PLOT: A telling of the last judicial duel in France, Marguerite de Carrouges claims a man named Jacques Le Gris raped her in her home, leading her husband, Jean de Carrouges to challenge him to a duel to the death.
REVIEW: Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is a visually immaculate, masterfully acted, compelling exploration of how women have often been marginalized by men in power throughout history, with this an especially brutal depiction. Men like Duel’s Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck) care only about their supposed honor, rights, and what gossip is spoken of them, even and esepecially after the rape of Marguerite (Jodie Comer), Carrouges wife. While the movie’s focus is a little lopsided, there’s no denying Scott’s latest is a very entertaining medieval drama that gets many of the basics just right, and then some.
Based on a true story during the 1380s, Duel – written by Nicole Holofcener (the brilliant Can You Ever Forgive Me?), Damon, and Affleck from the book by Eric Jager – explores the years of political and power struggles between the men before the rape of Marguerite occurred. Told in three acts, the two-and-a-half-hour runtime is divided into three chapters — one focusing on Carrouges’ view of the events, secondly Le Gris’, and finally Marguerite’s. Drawing obvious comparisons to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, with each one the perception of the others and their dynamic changes. And it’s right there where Scott rests the bulk of his movie’s laurels, because while the assault is the endpoint that gets us to the titular duel, the attention is all on the men, how stupendously they view themselves and how lowly they view the other, all until we get to Marguerite who sees them both as the monsters they are.
On the whole, there’s really not much substance to all of that, which means Duel is not much more than a showcase for the undeniably compelling surface details. Scott and his team worked behind the camera to make a movie with a runtime you can hardly feel by moving so briskly and highlighting everything that works in front of the camera. The cinematography from frequent Scott collaborator Dariusz Wolski (The Martian, Prometheus) favors the overcast, cold-colored feel of 14th century France, lending realism to Arthur Max’s production design, making the movie look entrancing despite a lack of brightness and period-movie flair. Factor in yet another great Harry Greyson-Williams score that evolves depending on the changing narrative, there’s hardly a moment that doesn’t look and sound exquisite.
The only hindrance to how great everything looks and sounds is in part the editing. As if trying to rush through so much story just to get to the final climax, scenes can cut away so quickly without feeling brought to a proper close, sometimes with a jarring effect. There are times when it can feel like less a story and more an illustrated Wikipedia page, simply meant to let you know what this character did at this one point in time, and whether it made them upset or not. Luckily, these moments can be far between, and never does it diminish the strongest moments that certainly demand spending time on.
The emphasis on grit in the production design and technical work recalls Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven rather than Gladiator, and the way the movie moves and sounds feels much more like his work on The Martian. For as dour as everything can sometimes look, Duel remains highly engaging thanks to the incredible work from the central cast. Each of the writers on the script has in the past proven their knack for dialogue that can be fired between actors, even when here they’re struggling to get out the very French names. While we’ve seen fine actors chew on great dialogue plenty of times before, Duel is most captivating when it’s time for the shifting narrative to come back around to where we have already been before, but now with subtle details in the acting and dialogue changed to add new context. It was riveting to see how the actors played off living up to the figure the central figure of the chapter saw them, with small changes keeping everything fresh when a linear structure would’ve easily bored.
So much attention has been placed in the epic mullet of Damon’s Carrouges and the nu-metal-frontman vibe of Affleck’s d’Alençon, but considering the ultimate D-baggery of the two of them, the looks actually fit. Ultimately, it’s easy to ignore the looks when the cast truly is so damn good. Damon and Driver’s transition between playing their characters as noble figures in their own eyes and then scumbags in the other’s makes for some of the best work of their careers, and Affleck is having some of the most fun he’s ever had on camera as the pompous playboy d’Alençon, getting the most laughs out of the surprisingly funny script. But with the final act resting on Comer’s shoulders, it’s her that really walks away as the victor of the ensemble. She is pushed to such limits, and while the men vary between degrees of asshole and faux-hero, Comer is the heart and soul of the film and gets you on her side no matter whose side of the story we’re hearing. As the innocent wife in Carrouges’ story, the “romantic interest” in Le Gris’, or the strong-willed, individualistic woman speaking out against her assault in the final act, the range she brings is truly sensational. In fact, she’s so good, it can’t help but draw more attention to the movie’s greatest flaw even more.
If you’ve kept up with the promotions for the movie you would go in believing this is a story that focuses primarily on the latter, and how Marguerite stood up in the face of childish men to speak her truth about what happened to her, even if it meant her own death. But the real truth is that’s not this movie. That’s maybe the final one-third of this movie. It mostly focuses on Carrouges and Le Gris, but even on that note, the overall story lacks complexity. It merely bounced from one admittedly entertaining scene to the next, painting a portrait of these men’s vanity, selfishness, and cruelty, as if we don’t already get the point.
The excuse can’t even be made that with each story we’re simply meant to get new information to make our own opinions about who is right and what the truth is, as the beginning of the final act makes it known that the filmmakers see Marguerite’s version of events is the truth. These men are truly assholes, she was assaulted, and all the time we spent getting to know these men and how they view themselves and everyone else is sort of meaningless. It does add drama to the ultimate clash at the end, but that once again goes to show that this is really a story about them and not her, dampening any impact the story is meant to have.
And truthfully, even though by the end any chances of mining depth from the story itself are gone, it’s hard to care as much when the actual duel kicks in. The first act of the movie featured a few solid battle sequences that dipped into some brutal violence, but the battle at the end certainly lives up to the title. Ferocious and bloody, Scott’s knack for filming swordplay brings to life two men with deep scores to settle, and you can feel it with every blow and missed brush with instant death. It doesn’t feel like it lasts too long, but it’s a worthy showdown nonetheless, with Damon and Driver going at it like animals until the gory conclusion.
As much as a big bowl of nothing the storytelling ultimately is under the surface, and certainly doesn’t hit the timely highs it’s aiming for, I can’t say the movie as a whole isn’t highly engrossing. Everything that is put front and center does the job of absorbing you into a captivating medieval drama, adding several unique touches that allow the actors to keep themselves and viewers on their toes with some of their collective best work yet, which goes so many miles it’s hard to fathom. Scott has made smarter, better movies, but only he can make a movie with these hairdos and that facial hair and make it excellent.