Wednesday, February 25, 2009
A Babe at Its Mother's Breast
In the film The Passion of Joan of Arc as the title character is executed by being burned alive, the camera interrupts the gruesome images of the flames and cuts to a baby feeding at its mother's teat. The child breaks contact with the mother and turns from the breast. In another cut, the child eventually returns to its meal. In class many of us found this image disconcerting and incongruous, generating a few gasps of incomprehension. Yet, is there a reason this image is included in the scene? Could that image have some symbolic importance to the film?
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The image of the feeding baby cut to as Joan is burning to death shows the cycle of life, someone experiencing the last, and some of the first moments of life. When the baby is distracted from its mother's teat by the hoopla it shows how innocent people are being drawn in and are disturbed by the violence going on, but eventually, as what happens with stimuli, habituation occurs, and the innocent who are disturbed by such actions forget about the violence and turn back to their lives. This sequence of edits shows the depressing aspects of martyrdom, maybe not so much that the person is dying (the first depressing aspect), but that the sacrifice is only worth something as long as someone remembers their struggle, and why they died. Although Joan's influence seems to last at least just beyond her death when someone yells in her support, I didn't see what immediately followed as class ended before the movie did.
ReplyDeleteI believe the image of the feeding baby was of the utmost importance. The reason for that is because it symbolized more than what the image portrayed. In this scene, Joan is being burned to death because of her supposed relationship with God(or as believed, her lack of relationship with God). This is the last stage of her life--death. The cut to the baby feeding on it's mother's teat shows just the opposite--it shows life and the beginning of a relationship with god. Just as Julia said, it is the circle of life. The baby represents how Joan started off as any innocent child does, but then the scene cuts to Joan being burned. This shows how her innocence is thought to be lost by the people of the courts and death is the only way to pay for her sins.
ReplyDeleteThis scene was very important in what it represents. I believe that there was an exact point to having the baby turn away from its mother at that specific moment in Joan's life.Babies and young children are symbols of innocence and purity. The baby moving represents that such a dramatic important event was occurring, that even an innocent child having no idea what was going, could feel the affects. The baby could tell that something was not right in what was going on in the world. The baby is also so young that he is unaware of God and how religion works. It is both ends of the spectrum. The baby having no idea about religion and Joan having such a strong belief in her religion.
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