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Killing "The Messenger" | page 1, 2
Despite so much acting firepower on hand, the director barely makes use of it. Malkovich, Dunaway and Hoffman -- not to mention French stars Pascal Greggory, Vincent Cassel and Tcheky Karo -- are relentlessly overshadowed by the 23-year-old Jovovich, the L'Oréal model who dominates virtually every scene and camera angle. "For a $65 million movie, it was essential to have Hollywood stars to bring in international audiences," explained Andrew Birkin, the British director-scriptwriter who shares script credit with Besson. "My chief fear was that Dustin Hoffman might tilt his scenes into something Shakespearean or overly pretentious, but I think he found the right balance, neither too casual nor too solemn." So intense was the secrecy surrounding the shooting that neither Hoffman nor any of the other actors, except for Jovovich, saw the script in its entirety, said Birkin. Each actor saw only his own part. "Not even the producer could take a copy of the script off the set," he said. During the filming of Charles VII's coronation scene in a town north of Paris, Besson himself chased away photographers trying to grab clandestine shots of Malkovich, Jovovich and the 800 extras convening in the soaring cathedral. Besson's mania for keeping his production under the strictest wraps was due in part to the Bigelow lawsuit, but was also an effort to conceal the ending. "The notion of introducing the Dustin Hoffman character as Joan's conscience grilling her in her cell was something none of the predecessors had," Birkin explained. "It was completely Milla's idea." Jovovich contributed so much of the script, in fact -- including some of the more haunting visions -- that she should have shared writing credit, Birkin suggested. In Jovovich's full-throttle portrayal, Joan burns up the scenery, eyes perpetually wide, as if she hasn't slept since seeing her sister murdered. "Perhaps Luc wanted her to play at such a high pitch so that her final absolution would be that much more of a relief," said Birkin. "Personally, I wouldn't have minded a bit more stillness in her character." In Besson's version, Joan is as much motivated by the need to avenge her sister's brutal murder as she is by the call from God to liberate France. As much as the filmmakers tried to downplay the patriotic fervor behind the legend, the English are the very face of evil. If the French court, with its spineless intrigues and ultimate betrayal of its savior, are hardly worth saving, Joan battles for the right of peasants to control their own land. "Anyone who comes to this film expecting a French 'Braveheart' will be disappointed," Birkin explained. "What Joan became embroiled in, and ultimately sacrificed to, was not so much a war against English invaders as a Valois family feud." The virgin warrior has served as a "France for the French" symbol ever since the movement for canonization began in the 1870s following the country's humiliating defeat by the Prussians. Still today, the far-rightist National Front holds its yearly vigil at the foot of her gilt statue across from the Louvre as if waiting for the saint to come alive and kick the Arabic and African immigrants out of the country at last. "We were extremely careful to avoid creating a film that could be construed as a paean to nationalism in any form," said Birkin. The result is that Jovovich's Joan ends up deeply conflicted as she goes to meet the flames, unsure whether it was God or herself who authorized her to violate the Sixth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Did she have divine visions or merely earthbound obsessions mingling revenge, blood lust and the legitimate desire to liberate the peasants from the scorched earth devastation wrought by Birkin's "family feud"? According to Birkin: "Unlike Shaw's 'Saint Joan,' where you can't escape crying at her sacrifice, this film ends more coldly, even brutally, and far more ambiguously, not triumphantly at all."
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