The Last Duel

THE LAST DUEL   ***

Ridley Scott

2021

IDEA:  In late-14th century France, a knight challenges his squire to a trial-by-combat duel after his wife accuses the squire of rape.

BLURB:  Despite its robust length and grand historical backdrop, The Last Duel is not the sweeping epic one might expect. The bombastic spectacle of Scott’s Gladiator is scarcely seen here; more in line with a chamber drama, the film’s action is largely confined to dusty, candlelit rooms and two-to-three-person exchanges over matters of feudal politics, chivalry, and medieval jurisprudence. With little in the way of visual frisson - Scott and Wolski shoot in bland closeups and perpetually gloomy shades of slate - The Last Duel generates its intrigue by immersing us in the minutia of archaic 14th-century French legal and economic systems and their accompanying civil discourse. At stake here is the autonomy of women within these spheres. The script by Damon, Affleck, and Holofcener underscores just how draconian laws surrounding women’s rights have historically been, with its first two chapters anatomizing the entrenched patriarchal structures that bear their inane, bloody fruit in the final third. The Last Duel is heavy-handed in its commentary; even when it’s giving us the supposedly self-glorifying perspectives of the two men, the writing, directing, and acting make it impossible to view them as anything other than what they really are: petulant and entitled, loyal only to their own egos and status ambitions. While the film may seem obvious in its rhetoric or even superfluous as a polemic on systemic sexism, it’s justifiably keen to remind us that, 600-plus years after the events it depicts, women are still being oppressed by legislation for which the adjective “medieval” remains sadly apt.