Ridley Scott made his best film in a long time with his medieval drama “The Last Duel”
If the 83-year-old Ridley Scott had intended to end his career with this epic, a circle would have come full circle: In 1977 she began with the costume film “The Duelists”, in which two warring officers almost become friends over their numerous duels. It is a gem of British cinema, both classic and modern, and the nucleus of Scott’s later trademark, a kind of author-genre cinema.
Scott’s visions became bigger and bigger over the years, from the duelists (who should be called “duelists”) in the meantime gladiators and now medieval fighters on horseback: With the scene of a courtly duel for life and death, familiar from countless knight films, Scott already serves in the first scene, like a genre painter, the expectation of a colossal painting. But what is then told in flashbacks over the next two and a half hours is, as is so often the case with this director, a crucial bit different.
The screenplay, which Hollywood stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon wrote together with New York filmmaker Nicole Holofcener, uses the method of Akira Kurosawa’s classic “Rashomon”: narrated one after the other from three perspectives, it only increases concentration on the dilemma in apparent repetition a finding of truth. It is a medieval thriller that is established with modern means in an archaic legal system. Because even if the final duel follows an elaborate court case, it is nothing more than a divine judgment.
Matt Damon plays Jean de Carrouges, a righteous knight who is systematically exploited and degraded by a former friend and aspiring bon vivant. Adam Driver gives this Jacques Le Gris exactly that mixture of charisma and dazzling work, which obviously made an impression in the Middle Ages as well as it does today. The intrigues of the false friend break into the noble man like biblical plagues, and the king’s favorite even sneaks out most of his property. However, Jean de Carrouges only challenges him to the duel when his wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) reveals herself to him: In the absence of her husband and mother-in-law, Le Gris broke into her house and raped her.
Inspired by the last duel legally allowed by the Paris Parliament in 1386, the film now tells the events from the perspective of all three characters. Scott masterfully celebrates the art of variation and risks what Hollywood probably fears most: the specter of boredom in repetition. In fact, the nuances of the finest variants achieve the exact opposite: you just follow the action more carefully, analyze the finest gestures and glances.
Subtle process
The archaic decision-making process is preceded by a complex legal debate. If the accused asserts to the last that the sexual intercourse was consensual, he invokes conventions: a woman of her class was not allowed to express pleasure at all. But even this fatal argument is irrelevant if the duel alone is decisive. For the plaintiff, too, defeat meant death.
The versions by Jacques and Marguerite in particular differ significantly from each other, starting with the assessment of an initial interview. Whoever sees the film in the original, experiences the actors reciting German poetry fluently.
In recent years Ridley Scott has seldom given preference to the chamber play over the big “set pieces”. Here he also found his way back artistically to a long-neglected sensitivity in staging. In his best films, especially “Blade Runner” and “Alien”, he did not need to shy away from being compared to Stanley Kubrick. This is his best film in a long time. The fact that it is actually not supposed to be his last is all the more good news. The youngest has already been shot: the fashion and family drama “House of Gucci”.
The Last Duel. USA 2021. Regie: Ridley Scott. 152 Min.
