MovieChat Forums > Joan of Arc (1999) Discussion > Dustin Hoffman and his character.

Dustin Hoffman and his character.


I thought that Hoffman was absolutely brillant in this film... (and a little scary).

I mean, I dont scare easily, but I found his performance intimidating and un-nerving. Just the cold, logical reasoning of it and his odd, careless voice.

WHAT WAS THE CHARACTER HE PPORTRAYED?

I thought it was meant to be Satan, but on here, it says he's merely the concscience of Joan...

How did you think he was meant to be in the film?

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I think Hoffman's character was Besson's way of paying tribute to Joan's courage, strong intelligence, and honesty.

Rather than hiding behind her long held delusions, the real Joan was smart and honest enough to admit that she herself might have been responsible for a vengeful campaign that had nothing to do with a heavenly mission, that her voices lied to her by feeding her resentments and giving her the courage to do what she wanted to do.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151137/board/thread/99280982?d=99413417&a mp;p=1#99413417

Besson's purpose in making the film was to remind viewers that religious extremists are not heavenly messengers. If a heavenly being wanted to affect mundane border wars between royal cousins, he/she/it could do so by other means. From his interview with Richard Jobson from the Manchester Guardian in 2000:

The most important line for me ... is the one we've just seen where her conscience says to her "you didn't see what it was, you saw what you wanted to see".

That's always the dilemma. Either you believe her or you don't. Maybe she has seen something but nobody else has seen it? You can ask yourself questions all night like: "If God wants to stop the war why doesn't he just show up in the middle of the battlefield? " That would be perfect. He's just shown up, he's saying: "I'm here, don't fight." I think that no one would fight, everyone would be down on their knees saying "oh my God".

RJ: And the idea that small people can change things. Small people can become big people?

LB: It's always the small people who change things. It's never the politicians or the big guys. I mean, who pulled down the Berlin wall? It was all the people in the streets. The specialists didn't have a clue the day before. If you read the newspaper a few days before...nothing...no one was talking about it. And even the French revolution, we just said "That's enough", and took the king.
The famous line about the French king was that he didn't even know what was going on. He said: "Is it a revolt?" And the other guy said: "No, it's a revolution." The king was thinking it was nothing.

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We watched this movie in my French class [in French, without subtitles ... not the best idea for an incredibly inadequate high school french class, but anyway], and when I FINALLY realized that Dustin Hoffman was in fact the one playing this god-like entity thing, I started cracking up, because all I could think of was "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me." [I have a bit of a Dustin Hoffman obsession, which contributed to my giddiness] I really want to see this in English though, since I feel like I missed out on a fantastic performance by Ms. Jovovich and, of course, Dustin Hoffman.
In conclusion, if you happen to be a high school French teacher, please don't show this movie to your class without subtitles, because they'll end up wanting to burn you like Jeanne d'Arc.

"I like to work in Hollywood, but I don't want to live there. I'm too young to die." -Claire Bloom

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Hoffman's character was a non-historical joke along with the blue-eyed Jesus that sunk what could have been a film based on historical facts.
It was only a joke to those who think their personal version of religious history must be true for all. For others, fictional elements like the conscience character address other possibilities.

For Joan-nuts, the only acceptable truth is that she was perfectly sane, a great military leader, and that the combination of her military failure after a month-and-a-half, capture, abandonment by the King and all the military commanders she fought with, trial, and death was all a huge devious plot having nothing to do with her own eccentricities as a person.

For true believers, her short time of military success cannot be because:

her unconventional but limited approach temporarily took everyone by surprise and the English quickly adjusted,

that she was merely used as a symbol by Charles (explaining his quick abandonment of her after he got his crown),

that the military commanders liked her as a plucky/crazy mascot, but did not really trust her as a military leader enough to risk their fortunes to ransom her from captivity. (they waited until she was dead in the ground and being celebrated as a heroine to brag about how wonderful she was and what close friends they were)

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DFC-2, once again, you evade the issue and launch into your own diatribe about Joan based upon silly speculation and ignoring historical review of the matter.
Waiting patiently for you to prove your point .

On the contrary, her tactics were not unconventional unless you consider "attacking" unconventional. The English did not adjust and the English continued to lose even after Joan was gone, hence Charles name, "Charles the Victorious"
The Duke of Alençon noted that Joan's approach was to attack without preparation. This is great if you catch your enemy by surprise or they are not trying to lure you into a foolish assault, but if the latter happens then the supply train can be broken or sections of your forces can be cut down. Think Custer, who was a lousy commander and responsible for many unnecessary deaths before he got out of the Civil War because of his repeated vainglorious assaults. As with Joan, a short span of victories covered a multitude of failures. In fact, the English remained in France nearly twenty years after Joan's death. The English recovered quite well, especially considering the differences in resources for the two armies.

The reality was that Charles was a self-indulgent, ego-maniac who was jealous of the prestige and love that the people of France had for Joan. He did not want any competition and at the first opportunity, abandoned Joan to the English so he could claim all the glory for himself and not have to share the spotlight with her.
Not very afraid of her claimed relationship with heavenly powers, was he? Anyway, what's your point as a response to me? Your idle speculation in no way contradicts my idle speculation. Both his intention to use her as a symbol and your claim that the people loved her can easily work side-by-side, except of course that no one loved her enough to ransom her from captivity.

Recent scholarship that focuses on the nullification trial testimony asserts that her fellow officers esteemed her as a skilled tactician and a successful strategist.
A key phrase there simply reiterates the point I made. A generation after Joan's death, when the English had finally been defeated and Charles was looking for ways to build a creation myth around his new nation, a long dead symbolic teenager suddenly became useful.

Joan's Mother had been trying in vain for years to get her daughter's reputation repaired. Pierre Cauchon was not only fearless in his conclusions, he had widely published the whole transcript of proceedings despite the fact that they showed Joan to be intelligent and included evidence of disagreements about procedures among the 100 or so witnesses he allowed to attend. We owe our warts-and-all knowledge of problems with trial procedures largely to Cauchon's effort to prove his fairness to all parties by transparently allowing everything to be saved and revealed.

In contrast, when Charles got into the game, not only were the Nullification trial results preordained, but the desired outcome was helped by the way he honored those associated with her at the same time as the "judges" sought "testimony." There were essentially (one crusty old priest continued to assert that Joan's angels were a fabrication) no disagreements expected or allowed. The "judges" came in with a long list of what they expected to prove and the "testimony" consisted of numerous people repeating the same phrases word-for-word over and over. The only disparities were in the responses of the self-aggrandizing who attempted to top each other with ever more outlandish claims about her psychic ability, courage, holiness, and, of course, their deep and pure connection to her. It is fun reading Pernoud's footnotes as she gently tries to resolve contradictory nonsense and get at the truth, but it didn't stop her as a Joan-nut from doing everything possible to portray the very open trial while Joan was alive as irrelevant and the statements made a generation after her death as all important and perfectly true, not usually something an unbiased historian does .

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The original script portrayed him a little different, especially at the end:

http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/themessenger.txt

But there was quite a bit of revising done during filming. In my opinion, the character ended up being something like her doubt (or you could say her conscience), but more importantly, the character was a part of her that she projected outside of herself, like any other voice. So the character Dustin Hoffman portrayed was Jeanne d'Arc.

Incidentally, the original script gave a much more satisfying heft to Jean d'Aulon's character as well, once again especially at the end. I prefer the Man as he was in the film, but would have liked to see much of Aulon as he was meant to be in the script.

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In the film's credits, Dustin Hoffman is shown as the Conscience - therefore that's what he was in the movie.

I found him intriguing to say the least.

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For me, Dustin Hoffman's character is what made the movie.

His apparition is a lot like the literal "Devil's Advocate" which in olden times was a Catholic official whose job was to argue against a person's sainthood.

Dustin Hoffman's character is not evil, but you said it: he is cold, logical and uncompassionate. That's exactly how the Devil's Advocate was supposed to conduct the investigation.

I also thought that it might be Satan himself--there's enough room for that possibility. But if the point was to tear down the existence of supernatural spirits (both divine & diabolical), then it would be more appropriate if he was just a figment of her imagination, as the credits say: her conscience.

One way or the other, he was freakin awesome.

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My thoughts are that Dustin Hoffman's character was actually the archangel Gabriel. A true messenger of God would probably have been "put off" by a human claiming to be the "Messenger of God". He taunted her and showed her that all of the visions she claimed to have had were merely her own delusions of grandeur. That even though she did great things she still allowed her own personal feelings to influence her actions and then claim them to be "God's will".

Seems to be alot of that going around lately.

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His inability to portray a medieval European (or someone who would be imagined by a medieval Euro) was the worst part of this movie IMO. They should have gotten F. Murray Abraham to play The Conscience.

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That comments is even stupider when you consider that Abraham is an American too.

Passenger side, lighting the sky
Always the first star that I find
You're my satellite...

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He was perfectly believable as a German alchemist in Nostradamus (1994), even without an accent. I've never seen Amadeus (can't stand Tim Hulce), I'm sure he was great in that as well.

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Then it was a bad decision by the director. Why not cast Gary Oldman or Bruce Willis instead (although Ian Holm would have worked).

Everyone except Malkovich sounded French, English or Irish (including some of the French). And Malkovich's lack of accent didn't jar on the ears. Even Faye Dunaway sounded European-ish.

I can't think of any of Hoffman's roles where he did a foreign accent (excluding perhaps Eastern European, which he may have done but I can't think of any). I haven't seen Kung Fu Panda though :)

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Because Dustin Hoffman was a suckass choice for the role. Why would a part of Jean's subconscious sound like a 20th century American?

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His accent didn't fit all that well but it wasn't jarring. He was OK in The Man in the Iron Mask even with Jeremy Irons, Gabriel Byrne and Gerard Depardieu as costars. Malkovich has a fey, hard-to-place way of talking anyway, but Dustin Hoffman sounds totally like an American Jew. I've never seen him play anything else believably.

I haven't seen Little Big Man except for the one clip where he was about to get scalped, he didn't fit well in that movie either IMO.

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OK I just watched a clip of Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook, and while he wasn't as good in the role as Hans Conreid, Vincent Price, or Boris Karloff, he did manage a halfway respectable accent.

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He is a part of Joan.

I've read scientists have theorized that the left and right hemispheres in the brains of ancient people weren't as well wired as they are in modern human beings. So a lot of ancient humans experienced this poor connection as disembodied voices. The logical left part of the self arguing against the impulse driven right side.

The scene in this film captures that very nicely. Ultimately Joan lets her Intellectual side win the argument because she values honesty, self honesty, the most.

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I thought he was Satan. Absolutely, without a doubt. I thought it was very clear, and then I come on IMDB and see that his character is called "The Conscience". Great, now I have to go rewatch that entire sequence.

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I loved Dustin's performance in this, regardless of his accent, and thought he was awesome in this. As for him being either Joan's Conscience or Satan, why he can't be both? Satan simply means "adversary" and actually denotes several beings rather than just a fallen angel called the Devil. From the Jewish perspective of the Book of Job in the Old Testament, for example, it wasn't necessarily the Devil, a fallen angel who rebelled against God, who was torturing Job but might be instead a holy angel of God who was simply acting as a prosecutor of sorts against a man that God gave Satan permission to torture in order to test Job's faith. The Conscience was doing something similar in practice against Joan and is thus acting as a "Satan" to her in order to test her faith, but with less torture and more questioning.

Welcome to my Nightmare- Freddy Krueger

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