Vision: The Free vs. Structure

In “Metaphors on Vision,” Stan Brakhage immediately challenges the effects that environmental influences have on our ability to see, or “to behold.” This intrinsic and infantile “vision” becomes deadened due to years of societal classifications of sights, further suppressing creations regarding “birth, sex, death, and the search for God,” which have developed to combat the dwellings of fear. Joan of Arc encountered a vision of a God that addressed the fear of French collapse, a vision not bound by the “physical movement properties of its own perceptibility”; I believe Carl Theodor Dreyer emphasizes the dangers in the discrepancy between free vision and structured vision. Consider the opening scene of the book that contains the entire court recordings of the dialogue that occurred during trial:

 

Dreyer approaches the book with a Judge/Theologian (denoted as JT hereafter) reading a page at a slanted angle, suggesting that the interpretations by the JT’s were bound to be bias due to their structured and methodological lifestyles. This is further supported in the first dialogue of the movie:

The pompous and arrogant expressions, along with the slightly upward angle, convey the JT’s as perceiving themselves superior to Joan, who is constantly portrayed on a lower level, looking upward.

Also, the picture above shows the JT’s laughing in response to Joan’s answers, clearly indicating that they contain a certain framework towards perceiving reality that differs from Joan’s lack of framework. Specifically, the Theologians thought it was funny that she did not know her age or that she could not describe the Saint Michael sighting. However, the questions were biased in that they expected personified descriptions of heavenly bodies, which is indicative of the parameterized thought structure of the JT’s.

Many of Dreyer’s close-ups of Joan show Joan looking upwards and with eyes wide open, suggesting that she contains a vision of wider and less obstructed understanding. The lack of tension in her face also conveys a face that is non-reactive, which also conveys that she is very accepting.

 

Joan’s vision allows her to abstract meaning and beauty out of seemingly empty sights; for example, when the light from outside creates a shadow of the window pane Joan smiles and all tension in her face subsides, despite being in the midst of a tortuous interrogation.  Throughout the interrogation, the judges and theologians ask questions that demand a black and white response; however, Joan’s wide-mind can only produce grey answers. The battle of the structured life-style versus the free ebbs and flows throughout the movie, but Joan’s necessary death, like Terry Malloy’s, results in the ultimate freedom for wide-eyed visionaries.