“Then they will hand you over to persecution, and they will kill you. You will be hated by all nations because of my name” (Mt 24:9).
Following Christ means you will suffer. This was clear to me even as a child: At every liturgy, even the most joyful ones, we speak about the inevitability of death, and how living your faith invites scorn, derision and suffering. The heroes of our faith were devoured by lions in the arena, beheaded, stoned, shot. There is the founder of our faith, the very God we worship, hanging limp from the cross. The message is clear: In the words of Daniel Berrigan, S.J., “If you want to follow Jesus, you better look good on wood.”
That aspect of our faith is especially clear to me during Holy Week, as we meditate on Jesus’ path to Golgotha (and, eventually, to Easter). It is easy to lose sight of at other times of year: I live a life of undeniable privilege, and martyrdom is far from my daily experience. I won’t lie and say I wish my life were more dangerous, but I also wonder if that comfort is a good thing. Christianity, after all, is a religion of consequences: If we remove ourselves too much from the consequences, we forget what it’s all about.
Martyrdom finds perhaps its most powerful cinematic expression in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928), a classic of the silent film era and widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. It is also one of the most striking saint movies ever made: Dreyer abstains from the usual pageantry of historical drama, opting instead for a filmmaking style that is shockingly spare and intimate. Through dramatic lighting, stark sets and searing closeups, Dreyer tells the story of Joan’s martyrdom in a way that is both painful and transcendent in its terrible beauty.
Joan of Arc is a complicated figure—warrior saint, peasant girl, national hero, condemned heretic. In the film, Joan is a frightened girl who, heartbreakingly, has to do math on her fingers before coming to the uncertain conclusion that she is “19, I think.” But she is also a soldier with steel in her blood, capable of staring down a room full of clerical interrogators and promising that the English will be driven out of France, “except for those who are going to die here.”
These contradictory images are united in Renée Maria Falconetti’s monumental performance. She plays Joan’s humanity as powerfully as her ethereality, making us ache with her pain and fear even as we marvel at her courage and faith. From the first frame, her Joan has a fundamental sense of integrity: There is still room for a skeptical viewer to read her as insane, but you never doubt that Joan truly, fervently believes. With no audible dialogue, Falconetti’s performance happens almost entirely in her face. As Roger Ebert wrote about the film: “[T]o see Falconetti…is to look into eyes that will never leave you.”
The viewer suffers with Joan, although suffering isn’t the film’s only purpose. Instead, it is what that suffering means: that Joan would not, could not, abandon her faith, no matter the cost. Watching the film, I felt challenged, if not a little indicted. Would I hold onto my faith in the face of ridicule, torture, death? It is a choice I may never have to make, but would I be prepared to make it? Am I really committed to following Christ, even when the road leads to the cross?
Joan, of course, makes her choice. She is not suicidal: Falconetti makes it clear to us how much she wants to live. But she can also see, with her preternatural clarity, that there are more important things than saving your own life. Our faith is love and mercy and forgiveness. It is also Felicity and Perpetua in the arena, and Miguel Pro with his arms outstretched before the firing squad. But their stories do not end there, any more than Joan’s ends at the stake—any more than the story of our faith ends at Good Friday. Following Christ means we will suffer like him; but it also means that we will rise.
“The Passion of Joan of Arc” is streaming on Max, the Criterion Channel and Tubi.
