Plot: What’s it about?
Joan was born to a poor French farming family who lived in a village with several other families. Joan grew up a very spiritual person attending church regularly with her family. When she was ten she was at church by herself just praying when she began to hear voices. She told the priest of this and the priest shared the history of the bible with her and the history of France. The voices told Joan that she would help unite France into one united country again. At the time half of France was controlled by the English and the other half was controlled by the French.
At 16 Joan was told by the spirit of Saint Catherine to go to the city where the King is and convince him that she would lead them to unite France and that the King would be the leader of the united France. It was hard for her to convince anyone of this but she went on her journey none the less. There was a myth about France that a young lady would lead the French people over the English and unite France once again. An army of 5,000 men showed up in support of Joan to invade a neighboring city that was run by the English. Even though Joan led the men on the battle field, a veteran captain was behind most of the war tactics and strategy. They continued to fight battle after battle to unite France. Some were good choices and others were not. The movie continues to show the spirituality of Joan and how the French would rally behind her and believe that she would lead them to freedom. The Catholic church began to wonder about Joan and her spirituality. She went through a trial with the Catholic church to see if she was a heretic. The outcome is a part of history and this movie is worth a rent to see how it turns out. Then again you may already know.
This was a pretty good movie and I don’t think I could have sat through it on regular television over two nights of programming not to mention commercial breaks. So I was glad that Artisan released it on DVD. The battles were done pretty good for a television production but don’t expect much violence from the battle scenes. The acting was well done as well. Al though there were a couple of instances when they could have grabbed the audience and pulled them in, but failed to do so by poor dialogue or not strong enough acting. All in all it was an entertaining television movie.
Video: How does it look?
A decent transfer for a movie that was made for the television, but just okay as far as a motion picture on DVD. It was presented in a 1.85:1 letterbox, 16:9 enhanced as well, that made the viewing a little more enjoyable. Especially since it aired to a full screen airing on regular television.
Audio: How does it sound?
This is in Dolby surround 2.0 and it did it’s job to keep you involved, but it could have been a whole lot better in 5.1 sound.
Supplements: What are the extras?
The extras consist of cast and crew biographies and production notes. The production notes are pretty thorough an interesting. The movie is about three and half hours so they were limited to what they could add on.
