Joan of Arc

To atone for the sin he committed in the previous film, from the outset Dumont supplies close-up after close-up of Prudhomme, and we can only be grateful. Jeanne’s story has been narrated countless times, with the consequence that it becomes hard to avoid the sense of a plot that unfolds in an overly mechanical way, but here the filmmaker makes us feel the claustrophobia of being caught within the apparatus of a cosmic mechanism: we have a sense of a world in which all the various viewpoints it contains all add up to one immense trap, which functions like a knot that only tightens the more one fights against it.

As a result, Dumont and Prudhomme induce a stronger affective response than any cinematic version since at least Dreyer’s and Falconetti’s. The switch from Igorrr to Christophe (who would soon be brought down by the pandemic) also contributes to the film’s emotional power, and makes sense in terms of a shift from the awakening of a divine but martial spirit to the consequences of the attempt to upscale that transfiguration through war and suffering when confronted with the finitude yet quasi-omnipotence of a corrupted world. Armond White (2020):

“In interviews, Dumont makes agnostic noises, but he is committed to studying the ineffable, pondering faith in circumstances that test faith, through characters who defy divine benevolence. ’Men are what they are’, Joan testifies, ’but we must think of what we must be.’
“In Joan of Arc (Jeanne), Dumont attempts to start over after Dreyer. His film poses a philosopher’s question that speaks to the morality of this moment: Can we start over?“