La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc:

I went to see this yesterday. It was a screening of Dreyer's silent film, with an accompaning oratorio called Voices of Light written by Einhard. The music was really, really good. Einhard merged biblical texts with medieval theologians/mystics and profane medieval texts to produce something that sounded right with the time period and the persona of Jeanne, at least as I've been taught. And, of course, Sudeep was fantastic, as were the other soloists.

The movie? Well, it may be a classic of filmmaking, but neither Will nor I liked it very much. The woman playing Jeanne just wasn't very good. She had exactly one response to everything: turn her head to the right, look up, and open her mouth a bit. Then the cinematographer lit up her eyes in such a way that we are supposed to believe that God was speaking to her. The whole mace-wielding riot scene at the end was just weird (like, where did that come from? I'm pretty sure it's not in the canonical tale of Ste. Jeanne). Jeanne seemed ridiculously naive, trusting the theologian who was trying to get her to condemn herself. And why did they give her the sacrament at the end? I mean, it makes sense for the dramatic structure of the movie, but I can't imagine a medieval priest giving a relapsed heretic communion, and Jeanne died excommunicate.

So the movie I could have more or less done without. I did learn that Shakespeare actually wrote about Jeanne d'Arc (she's a character in Henry VI).