25
“Jeanne” is the passion project of a director who clearly fancies himself a humorist, yet the attempt translates unfavorably as pretentious self-indulgence.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
67
Dumont regards history as a focal point for national identity, finding France’s leadership rooted in dry pontification and meandering religious fervor. He gives us a complex world so keen on taking itself seriously that it becomes parody, leaving only Joan’s stone-faced expression to point to a higher truth.
80
The New York Times by Glenn Kenny
Here and in the earlier picture it’s perhaps easy to apprehend Dumont’s approach with a “What’s this oddball up to now?” smirk. But if Dumont is joking at all, it’s a form of what used to be called “kidding on the square.”
30
Needless to say, a historical anti-musical that makes [the previous film] “Jeannette” look like “Moulin Rouge!” by comparison is going to win the filmmaker few converts.
58
The A.V. Club by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky
Less intended, perhaps, is the fact that a viewer may find themselves identifying with one of Joan’s ecclesiastical jurors, who insists at every opportunity that his colleagues stop wasting their breath and burn her already. He’s right in the sense that the church court is just dragging its feet to a foregone conclusion. In its own way, so is the film.
60
Screen Daily by Jonathan Romney
Joan of Arc is in some ways a more conventional drama than its predecessor, but is still intransigently individual. Yet even with a subject as eternally popular as Joan, it’s hard to imagine the film making waves with a mainstream audience or bringing new revelations to Dumont’s long-term followers.
30
The Hollywood Reporter by Jordan Mintzer
This is the pure case of a filmmaker doing whatever the hell (sorry, Joan) they want and leaving us to contend with the results. Enthusiasts of the prolific Dumont ... will surely get something out of this latest effort — as perhaps will Joan of Arc movie adaptation completists. But beyond that niche, many will find watching the 137-minute movie akin to being burnt at the stake.
40
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
Opaque and unrewarding.
80
The New Yorker by Richard Brody
Dumont turns the tale into a dialectical spectacle: he stages military musters like Busby Berkeley productions, seethes at the torturers’ rationalizations, delights in hearing his actors declaim the scholars’ sophistries, and thrills in the pugnacious simplicity of Joan’s defiant responses, which reduce her captors’ pride to ridicule.
50
Bruno Dumont seems perpetually aware of the trap of familiarity, which may be why he indulges in some of his most inscrutable filmmaking.