons. Instead, they parade in a circle, offering different movements and geometry, with Joan as the focal point.

The film's early stylization eventually seems like Dumont shaking off the remnants of his previous Joan of Arc tale, but in re-casting Prudhomme, who's most certainly a child, such scenes of internalized song and battle-as-dressage almost feels as if the filmmaker wants us to see such torment and implied horror from a child's perspective. That's not to say the film's version of Joan is naïve. Far from it, she is intelligent about politics and clever about strategy and thoughtful about faith. Still, though, she is an innocent in all of this, never using her sword to fight and, later, unaware of how cruel her judges are willing to be to prove her—and, by extension, the man she calls King of France—a heretic.

In other words, there probably was no other choice to play this iteration of Joan than Prudhomme—historical accuracy be damned. So much of the film's purpose and impact rest on her face—youthful, stoic, haunted by unseen war and now-absent heavenly forces that she has no choice but to embrace.

Many will likely succumb to the temptation of comparing Prudhomme's performance to the list of the assorted and storied actresses who have played the historical/saintly figure before, but such would be folly. Most of those movies and actors saw Joan as a character. With this film, Dumont sees Joan as an idea—of pure resolve in her faith, her love for her country, and her assuredness that, no matter what earthly fate may befall her, a higher power will provide the real judgment of her short life. Prudhomme embodies that idea in such a way that the very concept of performance doesn't figure into her work here.

Dumont's story is fascinating in how, while Joan may be the main figure, it's mainly a story of how assorted men, with various motives and expectations, have no care for her beyond what she can do for them (A prologue features a pair of women asking for no more than she can give—her prayers). For the lords who praise her victories, they want her to inspire more of them. For her king (played by Fabrice Luchini), it's for her to retire, so that he may make all the decisions and have all the glory. For her judges (played, in a rather bold move, as outward fools and cowards, who can't even look Joan in the eyes), it's to label her and the "so-called king" a heretic, even if it means torturing and executing the child.

Ultimately, these are boring men, worrying about niceties and procedure and discussing torture devices like they're tools of an ordinary trade. Joan of Arc sees them for what they are, but more importantly, it offers a sturdy counterpoint in Dumont and Prudhomme's interpretation of Joan.

Note: Joan of Arc is receiving a virtual theatrical release from distributor KimStim. You can choose to support a local independent theater (e.g., the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago) with your rental purchase. For more information and to access the film, click here. Participating theaters are listed on the page.

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