(Atlantis, The Big Blue, The Fifth Element, Joan of Arc, Leon, Nikita, Subway)
Producer:
Patrice Ledoux
Screenplay:
Andrew Birkin and Luc Besson
Music:
Eric Serra
Cast:
Joan of Arc: Milla Jovovich
Charles VII, Dauphin of France: John Malkovich
Yolande of Aragon: Faye Dunaway
The Conscience: Dustin Hoffman
Dunois: Tcheky Karyo
Cauchon: Timothy West
She had a dream.
And it would be to rise up and lead a revolution to protect her country
and defend France against the invading Englanders (See! We're portrayed as
the bad guys again!)
Joan of Arc (Milla Jovovich, one-time squeeze of director Luc
Besson and also a star in his
The Fifth Element)
believes she is the French answer to James Anderton and was sent by God as his
messenger to make contact with the Dauphin of France (John Malkovich)
and set plans in motion to reclaim their country, despite being saddled with
a disastrous boyish lesbian haircut. Faye Dunaway puts in another
sleepwalking performance, this time as the Dauphin's doubting mother-in-law,
Yolande of Aragon and Joan is guided by a boy from her past for whom is known
here as the voice of her conscience, who grows up to become Dustin Hoffman.
Now, let's backtrack a little here. Was it really a dream or a vision?
The moral of this story is that people should never go shouting their mouth
off. She envisages that the Dauphin will eventually become the King of France.
Big Brother's Nasty Nick had visions of who would win the
gameshow, but while he escaped with a mere eviction, Joan of Arc was
burnt at the stake, in quite a gruesome and realistic fashion depicted here,
on May 30th, 1431 at the age of 19.
The film also includes an incredibly gross act of necrophilia early on,
a neat moment where someone's blood gets splashed on the camera, an
hour in, and a staggering piece of CGI where a man's head is squelchingly
lopped off in battle.
The film is presented in an anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen ratio, thus replicating
the original cinema ratio, the only way to see the film since Besson uses
the entire with of the screen and looks splendid most of the time, although
the darker moments suffer a little from artifacts.
The average bitrate is 5.52Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 8Mb/s.
The Dolby Digital 5.1, in English and German, is nothing short of spectacular.
Battle scenes and Joan's visions benefit most from the sweeping rear-action
sounds as well as the full-on audio experience.
Extras :
These start with a two-and-a-half-minute Theatrical Trailer, a
shorter 80-second Teaser Trailer - both cropped to non-anamorphic
16:9 - and brief Filmographies for the main players.
The 24-minute HBO featurette contains the usual mixture of clips
and chat from the cast and crew and there's the wonderful addition of an
Isolated Score, bringing the mastery of Eric Serra's work
to the fore.
The disc contains the usual 28 chapters from Columbia. The film is very long
though so it should have more - at least 40, preferably. The menus are
all static and silent.
There are subtitles in 18 languages :
English, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hindi, Hebrew, Dutch, Bulgarian,
German, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Arabic and
Croatian.
Overall, this is a very entertaining film but it does seem rather weird
when you see English actors playing French soldiers talking in English, in
English accents, about wanting to defeat the English. Hmmm...
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
