The Last Duel is a medieval period piece with the modern trappings of the #MeToo movement, all centered around the true story of the last judicial duel in France. It is a drama that mixes past and present politics, with an intelligence to its messiness. The movie its self is broken into three chapters, one from the perspective of Matt Damon’s Sir Jean de Carrouges, one from Adam Driver’s Jacques Le Gris, and finally with the best performance out of all of them the final chapter is told from Jodie Comer’s Marguerite.
The opening chapter starts on a gloomy battlefield where Carrouges is at the front part of an army looking to defend this land for the king. He charges in despite the orders to stand his ground and everyone decides to follow him in. Everything from Carrouges perspective is of someone who has an unwavering honor and commitment to this duty to his countrymen and king but does not get the respect that he thinks he is rightfully deserved. He is shown saving Le Gris life, and them having a friendship that goes wrong. He portrays himself as someone who loves his wife and treats her with respect and gratitude, not just as something that is his. He is the hero of his own story.
The second chapter from Le Gris perspective opens a very similar way. We comeback to the battlefield from the opening, with Carrouges disregarding the orders and charging in, except this time no one follows him and Le Gris is the one that has to gather the troops and ride them into battle to save Carrouges. We get a complete different portrayal of Carrouges here, someone who can not get out of there own way, overly angry, unintelligent. We also see more of Le Gris, his relationship with Ben Affleck’s Count Pierre, and how he thinks of himself as this charming ladies man. This is where we see how Le Gris sees Marguerite for the first time, and he becomes infatuated and lustful for her. He sees her protests to his advances as just her guilty conscience, his thought process being why would she choose to be with Carrouges when he is right here. This is the first time we see the rape scene that happens, and while because it is from Le Gris’ perspective, so it comes off a little different, it is still a hard watch.
The final chapter is what I consider the closest to the actual truth, and so does the movie. It is centered on Marguerite, and how she sees the world that she is forced to be a part of. Carrouges here is somewhere in the middle, but he is definitely not a good person. We also see how Marguerite sees Le Gris, someone who is good looking but a terrible human being, when she is discussing him with her friends. We also see the struggles of her when she is trying to conceive with Carrouges, her visit to a doctor who asks about if she is feeling pleasure when they are trying. Her perspective is the moral center of the story, and is where a lot of the #MeToo modern day comes into play. Fair warning, the rape scene is also revisited here, and it is tougher to watch than the first telling of it, with her trauma being very prevalent.
The scene that sticks out to me more than any other after watching this movie is the scene where she is being questioned by this “jury” of white, male priests about if she enjoyed being raped by Le Gris, because where we are in time she is pregnant and “you can only get pregnant if you enjoy it” It was this defining moment of how far we have come and how much work we still have to do for gender equality
The acting between Matt Damon, Adam Driver and especially Jodie Comer is what makes this movie work. The writing is good, but their ability to put in multiple different types of performances using the same character and it feel natural is what puts this movie over the top for me. Ben Affleck should also not be forgotten as Count Pierre, who feels like a medieval version of someone from Boston somehow works really well here, playing a good royal jerk.
I would definitley recommend this movie, just be warned that there is some stuff that the movie does not shy away from and could make it a difficult watch for some. For a movie that is called the Last Duel, really the least important event in this movie is the duel, that it does not matter what man kills the other, as the woman at the center of it will ultimately come out the loser. As Comer's Marguerite tells her husband "You are risking my life to fight your enemy and save your pride".