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MovieMail's Review
The common wisdom is that Jacques Rivette’s two-part biopic, Jeanne La Pucelle: The Battles and The Prisons, is a companion piece to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927) and Robert Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), as it draws so heavily upon contemporary records. But, notwithstanding its factual accuracy, this meticulous epic owes more to the historical realist style that Roberto Rossellini developed in his later years, long after he starred then-wife Ingrid Bergman in Joan at the Stake (1954). Consequently, this feels more like medieval reportage than costumed recreation.
Moving William Lubtchansky’s camera through a 15th-century milieu that has been expertly fashioned by production and costume designers Emmanuel de Chauvigny and Christine Laurent, Rivette is able to locate Joan’s triumphs and travails in a world that is much bleaker, brutal and benighted than its Book of Hours façade would suggest. Thus, it’s possible to accept both that a peasant teenager could persuade the Dauphin and his sycophantic advisors that divine voices would inspire her to victory over the occupying English and that she could be discarded so easily by her supporters and persecuted so viciously by her military and ecclesiastical foes.
Yet, for all Rivette’s mastery of period detail and dramatic pacing, it’s Sandrine Bonnaire’s performance that makes the Maid’s career so compelling and credible. Joan of Arc has proved an elusive character since she was first portrayed on screen in 1899. But Bonnaire displays the faith to believe what God is asking of her, the courage to lead her troops into battle, the humanity to doubt her calling after her arrest, and the fear for her fate after her courtroom ordeal. Thus, for all the fidelity of the combat and conspiracy sequences, the focus always remains on the innocence of an illiterate girl at the mercy of timidly treacherous and enviously vengeful men, whose hypocritical chauvinism contrasts with her patriotic zeal and spiritual purity.
The second part of Rivette's magnificent and richly detailed six-hour drama based on the story of Joan of Arc. In Part one, The Battles, Jeanne the Maid (Sandrine Bonnaire) leaves her childhood home in Domremy after hearing what she is sure was the voice of God. She believes that she can help lead France to victory on the battlefield, and she persuades Charles, dauphin of France, to allow her to guide his troops. Part two, The Prisons, concerns the sad aftermath of Jeanne's defeat at Orleans. Jeanne is sent to prison, where in two separate trials she is tried for heresy and impersonating a man, with both her life and the sanctity of her mortal body at stake.
