Who was Pope Joan? A woman who became Pope, apparently, as a mellifluous narrator informs us in the first few minutes of this overlong biopic. This was “a disgrace to the Church,” says the same narrator – because of course women have always been disdained and discriminated against – so her feat was quickly covered up. “Was she to be banished from History altogether?” wonders the narrator sadly. “A woman who had accomplished so much…” Fortunately, Pope Joan arrives to redress the balance, a messy collision of politically-correct tract and cheesy Roman peplum that can only be described as a major guilty pleasure.
Joan is born in a German village, to an English father. Dad is a priest – but not a nice English priest like the Archbishop of Canterbury, more a seething fundamentalist and all-round misogynist. This is in the 9th Century, when women were considered inferior. Let me say that again, in case you missed it: women in the 9th Century were considered inferior. Once again, because it’s important: women in the 9th Century were considered inferior. (If you think I’m laying it on thick, wait till you see the movie.) Inferior 9th-Century considered women were. You know women? 9th Century? Inferior.
Actually, Joan almost doesn’t get born at all. It’s a difficult birth, and her Mum’s in excruciating pain – so the midwife tries to give her some medicine, only to be stopped by Joan’s nasty father. What’s that? he demands. “This will ease her pain,” replies the midwife. Rubbish, says Dad, quoting the Bible (“In sorrow shalt thou bring forth”), and throws it away! Things aren’t much better when baby Joan is born: Dad’s not happy when he finds it’s a girl, and of course any woman learning to read and write is “blasphemy”. (Did I mention that women in the 9th Century were considered inferior?) “Will you teach me to read?” Joan begs her brother. “I can not do that, little sister,” he replies in fluent Mediaeval.
Fortunately, Joan is no ordinary girl. “Despite her youth,” observes the narrator, butting in for no obvious reason, “she had an innate wisdom beyond her years”. She doesn’t just want to read and write – she craves knowledge, information, the answers to everything. Watching juvenile Joan and her father under the same roof is mind-boggling; it’s as if an Enlightenment philosopher had somehow been adopted by a Taliban warlord. Later, an elderly scholar comes to the village and recognises Joan’s talent. No surprise, really, since she doesn’t just read Latin – she also translates the text, unpacks any latent symbolism and offers alternative interpretations; not bad for an abused 11-year-old growing up in a remote village. And meanwhile Dad is skulking around behind the dazzled scholar, promising to “punish her accordingly”.
Maybe that was the moment when I stopped being annoyed by Pope Joan and actually started to enjoy it – or it may have been later, when Joan makes her way to the city and enrols in a Church school where she finds new tormentors, a posh lady who looks down on her bumpkin ways and a jug-eared teacher who quotes St. Paul on educated women being “unnatural”. (In the 9th Century, you’ll recall, women were considered inferior.) Undaunted, Joan leaves him speechless with her debating skills, scrubs the floor uncomplainingly and builds an elaborate pulley system based on an old Greek design. Why? Because she can.
And so Pope Joan goes on, taking its heroine ever closer to Rome and her destiny – but first there’s an interlude in a monastery, where teenage Joan poses as a man for the first time. From then on, she calls herself Johannes (“Yet Johanna was constantly aware of the danger she faced every day,” adds the narrator importantly) – though oddly enough she’s not known as a scholar but a herbalist, her fame based on medical skills she apparently picked up from her grandmother. Not entirely sure when that happened, then again I’m also not sure why the film has Joan rescued by a violent deus ex machina not once but twice (we almost lose her to an arranged marriage, till the Norsemen arrive raping and pillaging in the nick of time) – nor do I really understand what John Goodman is doing in this movie, in full cuddly-bear mode as Pope Sergius. “The pains … are gone!” he declares on his sickbed, hamming it up outrageously.
That’s in Rome, of course – the film’s final act and perhaps the most entertaining, with Nubian slaves on every street corner. (Earlier we had lepers, a glimpse of a mediaeval dentist and blind men used for sport by a baying mob.) The Pope’s courtiers plot to take over the Holy See – “I see you were not exaggerating when you called yourself … (arched eyebrow) ambitious” – but Johannes/Joan rises to the top, as we always knew he/she would.
Pope Joan is a Euro-pudding – though writer and director are German – and I’m not sure what lavish-but-silly historicals like this do for the European film industry, but you have to admit it’s distinctive: you couldn’t get such a flagrantly (not to say fragrantly) bad film in Hollywood, where everything is second-guessed within an inch of its life. The film keeps its biggest surprise for the end, a twist so bizarre I’m not sure I even understood it. Is it really saying that women in drag – looking more like transsexuals – are all around us, hidden away like aliens in human form? Is there meant to be a hidden Message for the 21st century, and our own forms of intolerance? Pope Joan is a very serious film, which is why it’s so funny.
