In between the church and God

The Passion of Joan of Arc, by Carl Dreyer (1928). Another dumb signifier, this one in a silent film, and perhaps one of the very first, for it seems like in order to be able to identify one we must have a sense of individuality, we must be ripped away from the church.
We see this played out on Joan's face during this intense film. She is placed between the church and God, and she learns that this the only place where she may take the sacrament, this is the only place where she is delivered, even if at the end she knows she is delivered by none other than Death. This is the desert of the real, something Simone Weil also touched on, something which the existence of the Catholic Church will always send looming up. It is true that we must always ask ourselves why we are not Catholics, and the answer should always set us somewhere outside of the domain of salvation, in between salvation and God. It occurred to me that, however deserted this place is, Mary must be there, an Ark herself, a tabernacle of grace. We see schizophrenia being created as the wily priests use her absolute faith in their cloth and absolute loyalty to the vision God has sent her. She defies Descartes by affirming that it was an angel and not a devil which appeared to her, but she does not escape being tortured by the representatives of this doubt. Is she pure because she does not know this doubt? Perhaps, but she must die and the church must function as the vehicle of this act, which ultimately is one of enjoyment, which at the end spreads to the crowds and the soldiers (British, I think) who cut them down with maces. Most crucial, and what sets Joan apart from the crowd, is that she at one point signs the abjuration, denies that the visions came from God, but then abjures this act as well. She is now in a desert beyond all human reach, for she cannot even trust her own insane loyalty. And this is where death, I don't know how the film manages this, death comes to appear welcoming. We feel that it is a consummation, a love feast. But only she has won it for herself.