Reply to a review of the movie The Messenger

The Messenger

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	benoitmorrier@ wrote:
	"Anything must be true before it can significantly claim other mérits. Without truth, all else is worthless." E. Gellner, Postmodernism & Reason. When a film is founded on a lie, and a perverse one at that (!), nothing that follows can be trusted. In the case of "The Messenger," a true story of love and sacrifice, of dedication and faith, is cinematically morphed to a false one of hatred, bitterness, fury, and revenge. If there was any truth to this outrageous concoction, which there isn't, this incredible revelation might have been noted by one of the following: playwrights Shaw, Schiller, Anouilh, Peguy, Brecht; historians Duby, Pernoud, Michelet, Warner, Fabre, Quichertat, Contamine, Luce; novelists Anatole France, Claudel, Delteil, Dumas, Malraux, Twain, Tournier, Vioux, Keneally; or filmmakers Dryer, Ucicky, Gastyne, DeMille, Fleming, Preminger, Robert Bresson, Enrico, Panfilov and Rivette. Calling attention to one's own outrageousness as a filmmaker has always provided a fashionable haven for those who cannot or will not do the hard and patient work that leads to real insight, true understanding, gripping storytelling and work of lasting value. Perhaps this film teaches us what should be relegated to the flames: the vanities of arrogance (thinking a film on Joan can be made with no regard to the research and the record), of self-adulation (believing that cleverness can substitute for a genuine search for the truth), and of vanity itself (the obvious way in which the role was cast and the reason for which the movie itself was made.) (This critic was written by Mr. Ronald Maxwell, who wrote and directed the motion picture "Gettysburg" and who is preparing his own film on Joan of Arc. Having seen the movie, I agree entirely with his "diagnostic") (2/10)
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