Allow me to begin by saying that despite the constant heavy breathing, I really thought Leonardo DiCaprio did an excellent job in this film as Joan of Arc. My suspicion is that little Leo had a contractual conflict early in the shooting of the film and that director Luc Besson decided to replace him with Matt Damon. So the Maid of Orleans goes through a hair-cutting scene after which she is played by Damon, as if the audience isn't going to notice the switch.

Forgive me for misleading you, gentle reader, but the fact of the matter is that the performance of Milla Jovovich (the actress who really does play Joan of Arc) is so irritating that I find myself wanting to pin it on some other actor--someone who gets on my nerves as much as DiCaprio or Damon. By the end of the film, it's clear that Jovovich isn't overacting, that her constant screaming and asthmatic breathing and bulbous eye-shaking are all parts of the character that Besson envisioned for his Joan.

But I'm not trying to blame Besson the writer/director for Joan either. No one has to be blamed for her because she is actually quite an interesting (if irritating character). If you come to this film with the assumption that the protagonist must be a sympathetic character, prepare to be disappointed. Joan is a lunatic whose 'patriotic' motivations are every bit as deeply personal and self-serving as those of Mel Gibson's character in The Patriot, but The Messenger gives us that tired tale of the personal vendetta writ large on the pages of history as a story that is (just barely) worth watching.

The film establishes Joan's religious mania quite early in her childhood. She is so eager to do something to show her union with Christ that she cannot wait to go through confirmation before breaking into the local church's stash of wine for a private communion. Her religious fervor has no outlet until the English invade her tiny village. In the confusion, her sister hides her in a closet, and Joan watches through the slats on the door as an English soldier murders and then rapes Joan's sister.

Besson's presentation of the English soldiers as capable of necrophilia strikes me as an extremely telling moment in the film. As disgusted as audiences might be by the idea of a soldier raping a corpse, the fact remains that it is presumably better (from the victim's standpoint) to be raped after one's death than before. It may be repugnant to kill and then rape, but it strikes me as more malicious, more physically hurtful to rape and then kill. Besson tells us a lot about Joan in her reaction to the soldier's commission of murder/necrophilia. All of that pent up sexual energy in her sister never had a chance to be released before her life was snuffed out. And Joan must find a suitable outlet for her sexual energy that will allow her to retain her virginity as befits a Catholic girl whose devotion to Christ is uncompromising.

Since my knowledge of the particulars of Joan of Arc is confined to Mark Twain's quite interesting book on the subject, I can't say how historically accurate Besson's film is--only that he interprets some key moments in Joan's life quite differently than Twain. Whereas the ultra-skeptical Twain was surprisingly willing to see something close to genuine miraculousness in the various proofs that Joan's supporters used to demonstrate that she had been called by God, Besson consistently minimizes the importance of the miracles. The miracles are downplayed throughout the film, but are most dramatically called into question by Joan's conscience, played by Dustin Hoffman, who rescues this film single-handedly by appearing near the end.

The first one hundred minutes or so of The Messenger are not very interesting. They are crucial to the development of Joan's character and to the establishing of mood, but even John Malkovich's portrayal of the Dauphin is tiresome. But it's worth putting up with Joan's awkwardly breathy conversations with the Dauphin and her childish reprimands of LaHier in order to understand what her conscience has to say to her.

Once Joan goes on trial, Hoffman storms onto the scene with lines that could very easily have been written by Tom Stoppard and turns the film into a comically philosophical meditation on the nature of revelation and divine voices. His dissection of Joan's argument that finding a sword in a field is a sign from God is riotous. His assertion that her battle against the English was self-serving and cruel really does help us to see why Besson had Jovovich play Joan the way she did throughout. This is a film for patient viewers. The appetizers and entrees will disagree with most palates, but the dessert is definitely worth sticking around for.

Recommended: Yes