This might very well be the most important news of 2022. A new animated feature is coming up in late 2022/early 2023 produced by veteran French animation studios Program33. This won't be an eye candy 5 minutes short for Youtube, this will be a 90 minutes movie involving a production team of about 300 people. 90 minutes is a very, very long run for animation and 300 people is a lot of manpower, hence the whopping 3.5 million euros budget to make it happen, which to anybody who knows animation will actually sound like a lowball figure. The costs of animation can get ludicrous real fast, which is why it is no surprise that this project is actually a big co-production involving not only the aforementioned Program33, but a slew of other studios like AT-PROD (Belgium), KOBALT (Germany), and Circus (France), and as stated in this Variety article "[this project] is backed by France Télévisions/Salto, with public funding from the CNC, Île-De-France Region, Procirep-Angoa and Europe Creative Media." Funnily enough, even with all that media power behind, € 3.5 millions is still not a big budget by any stretch of the imagination for a project of this scale.
Budget considerations notwithstanding, the announcement of this project by Program33 is beyond exciting. Animation is such a powerful conduit for quality storytelling, and since nobody has tried to get Joan right in a live action movie ever since the offensively distasteful abomination that is the 1999 The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc by Luc Besson, I'm grateful talented people are searching for Joan in different avenues.
The good news don't end there, according to the Variety article Program33 aims to "offer a new angle on the story based on the historical records of the rehabilitation and canonization process by the Catholic church, 25 years after she was burnt at the stake, in 1431", and not just that, according to Variety the project's main historical adviser is Valérie Toureille, one of the most accomplished Medievalist alive today, an absolute titan of Medieval studies especially when it comes to the Hundred Years' War, not to mention author of a best-selling biography titled Jeanne d'Arc published in 2020. Her presence is definitely as solid an insurance as you can get to make sure the storytelling doesn't go off tracks.
But it gets even better. The Variety article quotes Michel Spavone, produter at Program33, as saying "Alongside the epic dimension, we want to focus on the political dimension. She aided Charles VII, by driving the English out of France. Her rehabilitation involved complex political factors between the monarchy and the church, which most people are unaware of." That's promising. Joan's life offers an endless supply of epic moments that would translate beautifully in animation, but the political and more grounded dimension of her character is what can add even greater depth and value to the script.
There was one bit of the Variety article however that had me raise an eyebrow, and that's when Fabrice Coat, the project’s creator and executive director at Program33, is quoted to have said the following about the project:
"She [Joan] had incredible determination and intelligence. She broke the customs and barriers of her time”.
This is certainly true, but it's the second part of his comment that had me roll my eyes:
"She was rehabilitated, not just because the Church made a mistake but because the monarchy needed a symbol of geo-political importance. She helped Charles VII stay on the throne, so it was impossible to keep classifying her as a witch."
Ok, a lot to unpack here. Defining what the Church did to Joan as a mistake is outrageous. Was it a mistake to burn a 19 year old alive in front of a cheering crowd? clearly, but that's just a gross simplification. What the Churchmen in Rouen committed wasn't a mistake, it was good ol' murder. Premeditated murder? arguably. Political murder? surely, among other things. Was Joan's horrific death merely the result of a mistake? That'd be insulting to even suggest, and a little concerning coming from the creator of a project such as this.
But moving on, did Joan help Charles VII stay on his throne? this is a weird one. She definitely put him there, no question about it, but did she help him stay there? I mean, yes, technically, I guess? the main goal of Joan's condemnation trial was to undermine the rightfulness of Charles' crown, but even after Joan's death his position as King was never really in any serious jeopardy. The English never wished to acknowledge Charles, that's no secret, but they certainly had to acknowledge his armies as they massacred their men and pushed them out of France for good. They could kick and scream all day long about Charles not being a rightful King - which he certainly was by the way - but the reality is they could not do a damn thing about it. There is no king Charles VII without Joan, she was the one who put the crown on his head, that's the milestone, that's the herculean task nobody thought was possible at that point, let alone by the hand of a random girl from some village in the Lorraine. She did the heavy lifting for Charles, all he had to do afterwards was to not let her die alone, far from home, tied to a stake in a hostile town surrounded by a cheering crowd of English sycophants, and he miserably failed.
And ultimately, Joan was never really classified as a witch. Yes, the piece of paper nailed to the stake said Stryga Haeretica Relapsa, which means "witch, heretic, relapsed". However, Joan's most aggravating sin, according to her own accusers, had nothing to do with witchcraft, it was instead her rejection of the Church's authority in favor of a more direct way of communing with God - her voices. Moreover, the technical reason behind her execution was the male clothes she was found wearing after she had sworn she'd never wear male clothes again, hence the relapsed part. So, while many moments of Joan's condemnation trial do overlap with those of a typical medieval witch trial, Joan was not burned because they feared she would fly away on a broom and party all night long with Lucifer in a forest. Joan was not your average medieval girl next door who cooked a particularly mean stew and was now facing the inquisition because of a jealous hag who told the local priest only the devil himself would cook such delicious food. Joan needed no supernatural powers to be the most inexplicable human being that ever lived. A 19-year-old illiterate girl who, in less than two years, rained on England's 100 years parade by littering the Loire region with the corpses of their most capable soldiers and generals, and ultimately by giving the French what the English had worked so hard to deny them ever since Charles VI had signed the Treaty of Troyes in 1420: a rightful King. The English hated all of this, they hated all of her. That's why they worked so hard to put her on a stake — not to vanquish some whimsical teenage witch who didn't know better — but to burn their worst fucking nightmare.
But I digress.
So, back to the animated feature. Will the budget constrains hinder the quality of the end result? hopefully not. Is this the most important and anticipated project of 2022? absolutely.
For more information about this upcoming project and all the other projects by Program33: www.program33.com
Comments