Joan of Arc Review (1999)

Joan of Arc Review
Release date: May 16, 1999
Cast: Leelee Sobieski, Peter O’Toole, Neil Patrick Harris, Jonathan Hyde, Olympia Dukakis, Powers Boothe, Robert Loggia, Maximilian Schell, Jacqueline Bisset, Chad Willett, Shirley MacLaine
Director: Christian Duguay
Screenwriters: Michael Alexander Miller, Ronald Parker
Runtime: 3 hours (180 minutes)

Joan of Arc is one of those historical figures who has been portrayed on screen so many times and in so many ways that any new attempt carries the weight of every previous version with it.

The 1999 CBS miniseries directed by Christian Duguay didn’t just have the numerous previous films to contend with, but later in the same year would have Luc Besson’s big budget theatrical version with Milla Jovovich to compete with. The made-for-TV miniseries with the unproven lead should not have been able to compete. And yet here we are twenty-five years later, and the Sobieski version is the one worth talking about. It wasn’t even really close either.

The miniseries covers the full arc of Joan’s life from her childhood in Domrémy through the trial and execution at Rouen, adapted by Michael Alexander Miller and Ronald Parker.

At three hours across two parts, it has the room to breathe, and Duguay uses that space deliberately. The first part establishes Joan’s world and the voices that set her on her path with enough patience that, by the time she rides into battle, you understand exactly what is at stake and why the people around her are willing to follow her into it.

The battle sequences hold up better than they have any right to for a late-nineties television production. There is an inevitable period charm to certain elements — the kind of glossy, somewhat cheap feeling quality that ran through a lot of mid to late 90s action TV, from Hercules to Xena to the various biblical miniseries that populated the CBS schedule. It’s hard to describe, but when you see it (any of the action scenes), you immediately know that this was a product of the 90s.

Fans of that era will recognize it immediately, and it lands as a feature rather than a flaw, a warm reminder of when television still swung for the fences on historical spectacle. But Duguay’s blocking during the siege sequences is genuinely fluid, and the sense of scale he creates with the production’s resources is impressive. The battle at Orléans in particular manages to convey both the chaos of medieval warfare and Joan’s almost supernatural effect on the morale of the soldiers around her.

The supporting cast is stacked in the way that only a prestige television production of that era could manage. Peter O’Toole as Bishop Cauchon gives the trial sequences their moral complexity — he is not a simple villain but a man who recognizes Joan’s purity far too late. A superb performance from a legendary actor.

Neil Patrick Harris, in a role that deliberately distanced him from Doogie Howser, plays Charles VII with a slippery, calculating stillness that works well. Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Powers Boothe, Robert Loggia, Maximilian Schell, and Jonathan Hyde all perform their roles with sincerity and intention as well.

But the miniseries belongs entirely to Leelee Sobieski, who was just sixteen when this premiered, and carries the weight of one of history’s most mythologized figures without ever buckling under it.

The challenge with Joan of Arc is the same in every adaptation: how do you play a person who is simultaneously a mystic, a military commander, a teenager, and a martyr without turning her into a symbol rather than a human being? Sobieski solves it by anchoring everything in Joan’s vulnerability. The doubt is always present underneath the conviction, and that tension is what makes the performance extraordinary.

The trial sequences, where Joan has been stripped of her army and her king’s support and faces the full machinery of institutional power alone, are Sobieski at her best. The exhaustion and the defiance running simultaneously in those scenes is the work of someone who understood this character completely.

This is still the definitive Joan of Arc on screen. Peter O’Toole won an Emmy for his supporting role in this, and it was well deserved, but it’s still a shame Leelee didn’t win the Emmy or Golden Globe for Best Lead Actress in a Miniseries or TV Film.

If you’ve never seen this miniseries, it can be hard to find in physical copy today and it doesn’t appear on streaming services. But, you can find the whole thing on YouTube here, so check it out.