Johanna

People walked out of the theatre..fair enough. It's an Art film and an extremely audacious one to boot. But in my humble opinion, it's not worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

If you can get past the fact that 1) it's an opera, 2) it's sung (very beautifully) in Hungarian, and 3)there's naked old men singing about liver failure..you might actually enjoy this film. If not then perhaps you might find that you can appreciate it as a one off. Whether that is a good or a bad thing, I suppose is up to the viewer.

The lead actress Orsi Toth is absolutely stunning in this film. Her performance was uncomfortable, emotive, and surprising. I look forward to seeing her in future films.

A pretentious eccentricity: a virtually unrecognizable modernization of the Joan Of Arc tale (with the heroine now a drug addict-turned-nurse-turned-whorish miracle maker!) which, of all things, is also an opera sung in Hungarian! I only included it in the “Epic” challenge for this reason and had, in fact, intended to watch Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 masterpiece THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC as part of a marathon to commemorate the 40th anniversary of his death…but had to abandon the whole idea and, in the process, considerably streamline the schedule for the rest of the month following an unexpected death in the family which turned into a national tragedy!

Incidentally, Roberto Rossellini had already made a film out of Arthur Honnegger’s opera JOAN OF ARC AT THE STAKE (1954; which has, thankfully, just been released as a SE DVD in Italy) featuring the director’s then-wife Ingrid Bergman; I haven’t watched this yet but did recently acquire the latter’s earlier 1948 film about the famous inspirational but misunderstood warrior-saint. The film under review, then, is original to be sure and mercifully short – but also rather pointless...to say nothing of dismal-looking, dreary and thoroughly depressing! Having said that, some of the music – particularly the children’s choruses – is quite pleasing, though...

Kornel Mundruczo's "Johanna" is a cinematic mess, "full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing." With its garish (green) colours and flared images, a mediocre score and lame libretto, the film is well below par. It would be generous to say this film looks more like a bloated, experimental undergraduate student film from the 1970's. Set aside films such as Ingmar Bergman's acclaimed "The Magic Flute" (1975), Joseph Losey's version of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" (1979)," Carlos Saura's flamenco "Carmen" (1983), and Francesco Rosi's 1984 production of the same material, lead by a cast of international opera stars, as being too mainstream and conventional. Mundruczo's "Johanna", supposedly a retelling of the story of Joan of Arc, is lurid and dimwitted. It is the sort of film to which the jaded cinematic "cognoscenti" ascribe all manner of praise for its director's brave vision and deep meaning, but don't be fooled. I watched the entire film, but I'd suggest that you don't. You'll be checking your watch after ten minutes, thinking an hour has passed, wondering if your time would be better spent doing something else. It would.

It is a terrible bad film, do not waste your time to disturb you with it. It is without any story, very bad music. At the half of the film I left it, which occurred only second time in my life. The film suggests that the medical doctors are not able to treat any patient and that paramedical therapies are much more useful. It is declared for instance that a patient who would need a liver transplantation could be healed by sex therapy given by Johanna. I can not imagine what could be in the brain of the director. The pictures are also depressing, the whole film is very unpleasant and misses any taste and good human feeling. As a medical doctor I am especially upset with the content of this film.

This does fall into the art film category, and of course art films are not all good and taste varies. I tend to put art films towards the right part of the spectrum, meaning the "good" part so to speak. This one however I must place at the left extreme of the spectrum along with trash such as what you might expect from a film titled something like "Jesse James Meets Terry and the Pirates" (just made that up). The lines are all sung (kind of) like in lulls in between arias of an opera, only there are no arias. Just the same sound over and over and over. There is a certain arty ugliness to this hospital, so ugly that I thought the film would redeem itself if I sit there long enough and not give up. What is the story like? Since my review is directed at those who have not seen it yet, I will just be metaphoric. Think of being swallowed by a huge pig. You get bitten up in the mouth, gulped down the esophagus, churned around in the stomach, reduced to mash in the intestines, and whatever is left gets dumped out his rear end. Halfway into this you are convinced that there is some good to all this ugliness, though we know the world for some of us (many of us?) is a bad place and we wind up in the burn pile. That's the story, and I don't think my metaphor has spoiled anything. If after reading the other reviews you must see it, then I suggest you spend as little as possible of your hard-earned money and watch for say 10 minutes or so. If you like it by then, enjoy the rest, but if not --- it won't get better. The one thing I got out of it all, particularly after reading its history and the other reviews, is the realization more than ever before that there are those who laud something as art for having been placed into the art category. I don't know if my review will do anyone any good. Very few who read the review titled awful considered that review helpful, so I wrote a longer review. I like to write helpful reviews. If you do see it and find it awful, you might give us nay-sayers a thumbs up to give us credibility, which may prompt others to watch something else instead. Having read the reviews for this film, I had expectation of a worthwhile art film, but found in my honest opinion a monstrosity, all 82 minutes of it. Oh, and I almost forgot. Sex is suggested more than actual. What little nudity there is is rather ugly. It is a hospital after all.