Review: The Last Duel

THE LAST DUEL (2021, USA/UK, dir. Ridley Scott, 18 cert, 152 mins)The title of the film refers to the last government-sanctioned (or imposed) trial by combat in France. Duelling did carry on in a much less official basis for many decades longer but it was a private affair. The film starts by showing us the start of this last duel between Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) and Jacques le Gris (Adam Driver). The duel is being fought because Jacques stands accused of raping Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer), Matt Damon’s missus in the film. At the time, this wasn’t a crime against the woman as such, it was a crime against the husband whose property had been violated (don’t worry, it’s not the only odd thing old-timey people believed. Pregnancy couldn’t result if the woman did not have ‘the little death’, as French people still call an orgasm, and there were several other moments that made the modern audience with whom I watched the film chuckle). Then the film jumps back a bit and recounts how Jean and Marguerite met and married and the friendship between Jean and Jacques, with their buddy – but superior in the court of Charles VI – Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck, who plays Pierre as a bit of a Californian medieval bro). There are several scenes of battle that are filmed so tight it makes you feel like they didn’t have enough extras – or the budget for CG soldiers – and so make up for it with excessive foley squishing and clanging noises and shouting.
Then comes the crux of the film. Marguerite doesn’t get on with her mother-in-law, Nicole de Carrouges (Harriet Walter with the worst mix of different accents I’ve heard in a while) and Jean has to go fight. Nicole leaves the family castle with all the servants to go shopping leaving Marguerite home alone and Jacques shows up with his squire. At first, Marguerite refuses entrance because she’s on her own but Jacques insists and then follows three versions of the same set of scenes, namely the rape (or otherwise) of Marguerite by Jacques.

Then we get a courtroom scene overseen by the young king Charles VI (Alex Lawther), looking very much like Joffrey Baratheon as he stares in glee at the courtroom proceedings, wherein Marguerite claims Jacques raped her, he denies it and is challenged to trial by combat by Jean. The king agrees and says that God will decide who will win the trial. If Marguerite has been telling the truth, it will be Jean. If she lied, it will be Jacques who wins and she will be burned alive.
Then we come back to the duel the film started with. Akira Kurosawa used the same technique of filming from different perspectives seventy years ago in Rashomon. There it felt integral to the story but here, it almost feels like without it there wouldn’t be enough material for a feature-length film. The fact that we start with the start of the duel, then the incoherent battle sequences, then the three perspectives going over the same material in a slightly different way, then the duel again all make it feel like Ridley is reusing material to pad out the film. The end fight is visceral and extreme, it reminded me of the very best bits from Gladiator, another Ridley Scott film. Once the duel is done, the loser is stripped of his armour and clothes by the spectators and his naked body is dragged away behind a horse. We then see Marguerite sitting in a field with a young boy playing and we get the end card – it felt a bit slight to me, no rousing conclusion, and because this all took place 800 years ago, there’s no photo of the modern-day descendants and what they’re now doing, or how they’ve overcome their own adversities. It left me somewhat unsatisfied.
The performances were all top-notch (apart from Harriet Walter’s accents and Ben Affleck almost adding “dude” to most of his sentences), and Jodie Comer stands out in particular as the wronged woman. It all looks beautiful/muddy as you might imagine and the sound design and score were great. I just wish it was more satisfactory – it had all the right ingredients… 3/5