"The Last Duel" Showcases Jodie Comer As A Subtle Storyteller
Starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer, Harriet Walter, Ben Affleck
Rated R
Action, drama
Run time: 2 hrs, 32 min
Directed by Ridley Scott
In theaters October 15, 2021
Well, ladies and gents, it looks like we have our second Oscar season entry for 2021. (Respect, the Aretha biopic is what I’ve deemed as the first.) This one puts even more star power behind it, though. We have those good ol’ Good Will Hunting boys back together both in front of and behind the camera (Affleck and Damon are credited as writers and producers) and the main cast is rounded out by Jodie Comer and Adam Driver. It’s a fairly long historical epic about an event that did not cover much time at all packed with surprisingly period appropriate clothes and props, choosing to go with accuracy rather than beauty, and the effect is solid. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t nominated for quite a few Academy Awards in a couple months.
Comer portrays Marguerite, a young, beautiful woman who marries a knight named Jean de Carrouges (Damon) in the late 1300s in Normandy. Jean has many years of military service under his belt for both his king and the lord in his part of the land, Pierre (Affleck). Driver is one of his peers, Jacques Le Gris, who finds favor with Pierre, despite Jean seemingly putting forth a bit more effort, however fruitless it may be. After a few years of marriage, Jean comes back from a short trip to Paris to find his distraught wife with a harrowing story: while he was gone, Jacques, now Jean’s nemesis, stopped by their manor and did the unthinkable. He raped her. From there, it’s a he-said, she-said, and it escalates into what the title was about all along: the last legally sanctioned duel in France.
This film is undoubtably bursting at the scenes with some incredible star power, and despite some occasional lapses in accent consistency, Affleck and Damon bring the same caliber of acting they’ve been known for for decades now, and Comer proves herself more than worthy to stand along the likes of these big screen veterans. While every word she says is a credit to both her and the writers, she brings something more to the table. Her posture and expressions say even more than the script, conveying the most subtle of emotions and unease. In both storyline and appearance, Marguerite stands out among the crowd in every scene she’s in, and she wins you over in every version of the story.
The main issue with this film is the length. While the set-up is well done, and we get to see the full timeline of events from the perspectives of those most pertinent (Marguerite, Jean and Jacques), it does inevitably require quite a bit of time. At least a fourth of the film are exact duplications of scenes, but maybe with a slight shift in inflection or perspective. And though that does make it drag a bit, there is something impressive about these actors having to do completely different portrayals of the exact same scenes, making them somehow similar yet different. A small smile or darting eyes, especially from Comer, can change the entire meaning of a conversation. My one caution is a relatively obvious one, but one that should still be said: this movie is about rape. Granted, it’s one in “ye olden days,” and the battle scenes in this film are far more brutal than anything even related to sex, but some of it is still extremely hard to hear about and see. If you can stand that, and have 2.5 hours to spare, it’s worth it to see a very capable cast tell a fascinating story, and so you’ll know at least a handful of the people who will almost certainly be nominated come award time.