STORYTELLING MAKES FOR EXTRAORDINARY ‘DUEL’
From its first minutes, “The Last Duel” establishes itself as extraordinary. Two men are jousting — galloping toward each other on horseback, each wearing armor, each holding a shield and a lance, and each intending to impale the other. Such scenes are a cliche of every medieval epic, except that this time, you can feel it, the velocity of the horses, the bracing for impact, the danger and madness of the act.
Later, there’s a battle between two armies. What’s the most terrifying sound? A quiet whoosh. That’s the sound of the enemy’s arrows being released into the air all at once, a sound always followed by screaming. And how do men in armor fight each other? They get very practiced at stabbing each other in the neck.
“The Last Duel,” directed by Ridley Scott, gives us the texture of life in 14th century France, so much so that we feel that we are there, in this place that’s desperate and foreign and yet human and familiar. The customs, clothing and rituals are almost from another planet, and yet human nature — with all its jealousies, lusts, loyalties and treacheries — remains unchanged.
Written by Nicole Holofcener, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, the film is based on a series of real-life events that took place in Normandy in the 1370s and 1380s. Damon plays Jean de Carrouges, a knight, whose wife (Jodie Comer) accuses a squire, Jacques Legris (Adam Driver) of raping her. This culminates in France’s last legally sanctioned duel, the battle to the death that we get a glimpse of during the film’s opening.
The screenwriters have come upon a smart device for telling this story, one that makes its 152-minute running time go by
in a flash. Following the opening
scene, the movie flashes back some 16 years to tell us “the truth according to Jean de Carrouges.” This is followed by the truth according to Jacques Legris and, finally, the truth according to Marguerite de Carrouges.
As a result, we get to see the characters both as they see themselves and as others see them. In his own eyes, for example, Carrouges is a decisive soldier, a loving husband and tireless fighter against injustice. But as the picture fills in, Damon also shows us that Carrouges is hard and implacable, not always possessed of the best judgment, and with a tendency toward litigiousness.
Through the eyes of Carrouges, his erstwhile friend Legris is inscrutable. But the Legris section augments the portrait of someone intelligent, ambitious
and lascivious.
And Marguerite de Carrouges emerges as hardly an ornament, but a woman of courage and unusual administrative capacity.
Affleck was originally intended to play Legris, but because of a scheduling conflict, he had to take the smaller role of Count Pierre, who is the lord over both men. The replacement turned out for the best. It’s possible to believe anything of Driver, good or bad, but Affleck just seems shady walking
through the door. That shady quality gets good use in his performance as Pierre, a man with a magnificent front and no moral core.
The movie adheres fairly closely to the history, and where the history is incomplete, it fills in the rest with smart choices that both emphasize the drama and make psychological sense. One small surprise is that the rape scene that the real Marguerite de Carrouges described was even more brutal and horrific than the one she claims here. (There’s a feminist intent behind this choice, but it’s best discovered in the viewing.)
“The Last Duel” skips over years at a time so that there is always a sense of forward motion. Along the way, we get a feeling for feudal life. To be a knight or a squire is like being in the mafia — having that job means that you pay the boss, not the other way around. Only here the ultimate boss, the king, is not some tough guy but a perverse teenager (Alex Lawther).
We also get to see the sights, such as Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, just as it’s being rebuilt today.
Throughout, the beliefs and attitudes surrounding daily life seem entirely mad, and here and there, we get a hint of them. During the dueling scene, for example, a young blond woman on the reviewing stand laughs every time something grisly happens, as though watching an outrageous comedy. Ridley Scott is too smart to cut to a close-up of her; that would give her too much importance. Instead, he leaves her there in long shot. He knows that we see her.