September 2024 - Ian Thomas Malone

Classic Film: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog

The Passion narrative carries a lot of theatrical value even for non-believers. The sham trials of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate perhaps best illustrate the larger-than-life nature of one of history’s defining characters, a man grappling with the contrast of divinity and humanity in real time. The 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (original French title La Passion de Jean d’Arc) blends the history of one of France’s most beloved icons with the biblical tribulations of her spiritual lodestar.

Director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s work is a singular experience in filmmaking. Relying heavily on close-ups, with an absolutely breathtaking concrete practical set, the narrative sets up a succulent contrast throughout its 82-minute runtime. As the titular heroine, Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s expressive dramatic range evokes a sense of claustrophobia, buoyed by the imposing prison all around her. Falconetti never once lets up on all the angst coursing through Joan’s veins, delivering one of the finest performances in the history of film.

The silent film medium is perfect for the kind of storytelling on display in the film. The inter-title cards provide the necessary grounding for the audience to follow along with the plot, giving space for the actors to transcend all other conventional dramatic obligations. The musical accompaniment to Joan’s agony and the Machiavellian machinations strips the form down to its bare essentials, an immensely fulfilling adaption of the passion narrative.

All art is essentially human nature channeled through the creator’s preferred medium. There are limits to what a painting can do on a canvas or a film on its reel. Dreyer delivers a timeless treatise on the agony of the soul that bristles against the confines of its structure, a film so carefully constructed yet completely raw in its delivery. The Passion of Joan of Arc grabs you from its opening minutes and never lets go, an exhausting experience that drains almost as much as it inspires.

Perhaps more impressive than its ample artistic merits is the way the film breaks down the terrifying sense of awe and wonder of Catholicism, particularly its penchant for evoking guilt, for a general audience. Religion looms over much of popular culture and society at large, even for those of us who have nothing to do with the Church. Many religious narratives fall flat through their preoccupation with attempting to explain the unexplainable. The whole point of faith is belief in something larger than yourself, essentially for little reason other than it’s what you’ve chosen to believe. It’s not particularly convincing for many, for obvious reasons.

Billions of people have come and left this earth hanging on to a promise of eternal life that may never come. The Passion of Joan of Arc does not make much of an effort to explain why its titular hero chose martyrdom at the hands of a sham trial. What it does achieve is perhaps the most impressive feat for a religious narrative. For those seeking to understand the agony of faith grappling with itself in real-time, there are few better places to start than Falconetti’s spectacular performance. Dreyer’s nearly one-hundred-year-old work is still one of the defining examples of the sheer power of filmmaking to break down the barriers of time and space and deliver the essence of what it means to be alive.

Editorial note: Ian viewed a screening of the film with a live original score featuring the George Sarah Ensemble at the Art Theatre in Long Beach, California.

The Queen of My Dreams buckles under the weight of its many ambitions

Film as a medium often shines best when introducing its audience to worlds unfamiliar to their own. Many in the West are unlikely to be familiar with the 1969 Hindi musical Ardhana, an intense intergenerational family drama. Fawzia Mizra’s 2023 film The Queen of My Dreams leans heavily on Ardhana, including clips from the classic film in its own narrative while adapting many of its themes. Its title is also the English translation of Ardhana’s most popular song “Mere Sapno Ki Rana.”

Azra (Amrit Kaur) is a grad student studying acting in Toronto in 1999. A closeted lesbian living with her “roommate,” Azra butts heads with her mother Miriam (Nimra Bucha) over her career arc and lack of desire to adhere to the strict expectation of a first-generation Muslim immigrant. The sudden death of her father Hassan (Hamza Haq) on a trip back home to Pakistan takes Azra out of her world, forcing a reexamination of her relationship with her mother, and her culture.

Flashbacks play a sizable role in Mizra’s feature. In a nod to Bollywood casting traditions, Kaur performs double duty as Miriam in the 1969 flashbacks, showcasing a colorful, inviting world that’s a lot of fun to spend time in. Though the first act spends much of its time building up Azra as the protagonist, Queen of My Dreams is really Miriam’s story, increasingly ceding ground to the flashbacks as the narrative rolls along. After finishing med school in Europe, Hassan finds work in Canada, drawing only daughter Miriam away from home, deceiving her own mother in the process, setting up some intergenerational strife that’s eerily similar to Miriam’s own struggles with her daughter.

Mizra delivers a touching commentary on the cyclical pattern of daughters antagonizing and emulating their mothers. The theme of defying expectations transcends culture, religion, and sexuality. Queen of My Dreams is very confident in its own world, delivering a welcoming portrayal of Pakistan for audience members who might be unfamiliar with the region.

The film loses a bit of its power in the third act. Mizra doesn’t have a great handle on the balance between the flashbacks and the film’s present-day narrative in 1999, exacerbated by an unnecessary pitstop in 1989 Nova Scotia, where Miriam and Hassan first settled. There’s little rhyme or reason to how the flashbacks come and go, Mizra’s fascination with revisiting Ardhana growing tedious in the absence of plot progression.

Queen of My Dreams often severely underdelivers on its LGBTQ themes. Azra’s girlfriend Rachel (Kya Mosey) is a nonentity for the bulk of the film, Mizra unwilling to force any lesbian awakening on her characters. Real life doesn’t often come with easy answers to the struggles that some families feel toward homosexuality, but this film doesn’t really try to confront any of this either.

The narrative is too often bailed out by the film’s gorgeous aesthetics. Inexplicably, the whole experience feels like it’s overstayed its welcome despite a brisk 96-minute runtime. There is a beautiful film to be found in Mizra’s work, but it’s hard to praise her technical skills as a director when her narrative so blatantly holds back from its audience.