There’s little to distinguish a crime committed in 14th-century France seen in The Last Duel from how it would be handled in the present d...
There’s little to distinguish a crime committed in 14th-century France seen in The Last Duel from how it would be handled in the present day. A rape is followed by a refusal to believe that it ever occurred and victim-shaming. The survivor endures an insensitive interrogation that casts aspersions on her character. Everybody is rather more worried about her husband’s reputation and honour. It’s happened before, she is told – deal with it and move on.
Ridley Scott’s latest movie may be set in the 1380s, but it taps hard into the current debate that the MeToo movement has sought to expose. Swap the gowns for dresses and the robes for trousers and you have a film that is period only in appearance.
The screenplay, by Nicole Holofcener, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, is based on Eric Jager’s book non-fiction book The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval France. Damon and Affleck also play crucial roles in the movie – Damon as the aggrieved husband obsessed with social status and Affleck as a pleasure-loving lord who likes to keep his wife pregnant at all times.
The movie is divided into three chapters that, in the manner of Akira Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon, present the differing points...
