Saturday, 10 December 2022

St. Joan, Heavy Metal & Bhagavad Gita

Bruno Dumont's 2017 film of the childhood of Joan of Arc is a unique blend of influences. Based on a play by Charles Peguy & featuring an 8 year old Lise Leplat Prudhomme as the young Joan, it is a musical with songs performed in Heavy Metal style.

Even when Joan was a child, working as a shepherdess looking after her father's sheep, she would share her food with the hungry & was worried about the English invasion. Though playing & prancing as befitted her tender years, she was questioning God about the misery of the French. She even shared her doubts about Divine Justice with Sister Gervaise of the convent, who attributed suffering to the human condition. Not entirely satisfied about that view, she prays to God to send a military leader to unite the French (whose King was ineffectual at that time). A vision is vouchsafed to her in which Saints Catherine, Margaret & Michael appear & ask her to take that leadership herself. She did in her teens, drove out the English but was martyred herself.

At the beginning of Bhagavat Gita also, Arjuna seeks to lay down arms against his relatives (& presumably submit to Fate.) But Lord Krishna reminds him of his duty as a military leader & exhorts him to fight for righteousness & defeat his unscrupulous enemies.

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