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The Last Duel - Ridley Scott, 14th Century France, Co-Written by and Starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, plus Adam Driver, Jodie Comer (Oct 15)

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The last officially recognized judicial duel fought in France, in 1386

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The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval France is a 2004 book by American author Eric Jager concerning the last officially recognized judicial duel fought in France. It tells the story of the December 29, 1386 trial by combat (duel) in which the Norman knight Jean de Carrouges killed the squire Jacques Le Gris. Carrouges had accused Le Gris of raping his wife Marguerite de Carrouges, née de Thibouville, that previous January, and had gone to King Charles VI seeking an appeal to the decision handed down by Count Pierre d'Alençon, whom Carrouges believed favored Le Gris. Whichever combatant was still alive at the end of the duel would be declared the winner as a sign of God's will. If Jean de Carrouges had lost the duel, Marguerite de Carrouges would have been burned at the stake as punishment for her false accusation.

In the centuries since Le Gris' death the case has become an important cultural legend in France, and the guilt or innocence of its participants has been a source of great debate among historians and jurists

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I honestly can't decide what to think about this.  I will pass on it in theaters, but if it hits a streaming service I'm subscribed to, I will probably check it out.

Seems like an odd movie for Affleck and Damon to co-write (along with another writer I can't remember), and I'd prefer European actors, but oh well.

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Bama Llama

Bama Llama 1450

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Sir Ridley to agent: Hallo, Cedric?  Yes, fine, fine.  Listen, find us a winter gig in France involving at least six medieval chateaux, stylized armor, bizarre political shit and (taps  index finger on cigar case). . . oh yeah, Affleck and Damon.  Right!  Off you go, there's a good agent!

Cedric the Agent: Why?

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Felix

Felix 607

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Saw this last night and thought it was good.  Obviously they couldn't leave it vague like the actual story, but thought they handled the historical aspect well.  Story was told in three chapters each from the point of view of one of the principles and culminating in the duel which was really well done.

No punches pulled on the brutality of the time, but the characters were interesting and pretty well fleshed out.  I'd recommend it unless you're squeamish about blood or rape.  Obviously they aren't speaking French but that doesn't take anything away as far as I'm concerned.

It left me thinking about a few things which is nice in a movie.

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WBT

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I saw this tonight and really liked it.  I thought the three leads were all great.  I agree that the duel in the end was awesome but it was typical hollywood bullshit that after Damon got kicked in the head by the horse that they didn't stop the fight to put him in concussion protocol.

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billfromlaketravis

billfromlaketravis 11519

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I hate Adam Driver, so this was a great role for him.

Damon can play anything. A sophisticate in Mr. Ripley to a simpleton profession solider in The Last Duel.

I think Affleck went under the radar and gave the best performance of the movie. He’s so good as a scum bag. It always pissed me that he went away from that, but hey, he earned it. He allegedly wrote Good Will Hunting with Damon so he could cast himself in a non-jerk role. 

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WBT

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12 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

I hate Adam Driver, so this was a great role for him.

Damon can play anything. A sophisticate in Mr. Ripley to a simpleton profession solider in The Last Duel.

I think Affleck went under the radar and gave the best performance of the movie. He’s so good as a scum bag. It always pissed me that he went away from that, but hey, he earned it. He allegedly wrote Good Will Hunting with Damon so he could cast himself in a non-jerk role. 

I thought Comer really stole the movie.  She and Driver were both really good in their scenes together that repeated, first from his POV and then from hers.  Although the 2nd version of the rape...yikes.  Those scenes could have been heavy-handed but I thought they played the nuance really well.

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billfromlaketravis

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17 minutes ago, WBT said:

I thought Comer really stole the movie.  She and Driver were both really good in their scenes together that repeated, first from his POV and then from hers.  Although the 2nd version of the rape...yikes.  Those scenes could have been heavy-handed but I thought they played the nuance really well.

Comer would have won the movie if she unleashed those warlocks. 

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DanRydell

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On 10/30/2021 at 4:46 AM, kevwun said:

Is this going to a streaming service soon?

It's 20th Century so it'll be on HBO Max eventually but I doubt it will be very soon. New Mutants hit HBO Max in April after coming out the previous August and Free Guy came out in August and isn't on HBO Max yet. 

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Tom

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I really wasn't expecting too much going in, but this is probably the best thing I've seen in theaters in a good while.  It was really well done.  Loved the nuances in the acting when the story is repeated from different points of view.

I'm surprised it's already down to 1 or 2 showtimes a day after only two weeks.  Nobody has super powers in this and there aren't CGI villains, so I guess it's not going to be the biggest draw.

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billfromlaketravis

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1 hour ago, Tom said:

I really wasn't expecting too much going in, but this is probably the best thing I've seen in theaters in a good while.  It was really well done.  Loved the nuances in the acting when the story is repeated from different points of view.

I'm surprised it's already down to 1 or 2 showtimes a day after only two weeks.  Nobody has super powers in this and there aren't CGI villains, so I guess it's not going to be the biggest draw.

I read a review that frames it as a whodunnit that would have been better off as an open ended mystery. They also thought Parts 2 and 3 were too long and uninteresting. 
 

I of course disagree. There’s certainly some ambiguity, but Comer’s point of view is probably what happened. 
 

Driver thinks he’s invincible because he’s Pierre’s guy. 
 

Damon will do anything to save face and defend the only thing valuable to him, his family’s name. 

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Tom

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15 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

I read a review that frames it as a whodunnit that would have been better off as an open ended mystery. They also thought Parts 2 and 3 were too long and uninteresting. 
 

I of course disagree. There’s certainly some ambiguity, but Comer’s point of view is probably what happened. 
 

Driver thinks he’s invincible because he’s Pierre’s guy. 
 

Damon will do anything to save face and defend the only thing valuable to him, his family’s name. 

 

Yeah, I also disagree.  I was getting more and more into it each time the story started over.  

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Sam Lin

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Was well acted and done, I just wasn't drawn in by the movie, not sure why. Comer and Damon were great.

 

The multiple perspective structure is a modern Rashomon, and I much prefer Rashomon. Some of the camera work was annoying, one scene in the third act had (intentional) camera shake that was very distracting, and the jousting match defaulted back to the tight camera work and quick scene cuts that saves budget but keeps you from knowing wtf is actually happening.

 

Spoiler

Not intending to CR, the 3 perspectives weren't that different by modern standards. A rape happened in all 3.

Was a bit surprised the film was made in this day and age, it's not an easy subject to address and portray. Kudos for daring to touch the subject.

 

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wild_turkey

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Watched it last night. Thought it was okay. I'm surprised at the majority of people seeming to like it so much on here.

I found the story itself rather interesting, especially after reading more about it on Wikipedia afterwards. I didn't like the way they told the story with multiple versions in succession. Not that I mind that version of storytelling, but I didn't think there was enough variety in the 3 different versions of the story to make the viewer watch it 3 times. The second version from the Jacques le Gris POV still made him look pretty rapey so there really wasn't any ambiguity in the eyes of a 21st century viewer. By the time we got to the 3rd version from Marguerite's POV, it just felt like a repeat of the previous 2 versions and didn't add anything except to make the runtime longer.

The duel at the end was the best part of the movie and very well done IMO.

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Hozz

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I didn't have high expectations but this movie exceeded them.  All the main cast was great.  Blond haired Pierre was my favorite on screen.  I don't like Adam Driver so he was well cast IMO  Matt Damon's character seemed a little over the top.  Seems like he would have been killed or stripped of his lands at some point before getting to where the movie got to.  Oh the dude playing the king was fucking great too.  Not a ton of screen time but man he was a great weirdo.  I looked at Wikipedia for Charles the VI and this was the second sentence: "He is known for his mental illness and psychotic episodes which plagued him throughout his life."  Haha.  Well played sir.

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Tom

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On 1/3/2022 at 12:28 PM, wild_turkey said:

Watched it last night. Thought it was okay. I'm surprised at the majority of people seeming to like it so much on here.

I found the story itself rather interesting, especially after reading more about it on Wikipedia afterwards. I didn't like the way they told the story with multiple versions in succession. Not that I mind that version of storytelling, but I didn't think there was enough variety in the 3 different versions of the story to make the viewer watch it 3 times. The second version from the Jacques le Gris POV still made him look pretty rapey so there really wasn't any ambiguity in the eyes of a 21st century viewer. By the time we got to the 3rd version from Marguerite's POV, it just felt like a repeat of the previous 2 versions and didn't add anything except to make the runtime longer.

The duel at the end was the best part of the movie and very well done IMO.

 

Agree that the rape wasn't ambiguous from his perspective either for today's standards, but for the time period and the way he interacted with all women you could see how it would not seem like rape to him.

It's been a hot minute since I've seen it now, but I feel like her perspective really drove home what a hotheaded loser Damon's character actually was and how he was only ever mistreated or acting honorable in his own eyes.  His misfortunes were mostly self-inflicted and his wife saw that.

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The duel scene at the end was bad ass. There should have been a lot more of that.

The different perspectives felt a little unnecessary because it was rape in every scenario. Which I understood isn't the case for that time period but nobody is going to watch that and think "well, breaking into someone's house and forcing a woman to have sex isn't rape because no means yes."

I am pretty sure the idea that a woman can't get pregnant unless she enjoys it is a modern creation (anti-abortion argument) and not something from Medeval times.

 

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wild_turkey

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The different perspectives felt a little unnecessary because it was rape in every scenario. Which I understood isn't the case for that time period but nobody is going to watch that and think "well, breaking into someone's house and forcing a woman to have sex isn't rape because no means yes.”


That’s pretty much how I felt. I didn’t need 3 different versions with 3 different rape severity levels.
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Firemans4Horn

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4 hours ago, wild_turkey said:

 


That’s pretty much how I felt. I didn’t need 3 different versions with 3 different rape severity levels.

 

Agreed. “Let’s extend the move by 20 minutes by showing the same rape scene twice”.

image.gif.84485b29d31431b01f38ba8849444965.gif


 

Should have just shown some badass battle field scenes Gladiator style. 

 

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52-80

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7 hours ago, Firemans4Horn said:

How strong is this armor supposed to be?

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Jean de Carrouges has a baseball swing with a broad sword to the back of le Gris and it barely does any damage. Yet these guys slice through the battle field like their opponent’s armor is made out of queso  

 

the typical battlefield depiction is wrong when they show dudes fight like its katana warfare.  hack-n-slash works for/against the underarmored infantry.  knights' steel body armor / cuirass is effective against bludgeoning shots, thats why they need pointy daggers to pierce at the soft fleshy bits where the armor doesnt cover

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11 hours ago, 52-80 said:

the typical battlefield depiction is wrong when they show dudes fight like its katana warfare.  hack-n-slash works for/against the underarmored infantry.  knights' steel body armor / cuirass is effective against bludgeoning shots, thats why they need pointy daggers to pierce at the soft fleshy bits where the armor doesnt cover

Jorah Mormont explained this when saying that the Dothraki arakh wouldn't be effective against plated armor like a broadsword would in GoT. This was also demonstrated in several fights as well as an explanation as to why the Dothraki prefer these swords.

Getting off topic but The Wheel of Time ignored details like this and had everyone using different swords without rhyme or reason.

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Knoxtnhorn

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I didn't know about the history of this story going in.  That being said ...

Spoiler

I am so effing happy that the duel ended the way it did.  I don't think I could have stomached seeing that poor woman burned at the stake.  I mean, I know it was the 1300's and all but, she got yanked from her home, basically traded in by her father, married a guy that was gone most of the time and somewhat of a dick when he wasn't, raped, screwed over by her best friend, was told that she must have enjoyed the rape because of "science", somewhat betrayed by her husband at the trial, THEN almost burned at the stake.  

 

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956 Worldwide

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I really liked this movie. Matt Damon's medieval mullet was questionable and distracting. There were several accounts of the fight that the move tried to weave together and make more cinematic, but a lot of the stuff mentioned actually happened. It did a good job showing that a duel to the death in full plate would have been prolonged and bloody, coming down to exhaustion and finding a weak point. The scene where Matt Damon grabbed his sword's blade and used it almost like a club is actually how medieval knights learned to fight with a longsword. Modern audiences have a hard time believing not only how effective plate armor was-- but also how mobile a trained knight was.  

The battlefield scenes took some more liberties, but it's worth remembering that not all of the combatants would have been in full plate, especially the dudes that are getting ridden down by mounted knights. 

I think a lot of the issues with audiences were the complicated and drawn out narrative structure, and the lack of context.  Almost none of us know anything about the Hundred Years War, a well-educated American might be able to say "it was between the French and English in the Middle Ages." So trying to piece together the politics and why the fuck sometimes the French were fighting other Frenchmen and why the dude wandered off to Scotland and got in a fight against an unnamed opponent in the middle of the movie is rightfully confusing. 

I'd say it is the best big-budget movie out of Hollywood this year. 

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