Review – Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints – Joan of Arc

After a remarkable five-decade career, Martin Scorsese remains one of the most essential living filmmakers. Even at 82, the acclaimed director of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and Raging Bull still creates remarkable masterpieces like Silence, The Irishman, and Killer of the Flower Moon. With his upcoming Jesus biopic starring Andrew Garfield on the horizon, he has finally achieved his dream of releasing a TV series about Catholic saints.

Content Guide

Violence/Scary Images: Scenes of medieval warfare are depicted, but little violence is shown onscreen.
Language/Crude Humor: Mild, if any.
Drug/Alcohol References: Characters drink alcohol casually.
Sexual Content: Discussions of virginity, but no sexual content is depicted.
Spiritual Content: The show centers on Catholic saints who claim to speak directly with God and other saints, exploring the theological implications of these experiences.
Other Negative Content: None.
Positive Content: A surprisingly dramatic and effective historical and theological exploration of Joan of Arc.

Review

Scorsese has always been a man of curious faith — a divorced, progressive, elite filmmaker whose work is haunted by indulgence and Catholic guilt. He makes movies about characters living in the shadows of their sins, which prove both fun and haunting in their ability to show how society wrestles with evil. However, as a Catholic schoolboy, he took the saints quite seriously and still admires them. The Saints is his way of honoring the incredible lives of those he grew up admiring — a multi-part docu-drama series with 45-minute episodes set to explore the lives of St. John the Baptist, St. Mary Magdalene, St. Moses the Black, St. Sebastian, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Becket, St. Maximilian Kolbe, and St. Joan of Arc.

The catch is that The Saints is premiering exclusively on Fox Nation, the Fox News streaming service that hosts Sean Hannity reruns and Yellowstone National Park documentaries starring Kevin Costner. It’s an app that, in the words of defrocked news host Tucker Carlson, “sucks.” The Lionsgate-backed show was allegedly shopped around for years, with Fox Nation ultimately making an offer for all eight episodes. However, with recent programming hosted by Matthew McConaughey, Kelsey Grammer, and Dan Aykroyd, The Saints may be enough to push some cinephiles into swallowing their pride long enough to give Fox News $6 (and I’ll admit that The History of the World in Six Glasses is a fun show).

The Saints is clearly a labor of love for Scorsese, something he’s wanted to work on for decades, although cinephile completionists will note his role is as an executive producer and narrator. The fictionalized sequences look and feel nothing like his films, resembling more generic History Channel-tier dramas. However, they are still well-produced and acted, as Scorsese unpacks the historical details with the benefit of a rather sizable budget.

The choice to launch the series with an episode on Joan of Arc is inspired, given the figure is both notable, controversial, and highly cinematic. The 15th-century French mystic holds a unique place in history as one of the few teenage girls to lead a successful military campaign against the great empires of Europe.

As a young child, Joan the Maiden claimed to hear the voices of God, angels, and saints speaking to her. With the Hundred Years’ War resulting in her nation’s devastation, she found herself called to speak to the ascendant French king, asking for a horse and company of men, which she successfully led in a siege against an invading English stronghold. In doing so, she became the English’s greatest target, was captured, tried as a heretic, abused, and burned at the stake. She was only declared a saint in 1920, in part due to internal tension within the Catholic Church over burning one of its saints.

Joan’s life is full of mysteries. For someone hearing voices in her head, she proved remarkably resilient and effective. Scorsese’s portrayal offers an efficient and dramatic 46-minute breakdown of her life, ending with a brief dialogue between Catholic scholars Fr. James Martin SJ, Paul Elie, and Mary Karr. Their discussion explores the process of canonization, the theological challenges of venerating a nationalistic warrior saint, the cultural implications of her virginity being a focal point, and the issues with discerning truth from a figure who heard voices.

At times, the documentary feels like it’s brushing up against something more radical than it actually is. Scorsese makes a considerable fuss about Joan’s transgression of wearing male clothing, presenting it as a violation of medieval societal norms that she was called to make by God. However, he never fully embraces the modern tendency to declare Joan an LGBT icon by proxy. While the inclusion of liberal Catholic scholars allows for some feminist unpacking, it’s clear from the Fox Nation branding and faith-based advertising the show isn’t permitting these themes to go too far.

The first batch of episodes is set to be released weekly on Sundays through December 8, with the remainder premiering next spring before Easter. This first episode is just a taste of what is to come, and it’s already a strong indicator of what Scorsese sees in a show like this. The sizable budget and accessible approach to the topic make it a great introduction to some of Roman Catholicism’s most fascinating figures. The Saints looks set to be a surprisingly touching docu-drama going forward.