Emotionally complex film on sexual violence

The Last Duel

(US, UK, 2021)
Director: Ridley Scott

Review by Iva Apostolova

This two-and-a-half-hour epic saga, delivered by veteran director Ridley Scott, has quite the star-studded cast. This is the first movie after Good Will Hunting (1997) in which pals Ben Affleck and Matt Damon appear side-by-side, although in very different roles. Matt Damon is unrecognizable in what I can only describe as a medieval mullet. It also features the new Hollywood it-girl, the scouser (scouser: someone born and bred in Liverpool) Jodi Comer, magnificent in her portrayal of the vulnerable yet determined Marguerite de Carrouges, as well as Adam Driver who plays the ambiguous but deeply malicious Jacques de Gris.

As far as I am concerned, The Last Duel is one of the English director’s best works. His specialty is epic sagas, and his credits include the imaginative Alien, the blockbuster Gladiator that made Russell Crowe a star and the war epic Black Hawk Down. If there is something that Scott does well, it’s big-budget dramas with complex storylines and close-up shots of human wounds, both physical and emotional. No exception to this, The Last Duel is not for the faint of heart!

Its story is inspired by true events from medieval France. King Charles VI, known as Le Fou (The Mad, because of his frequent psychotic episodes) was the last king of France under whom disputes were settled by duels to the death. Scott does not spare the viewer a single deafening clank of the armor or bone-crushing blow of the lance! The pinnacle of the gore comes when Matt Damon’s character, Sir Jean de Carrouges, drives his sword through Jacques de Gris’s face and skull, with all the appropriate sound and visual effects.

But if you think this is a movie about dungeons and dragons and damsels in distress, you are sorely mistaken! It is an emotionally complex story about sexual violence against women so normalized in medieval Europe that the idea of human rights, let alone gender equality, sounds like a conceptual impossibility. Given that Scott directed the brilliant Thelma and Louise, it is fair to say that he is an astute connoisseur of the female psyche. In The Last Duel, Scott uses the clever technique of presenting the same story three times, with many of the same details left intact, only interpreted differently. But the viewer’s patience is rewarded when the last version of the story, from the point of view of the female protagonist Marguerite de Carrouges, finally reveals the truth.

Running time: 2 hr 32 min
Rating: 18A

Iva Apostolova is a professor of philosophy at Dominican University College.