of the fact that she is female. One specific example of this is when Joan arrives at Orleans and talks with the military captains at Orleans about how they should try and retake Orleans. One of the captains looks at her and explains to her why the leaders are having a difficult time taking her seriously, "It's not easy for us, for our pride, to suddenly be usurped by... well with all due respect, by a... by a girl." Many of the Englishmen Joan fights during the film throw patronizing and derogatory remarks towards Joan before, during, and after combat. Despite the amount of genuine resistance that Joan faces for being a woman during the Middle Ages, let alone one that claims she can talk to god, she never gives up on her ambitions and never …show more content…
Initially, the film frames Joan in a light that is very similar to the common female heroine found in medievalist works. Jane Tolmie discusses this archetype as one that requires, "However, the adverse external conditions which shape this world and challenge these exceptional female tourists are readily recognizable to the medievalist, as is the trajectory of the heroine who overcomes adversities rooted in gender-based oppression." While Tolmie's statements are more directly targeted towards fantasy protagonists and writers, the structure found those pieces fiction and The Messenger. The protagonist runs into an oppressive, male dominated society which questions her abilities to be the heroine that their society needs. However, the hero prevails in the end and earns the trust and admiration of everyone until Joan gets betrayed by the King and gets burned at the stake by the English. However, The Messenger throws a modern interpretation of Joan's story into the mix with a level of ambiguity that has become more prominent the academic research surrounding Joan as …show more content…
Dr. James Harris mentions in a brief article he wrote on Joan that, "Yet controversy remains about whether she was divinely inspired or delusional." This debate extends as far back as 1941, when Dr. H.P. Dayon discussed the issue of whether or not Joan experienced hallucinations, which he claimed she probably did not. The film portrays this by showing Joan as she is perceived by the general public in the first half of the film. She is heroic and it seems as if Joan's visions are directly from god. However, the second half of the film throws this into question by using the manifestation of her voices and visions as black-hooded figure who opposes these notions directly to Joan in her mind and directly questions the legitimacy of her beliefs and her status as a messenger of god. Besson muddies this perception of Joan further by having Joan's sister get raped and murdered in front of her when she was ten years old which, as Nickolas Haydock mentions, has no historical validity and is an invention used solely to add credence to the idea that Joan's sanity is questionable. The use of the black-hooded figure provides Besson with an opportunity to have a direct dialogue between Joan as she is perceived (The Joan that is seen and the film) and the questions of validity that have arisen against her since her death (the black hooded figure). This