The Greatest Trick

Watch with caution. It’s a few years old now, and there might well be those of you out there who find what we have to say about it over the top and/or reactionary, but we saw Luc Besson’s vision of the life of Jeanne d’Arc last night, and were quite disturbed by it. This review will contain major spoilers, for which I apologise, so if you have any intention of seeing the film, do so before reading this. And then comment!

The story is familiar enough: teenage Jeanne becomes convinced she is being given messages and a purpose by God, namely that of leading the flailing French armies against the English and whipping their scummy butts out of France. Oh, what a surprise, the English are the enemy again! Anyway, I won’t dwell on that. She achieves a modicum of success, especially at Orleans, despite the inevitable view that a girl couldn’t possibly do what she was attempting to do. Then the ‘Oh look, she can!’ amazement becomes “Hmm, I’m male and therefore afraid of this” and she is, and I choose my words carefully, castrated with regard to any power over the army or the king’s business. The ‘Holy Mother Church’, as the Catholic authorities continually refer to themselves (and don’t even get me started on what’s wrong there) decide that they don’t like an illiterate peasant girl having these messages from God either (that is their domain, after all, and they hold the authority), and set out on a mission to prove her a heretic at the English king’s behest. They are, as we know, successful and Jeanne ends up burning at the stake for her ‘heresy’.

We didn’t hold much hope for liking this much, and in that respect it lived up to our expectations, but the film takes such a concerning spiritual standpoint that this forum is ideal for discussing it, probably at some length. More of that later. The action stuff is well-handled, with some suitably gruesome medieval war scenes (boy am I glad I wasn’t alive then); likewise the male characters around Jeanne make for an interesting collection, from the weak-willed and uncertain Dauphin (John Malkovich) to the initially sneering but ultimately loyal army captains she fights alongside. And Milla Jovovich (Besson’s then-wife) herself as Jeanne does a perfectly good job of portraying someone by turns forceful, determined, unsure, panicky, exhilarated and possibly insane. What we’re supposed to conclude about her is less clear, and is all tied up with the spiritual element of the movie. Before I get into that, I should just say that one of the factors that gets Jeanne stoked up to defeat the English is the murder and rape of her sister at their hands, an intensely unpleasant scene that comes early on and which had us reaching for the fast forward button on the remote.

Jeanne receives messages from God, the main one being that He hates the English and has given her the power to kick them out of France. For me, this is enough to know that this was not from God - there is no people group on the Earth which receives more or less love from God than any other. Yes, when He was establishing the land for the Israelites he told them to wipe out the nations currently inhabiting the land, but that was to fulfil a promise He had made to his people and to give them the space to live purely in a place. They never managed it, but that’s beside the point. The war featured in the film is not the same situation at all. So Jeanne was either deluded, fiercely patriotic, or both. The presentation in the film favours the latter. That she believed she was acting under God’s instruction is clear from history and the film, which is what makes it such a tragedy; she failed because she wasn’t operating under His will at all.

In fact, this is made quite clear through the introduction of the Dustin Hoffman character in the latter part of the movie (the section which many other reviews lament, due to the fact that her heroic acts dry up). To us, he is clearly presented as Satan tormenting Jeanne with the notion that it was in fact him who planted the messages in her head, and she who developed them into action based on her human desire for excitement or recognition or national pride. Now in other reviews I have read, the assumption was made that this character is in fact God. I can’t accept this reading; the God I know has no interest in causing his beloved to suffer through planting doubt in their heads. I also think that this is ignoring certain other aspects of Jeanne’s spiritual encounters as presented in the film.

The first time we see her is in confession (which, by the way, she is addicted to. She cannot operate properly without confessing every day in the film. This is not a relationship with God, especially as it has to be done through a priestly intermediary. This is not even ’spirituality’, a word I’m not sure I should use. This is bondage, pure and simple). Immediately afterwards she runs across fields, delirious with her perceived closeness to God, and lies down in the grass where a sword ‘miraculously’ appears beside her. On the screen, her arms are out, so she forms a cross shape. So does the sword next to her. But the camera is placed at her head rather than her feet, thereby creating the image of two upside-down crosses. This is not an accident on Besson’s part, but a deliberate decision and, it seems to me, a statement of belief regarding where her visions came from. Very surprising from a French director making a film about a French heroine. Or perhaps he simply was telling us what he believes about God.

This theory would be borne out by the presentation of every other spiritual encounter in the movie. Each one is sinister in some way; the camera judders uncomfortably, the Jesus character stares and points in an unsettling way, things and people transform into other things, sometimes horrifically. In short, this has no relation to the ways the Bible says God speaks to us. Sadly, this peasant girl, so steeped in arcane Catholic tradition and unable to read the Bible for herself, has no way of knowing that her relationship with God should not be like this at all. She shouldn’t wake up from spiritual flashbacks petrified and unable to make sense of the world; and Besson, if this is his view of ‘being at one’ with God (a phrase used in the film), is also sadly mistaken.

There is, however, one tiny glimpse of hope. The very last shot of the film, through the flames of Jeanne’s pyre, is a simple cross. Perhaps, let us hope, that Besson is telling us that when all the trappings and unpleasantness of religious fervour and tradition are burned and done away with, the sacrifice of Jesus remains true. This doesn’t, however, redeem a movie that I cannot recommend.