Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. France is also a foreign country, and they do things differently there too. So, imagine how differently they must have done things in medieval France, in the past. Speak English, for one, if Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is to be believed, and it’s based on a true story, so why wouldn’t you believe it.
This is the story, told three ways from each of the principal participants’ viewpoint of the trial by combat of Matt Damon’s Sir Jean de Carrouges and Adam Driver’s Jacques Le Gris the latter of whom is accused of raping the former’s wife, Jodie Comer’s Marguerite de Carrouges.
Sir Jean is up first, a brave but foolhardy soul who falls on hard times after the Caroline War and struggles to pay his dues to Ben Affleck’s Count Pierre d’Alençon, although his former squire Jacques Le Gris does try and soften Pierre’s low opinion of Jean. Jean’s fortune improve after his marriage to the wealthy but disgraced de Thibouville family, but property squabbles with the count gifting land away from him to Le Gris starts a feud that bubbles along until, when Jean’s away fighting a disastrous campaign in Scotland, de Gris rapes Marguerite. When a capricious justice system yields typically skewed results, he opts for trial by combat.
The second part tells Le Gris’ side of the same story, but it’s the third part that truly packs the film’s wallop, as Marguerite experiences the harrowing rape in altogether too gruesome detail, but does hammer home how awful women were treated in this time period, literally property of their husbands. The duel itself also has a fair degree of wallops and hammering, and show that Ridley’s not forgotten the swords and sandals skills he’s picked up over the course of his career, in a film that arguably harkens back to his debut in 1977 with The Duellists.
Ridley Scott had some weird blame game thing going on about the relative commercial failure of this, something about millennials and mobiles, which had some serious old man shouts at cloud vibes, particularly in the middle of a virulent pandemic. No. It is the audiences who are wrong. I don’t really blame them for their apathy, it’s not that The Last Duel is a bad film, on any axis I care to think of, but it’s not a good one either. Rashomon in plate mail sounds like a winning formula, but the end result is just a bit drab.
Visually drab, in the main, which is most likely the “authentic” way to do things, and I have some respect for that, but it does wind up making the whole affair rather flatter than the drama of the story maybe deserves. Also, said story and characters seem to be chasing authenticity rather than interest, which, again, I have some respect for, but this is not a documentary, and much as it goes against every fibre of my being I do kind of wish this had leaned a bit more heavily into the soap opera aspect of the tale.
As it stands, oddly enough it’s maybe Ben Affleck that comes out of this the best, and certainly about a week on he’s the only character I remember with any life and vibrancy about him, or indeed the only character I remember full stop.
I’m certain there’s an audience for this that will really appreciate what it’s set out to do, but it’s much less of a fraction of the mainstream audience than Ridley Scott expected, apparently. I think it’s also fair to say that it’s a well enough made film that it deserves to have been given a chance by more of that audience, but again, virulent pandemic gonna virulent pandemic. I would say it’s worth giving this a look from the safety of your sofa now it’s started popping up on streaming services and even if it’s not the most entertaining film Ridley’s ever made, it will satisfy a more grounded sensibility. Three and a half out of five.