Uncomfortably Clear- Jane Maberry

    The end of The Passion of Joan of Arc is arguably more hellish than the rest of the movie, but I find the trial itself to be more unnerving. The contrast between the quality of the shots and the actions occurring during them help emphasize just how thematically different they are. After seeing the turbulent chaos of the end, looking back at the trail just becomes more disturbing. Even though the riot contains much more action as a climax, I find that it mainly helps to give the earlier parts of the movie more clarity and emphasis rather than serving to top off the story by standing alone. 

    After Joan has been burned and a riot breaks out, the film becomes much more grainy. This could be explained as smoke, but her face and those of the onlookers while she was at the stake were still clear despite the wood already going up. The way the picture isn't nearly as clear helps add to the chaos, but it also distances us from the characters. Of course Joan and the priests were really the only characters that were fleshed out, so having the masses be even more unclear, not just from proximity but from picture quality, takes away the realism of the scene. The distanced camera shots over the crowd are almost startling after spending the whole movie looking at close ups of peoples' faces. The riot isn't like anything I myself have experienced, except through the news or reading history, and I haven't been to a trail either. But everyone is well versed in human expressions, and the clearness of every shot we get during the trail only serves to make it even more uncomfortable to the viewer. So when the end of the movie comes around, it's strange but almost a relief to be able to distance yourself from what's happening. 

    This feeling of distance is what brings me to how uncomfortable the trail itself consistently is. The premise itself is already unsteady, as this has already happened, but we can still see even with no historical context just how unfair this trail is. While it would still be moving if we only got close ups of Joan, the grotesque figures of the judges give a contrast to her that makes her seem even more angelic and innocent. When there was the series of shots with the priests faces coming up from out of the bottom of the frame, it was almost laughable, but in the way a gargoyle is. The statues are placed there as ornamental rain pipes, just as the judges are really only there as a formality, to sit there and look imposing to Joan. The clarity we get in these moments, of both the physical characteristics of these people and their personalities, is only emphasized by the obscurity of the riot. Although the riot feels somewhat out of place because of how thematically different it is to the rest of the movie, it plays a necessary part beyond finishing off the story in the way it contrasts the former.

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshDecember 22, 2021 at 10:09 AM

    That's an interesting observation about the end: it comes as a release, an overflow, of energies that have been held in check by the claustrophobic perplexity of the trial.

    ReplyDelete

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