Sir Ridley should hang up his sword
The Last Duel (R16, 153 mins) Directed by Ridley Scott Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★1⁄2
In December 1386, two men met in Paris to fight to the death. Jean de Carrouges had accused Jacques Le Gris of raping his wife. The accusation allegedly came from Marguerite de Carrouges herself.
But, as with everything else connected with this case, no-one knows for sure any more.
Trial by combat was rare, even in those times. The idea was that only God knew the truth, and he would ensure the right bloke won the fight. Luckily, in these enlightened times, we just let the person with the more expensive lawyer win.
The ties between the two were complex. They had been friends, godfathers to each other’s sons and had fought together in a couple of military campaigns.
But, they had fallen out over disputed lands, which, maybe tellingly, would be awarded to the survivor of the duel.
is a historical epic in which the true history is simply not known. Veteran writer Nicole Holofcener solves this quandary – and provides herself with some very necessary structure – by replaying the events that led to the duel from three perspectives.
We get ‘‘What Carrouges Said’’, followed by Le Gris’ version and lastly – and most watchably – Marguerite’s recounting of what happened to her and what she did next.
Whose version we believe is left entirely to us, although Holofcener
does find numerous ways of reminding us what the stakes were for Marguerite – and that any person who will put themselves through the human hell of making an accusation of rape is never doing so lightly.
As such, could have emerged from the filmmaking process as a provocative, timely, complex and fascinating document that – although it could only be speculative – would have had something nettlesome and pertinent to say about ‘‘the truth’’ and its ability to survive inside a courtroom.
And then into comes Sir Ridley Scott. Who I imagine as having one of those permanently shouty British voices, saying ‘‘YES, YES BUT CAN I PUT FIGHTING IN IT AND CAN I SHOOT FLAMING BALLS OVER A VALLEY LIKE I DID IN
Which is how, I think,
Duel finished up as the bloated and lumpen thing that it is.
Matt Damon – an actual cowriter – plays Carrouges as a visionless and pugnacious little man, crippled by his own feelings of inferiority in the face of the worldly, raffish and urbane Le Gris – a perfectly adequate Adam Driver.
Ben Affleck – also a writer – shows up as Le Gris’ friend and protector, a Count with access to the King. Affleck, to give him his due, is mostly pretty great, peering out from a bleached bowl cut and chin-tuft ensemble that makes him look like the saddest single dad at the skatepark – and actually injecting some humour into his scenes.
Damon, rocking a mullet-andgoatee combo that wouldn’t look out of place in a late-80s Upper Hutt panelbeater’s shop, simply plays a dull and angry man in a dull and eventually angering way, muttering about ‘‘his dignity’’ as though it were something other than a fig-leaf for his boundless insecurities.
The star here, with the only role written with real nuance, is Jodie Comer as Marguerite, handing in a performance that should and could have been the layered and incendiary centrepiece of the film.
But, for all its pretensions to modern-day relevance, all there is to learn is that Scott is still more comfortable watching his boys shout and wave their swords at each other, than he is with listening to what a woman has to say. What a waste of a great story.