The Last Duel (2021)

I had no plans to see The Last Duel. The trailer didn’t impress me, the last time I saw Matt Damon in a movie set in something like medieval times was the awful The Great Wall, and director Ridley Scott is, in my view, a bit hit-and-miss with his movies, mostly miss. I may have gone to see actress Jodie Comer, but honestly, I know her only by her reputation since I haven’t gotten around to Killing Eve yet. So, why bother? Well, my friend William Watson noted my favorite movie of all time is Rashomon, and The Last Duel is apparently Scott’s attempt to make his own version, this time one based on a historic event from 1300s France.

Besides, knowing it was something of a flop means I can see it in a less crowded screening room, and even before the pandemic, I always liked that sort of thing.

Told in three chapters, the movie tells the events of what was the last judicial duel to the death in medieval France. The basic idea is that a knight, Jean de Carrouges, had a fight to the death with a squire, Jacques Le Gris, after Carrouges’s wife Marguerite accused Le Gris of raping her. Carrouges (Damon) had his version of events up first, and we see the story through his eyes before rewinding and retelling the same story in two more chapters from the point of view of Le Gris (Adam Driver) and Lady Marguerite (Comer). Marguerite claims Le Gris raped her, Le Gris denied it, Carrouges demanded his honor be satisfied because whatever happened to Marguerite is basically a reflection on him, and off to the side is Count Pierre (a very blonde Ben Affleck) basically just enjoying life while it’s hard for everyone else, no doubt standing in for a very jaded and awful noble class.

Now, Rashomon tells the story of a samurai’s murder from the perspective of four witnesses, namely a bandit, the widow, the dead man’s ghost, and a woodcutter, but the thing that makes Rashomon in part is not so much that the four stories are told to one degree or another to the benefit of the teller, but that the four are in point of fact completely incompatible. That is not the case here. The stories may be different, but that is more from a matter of perspective. Carrouges, for example, is not present for the alleged rape, so his chapter doesn’t show it. Likewise, most of the Pierre scenes happen with Le Gris as neither Carouges nor his wife have much to do with the feckless, distant lord.

Instead, we get the same story as each person believes it to be, and for at least the two men, their respective stories don’t so much contradict each other so much as suggest that neither has the full story about the other. Carouges is a very traditionally-minded soldier, high on the concept of honor who always sees his duty through violence, but that hampers his ability to get ahead or to be sensitive or sensible when he needs to be. Le Gris is an educated clerk in Pierre’s court who knows how to play the game and gets ahead, often at his old friend’s expense. Arguably, Carouges seems more pitiful than horrible from Le Gris’s perspective. In point of fact, Carouges’s version of the story, the most simple, is likewise the dullest of the three.

But then there was Marguerite’s story, and that one made the movie. Comer had, easily, the strongest performance, and her view of both men is the most feminist and the most modern. I highly doubt this movie could have been made the way it was twenty years ago by looking at the society from the perspective of a woman who, no matter which of the men is in the right, is the one who should have say in her destiny but doesn’t. She knows where her place should be, but she likewise makes it clear that, well, maybe it shouldn’t be, so she’s going to give the society she lives in a little shove. It’s really hard to speak about this movie without giving away the ending, but all I will say is, it doesn’t exactly hide the film’s version of the truth, but it is Marguerite’s story that ultimately makes the movie.

Grade: B