The Last Duel 4K 2021 Ultra HD 2160p

The plot is based on the novel of the same name by Eric Yager. The film tells about the knight Jean de Carrouge, who returns from the war and learns that his neighbor Jacques Le Gris raped his wife. However, he cannot prove his guilt in any way and turns to King Charles VI for help, who believes that the dispute should be resolved by a duel.

The Last Duel 4K Review
"The Last Duel" by Ridley Scott was the last out-of-competition screening of the Venice Film Festival - the program had already exhausted itself, and forces were running out (both festival-goers and fencers). It seemed that the honored master would hardly surprise, and most likely would retell Gladiator again, but in medieval France of the XIV century. But these (perhaps partly snobbish) expectations were not destined to come true: the real incident that happened in Normandy speaks better than many other films about the situation of today - or rather, that nothing has changed since then.

The script is based on the book by Eric Jaeger "The Last Duel: The True Story of the Test of Battle in Medieval France", but that (as we wrote above) draws inspiration from historical sources documenting the duel between Jean de Carrouge (Matt Damon) and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver). The reason for the strife is the lady of the heart, as is customary among the knights: however, in the retelling of Sir Ridley, the conflict is far from the passages of romantic novels and the light of shining armor. De Carrouge's wife Marguerite (Jody Comer) accused Le Gris of rape - in order to stand up for honor (above all his own), de Carrouge challenged him to a judicial duel: God, as you know, is on the side of justice in battle.

Ridley Scott this time traded epic battles, clashing of swords and grand gestures for intimate conversations, half-glances and calibration of intonations: at first it might seem that there is a love story ahead like "The First Knight", but this is yet another deception. To make sure again that everyone has their own truth, Scott allows each of the participants in the trial to speak out - but not only with an accusatory speech before Count Alencon Pierre II (Ben Affleck) and King Charles IV (Alex Lowther). Like Akira Kurosawa in Rashomon, the director is armed with three pairs of eyes and hands to see and experience the same events with his skin in a completely different way. De Carrouge is a brave warrior and a wounded husband, Le Gris is a comrade, friend, fellow soldier, a worthy man, no matter how you look, and Marguerite is a faithful wife or a harlot (there are too many secrets at first).

The gradual disclosure of interpretations is, of course, not a new move, but in the script written by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Nicole Holofsener, the technique finds a realization that is close to perfection, if not at all ideal. The accents shift, sensuality and violence acquire a new range of sincerity, which is still different for everyone. False expectations and reckless assumptions are the very spindle that "The Last Duel" is spinning, playing on the general feeling of selfishness. Each new circle, the story shields its narrator and closes the blank spots in the confession of the previous one. Not only facts or, say, emotional coloring change, but also the language and manner of shooting. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” - and not only beauty, but, as it turns out, lust, passion, resentment, jealousy and reverence.

The story in three acts (and with a powerful last duel in the finale, where Scott invested all his talents as a commander on the set) progressively and in detail laid out one of the most painful issues: the right to a body, a culture of consent, sexual violence. Not every manifesto, backed up by the uncompromising slogans of the current agenda, so subtly reflects the nature of perception. And the point is not in some layers of deep psychologism, but in the banal optics and the difference in consciousness / upbringing, which make it possible to interpret the events and behavior of others depending on their own judgments. Fragmentation, elevated here into a method, is the main symptom of truth with the prefix "post", which has long since seeped from the world of media into all layers of our life: word against word, opinion for opinion, truth is somewhere nearby, truth cannot be found.

The ambivalence of the narrative depends not only on the voice of the narrator, but also on the chronology of events: at first there is hardly a chance to resist the rude and assertive charm of Jacques Le Gris and not succumb to passionate words. But for the second time in a year, Adam Driver proves that abuse has a beautiful face and strong hands, and even in straightforward and transparent genres like knightly ballads and musicals (we are talking about "Annette" by Les Karax), it is difficult to divide heroes into virtuous and villainous.

A detailed exploration of human nature was to be expected from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who wrote the screenplay for Good Will Hunting. With Ridley Scott it is a little more difficult, both viewers and critics began to look tiredly at the veteran of cinema after Prometheus, but here conversations about the eternal and God (one way or another, he is the only one who knows the highest truth) organically enter the canvas of topical contradictions and judgments. In addition, it was Ridley Scott who became the founding father of one of the most feminist-directed franchises in film history, Alien. Back in 1979, the threat of an alien invasion of Ellen Ripley's body was interpreted as a metaphor for sexual violence, and in his debut film, The Duelists, the director examined the sworn enmity between comrades - now the vectors converged in one battle for honor. The combination of the epic and seemingly distant (with corsets, shields and chain mail) with a very concrete and mundane moral ethics only crystallizes the meaning, turning real history into a timeless parable.

Of course, the picture, carefully built on drama and nuances of behavior, could not do without strong acting parts: Matt Damon exposes the second bottom of an exemplary husband and warrior Carrouge, Jodie Comer keeps Margaret secret for the time being, Adam Driver draws a new horizon his acting range, and even Ben Affleck and Alex Lowther do a little acting feat in bit parts. The director of "Gladiator" reconsidered the structure of this "feat" as a concept in order to knock out the ins and outs of male virtue. Ardent confessions, battles and odes to the lady of the heart in “The Last Duel” are not categories directed outward (for a wife! For a king!), But endless projections of one’s self. And if the power is still in the truth, then what is this truth?