Set in the 1300's, I appreciated the look of this film. The scale of the shots, the costumes, the grey, drab color palette seemed accurate for the time. What wasn't was the dialect and Ben Affleck. The thing that struck me was the way that all of these squires, knights, whatever, fought for an immature, disinterested king. The way the king was portrayed was funny in an almost too over-the-top way (like Ben Affleck's performance).
Jodie Comer plays Marguerite, a victim of two ruthless men, Carrouges (Matt Damon) and Le Gris (Adam Driver). She's treated in horrific fashion by both men and the actual plight of many women during those times was probably as bad or worse. It was revealing when Carrouges's mother tells Marguerite that she too suffered through a rape but decided to keep silent, which she clearly regrets after seeing Marguerite's brave stance.
One of the real downsides of "The Last Duel" is the way it chooses to tell the story from the viewpoint of each of the three characters mentioned earlier. Each story retells the previous one, even displaying a title screen that tells the viewer who's version of the story is to be told in the forthcoming act. This was a bit too much spoon-feeding for my liking, especially when the title screen indicating Marguerite's version fades out and displays "The Truth". It made the versions told by Carrouges and Le Gris mostly pointless, other than to make you hate their characters perhaps more than if the story had just been told once. We could have easily seen their ruthlessness and cruelty to Marguerite without rehashing the events three different ways. It just seemed like it wanted to point your nose at the correct interpretation. Why bother? It does knock this movie down a couple of notches for that approach.
Review by whitsbrainVIP 5BlockedParent2022-01-20T19:03:05Z
Set in the 1300's, I appreciated the look of this film. The scale of the shots, the costumes, the grey, drab color palette seemed accurate for the time. What wasn't was the dialect and Ben Affleck. The thing that struck me was the way that all of these squires, knights, whatever, fought for an immature, disinterested king. The way the king was portrayed was funny in an almost too over-the-top way (like Ben Affleck's performance).
Jodie Comer plays Marguerite, a victim of two ruthless men, Carrouges (Matt Damon) and Le Gris (Adam Driver). She's treated in horrific fashion by both men and the actual plight of many women during those times was probably as bad or worse. It was revealing when Carrouges's mother tells Marguerite that she too suffered through a rape but decided to keep silent, which she clearly regrets after seeing Marguerite's brave stance.
One of the real downsides of "The Last Duel" is the way it chooses to tell the story from the viewpoint of each of the three characters mentioned earlier. Each story retells the previous one, even displaying a title screen that tells the viewer who's version of the story is to be told in the forthcoming act. This was a bit too much spoon-feeding for my liking, especially when the title screen indicating Marguerite's version fades out and displays "The Truth". It made the versions told by Carrouges and Le Gris mostly pointless, other than to make you hate their characters perhaps more than if the story had just been told once. We could have easily seen their ruthlessness and cruelty to Marguerite without rehashing the events three different ways. It just seemed like it wanted to point your nose at the correct interpretation. Why bother? It does knock this movie down a couple of notches for that approach.