The Last Duel <img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/><img src="https://img.icons8.com/ios-glyphs/20/000000/star--v1.png"/>

The Last Duel

As per the film's title, this is all about the last legally sanctioned duel in France. In 1386! Wikipedia gives a more recent 1547 and Ridley Scott himself directed a film (his first) in 1977 called The Duellists, set around the early 1800s, though I take it the duels in this film were not judicial. Anyway, The Last Duel is a pretty fine film. It's neatly structured into three parts, though crucially, not three acts. Each part is named 'The Truth According to....', covering the main characters, played by Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer. These are Jean de Carrouges, Jacques Le Gris and Marguerite de Carrouges respectively. Add Ben Affleck's delicious portrayal (replete with quality swears) of Count Pierre d'Alençon, and you have some excellent turns; just the right side of smallgoods.

The 'three truths' structuring will, of course, conjure thoughts of Rashomon (and the many examples of films or TV shows using the Rashomon Effect), but the icing on this cake is the resulting similarity to an especially fine Game of Thrones episode, with Marguerite as the Tyrion proxy. You'll know the one. The crime that underpins the whole film, and the reason for the duel, is the rape of Marguerite. This obviously isn't seen in the first telling, as Jean is away when it occurs, so we get the reporting of the act from wife to husband. Jean's reaction is immediate disbelief but his reaction from his 'memory' isn't as ugly as from the third part - Marguerite's side of things.

The second and third tellings show the rape in all its repugnance. Here's where I blanched a little - I didn't think a second version was warranted, even though I can see the absolute need to show the subtle changes before and during the rape that explain how a person (Le Gris) could completely believe his own story. His actions are virtually the same from part 2 to part 3, but Marguerite's are clearly different (she ACCIDENTALLY loses her shoes; she screams for help many times, NOT only once; she's visibly crying during and after, NOT just breathing heavily, etc). It's a smart way to let the audience see how viewpoints can crucially differ, but it's uncomfortable viewing nonetheless.

Another point of note is that the film was written (and produced) by three people - Damon, Affleck and Nicole Holofcener. As Damon told Entertainment Tonight,

"It's a story about perspective... So, there are two knights and then there's the Lady Marguerite. So Ben and I wrote the male perspective and Nicole Holofcener wrote the female perspective. That's kind of the architecture of that movie."

And that architecture shines a light on the fact that the 'male perspective' hasn't changed a whole hell of a lot for many blokes. Affleck's Count (minus an 'o', if you like) is a prime example of the kind of dick that still muddies the waters of society. He's a charismatic enabler - encouraging his protégé in his carousing ways, and then covering up for him when the accusations are brought to light.

Sir Ridders needs mention here too. The old dude has still got the chops. His directing is custom-made for this kind of film - confident, showy, grandiose. The climactic duel is fantastically gripping and I'm sure the lead-up made it all the more so. Also, I'd been a bit of a Comer agnostic before this performance but I was put rightfully in my place and into the Comer Corner (Comer Corner, Karma Comer, Comer Chameleon?). Her withering look at the back of Damon's head near the end of the film is priceless.

The Last Duel is showing now at Palace (and other) cinemas.

See also:

I won't suggest the obvious GoT episode (alluded to above) but see that again, by all means. I also can't recommend Scott's early duelling film (mentioned above too), as I haven't seen it. So instead I'll give you two of my favourite duels in cinema, namely the fight at the top of the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride (1987), directed by Rob Reiner, and the gun vs knife duel in The Magnificent Seven (1960), directed by John Sturges.

LIGHT SPOILAGE IN POD!

Comments

All We Imagine as Light

This meditative exploration of the lives of women in Mumbai has a lot to say about class, religion, poverty, the patriarchy and the strictures of Indian society. This could be a tinderbox of themes but writer/director Payal Kapadia treats the characters and situations with a mild, sympathetic, even phlegmatic touch. We meet a nurse, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and her younger colleague and housemate, Anu (Divya Prabha). The two of them have relationships, tangible and nebulous, as well as interactions with people like Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) a cook at the hospital, and the temporarily placed doctor Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), who yearns after Prabha. Anu has a secret Muslim boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) and workplace rumours paint her as a bit of a trollop. Prabha's 'arranged' husband married her and then promptly upped sticks to Germany (the arrival of a German rice cooker is loaded with meaning). The desperation and sadness of the people, especially the women, seeps through th...

High and Low

I caught this at the Luna back in November as part of the Akira Kurosawa retrospective and was happily gobsmacked to find screen one nearly full. It was the biggest crowd I've seen at the cinema for a long while. Kurosawa still packing them in! It's actually the first non-samurai film of his I've seen but it has his stamp of lingering, physically moving mid-shots and busy action within the frame of the wider shots. The setting is Yokohama, Japan in the early 1960s (the film was made in 1963). A shoe company executive, Gondo (Toshiro Mifune) is planning a share takeover when his son's friend, mistaken for the son, is kidnapped. The kidnapper demands roughly the same amount of money required to finalise the financial coup, putting Gondo in quite the tsukemono! Mifune is commanding in the lead (odd seeing him in a suit) but detective 'Bos'n' Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama) is the standout. He looks like so many of the oji-sans hanging out at the horse tracks of Jap...

Emilia Pérez

Jacques Audiard makes a feature film roughly every three or four years, and at the age of 72, at this rate, he may not have too many left. For me, this is one of the tragedies of modern cinema. This bloke can do almost no wrong (his first film, See How They Fall was his only misstep). So here he is with his tenth (!) feature, Emilia Pérez . It's a pretty bonkers story about a Mexican drug cartel boss who hires a young, marginalised lawyer to help him transition to a woman. The film tackles some important themes - the transitioning element, but also racism and the disappeared population of Mexico. The twist is that it's all performed as a musical, and the balance between fantastic and ludicrous is stretched throughout. Most musicals live or die by the music and luckily, there are some great numbers in this (one of them, El Mal , just took out best song at the Golden Globbies). On the other end of the scale is a song about the details of transition surgery, where a doctor warbl...

Best of 2024 - End of Year Report

Ho ho, yo yos. Here's my rundown of films in 2024. By my best count I saw 124 films last year, 115 of them new watches (though not necessarily made or released in 2024), and 61 of them at the cinema. Of those cinema trips, 28 were at Luna Leederville , 14 at Palace Raine Square and 10 at the Backlot Perth , with 6 other cinemas making up the numbers. So here are my 10 favourite films from 2024, with a top 5 pod down the bottom... [Click on the titles for links to full reviews] 10. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) George Miller's follow-up to Fury Road tells us the story of how Furiosa got to where that film started. I reckon this was the best blockbuster of the year, certainly the most entertaining, with one epic action sequence and a couple of fine performances from Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. Great fun. 9. The Taste of Things (2023) Don't go in hungry! This is a foodie's shan-grill-ah, the high culinary masterwork of the last decade or more. Juliette Binoch...

Nosferatu

The best looking film of the year, this has a gorgeous array of visuals that elicited a number of quiet 'wows' and intakes of breath from yours truly. Big praise to cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, production designer Craig Lathrop, art director Robert Cowper, set decorator Beatrice Brentnerova, and of course, director Robert Eggers for getting this crew together - he seems to use a lot of the same folk for his films, and fair enough, when this is the final product. Eggers has adapted the script from Henrik Galeen's original for F. W. Murnau's 1922 film, itself none too subtly ripped off from Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula . This is Eggers' fourth feature after The Witch , The Lighthouse , and The Northman and while I haven't yet seen the first two, I didn't care much for The Northman , typically wondrous images aside. He flirts with the pomposity that affected his previous film but here it matches the gothic tones and source text, that is until Aaron Tayl...

Anora

Sean Baker has been making low budget, grungy-looking films for a while now, so it was probably a bit of a surprise when he won the Palme d'Or at Cannes with Anora . The first third of this stripper/sex worker story pings along at a nice pace. It begins to go slightly baggy in the middle third but recomposes itself for the home straight. Mikey Madison plays Anora (or Ani), an erotic dancer in a club where it looks like the majority of the dosh comes from private lap-dances - she has issues with her boss not paying health insurance and holiday benefits. Madison is a natural in this medium (my notes for this say "Is she an actual stripper? Check.") One night, Ani is requested to translate and maybe dance for, a young Russian guy, Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), who immediately takes a shine to her and invites her to come to his place the next day. Ani realises she's hit pay dirt when she arrives at his mansion, and his goofy, sweet nature endears him to her even more. Post-sha...

Tatami

Tatami is the semi-spongy flooring you might find in an old Japanese house. Or in a judo dojo where competitors try to stay off their backs while trying to pin or throw the other (I'm hazy on the rules, as you can tell). That's how tatami is used in this Iranian/Israeli coproduction of the same name, directed by Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Iran) and Guy Nattiv (Israel). The film opens with Leila (Arienne Mandi) and her teammates on their way to the world championship of judo in Tbilisi, Georgia. We peg Leila immediately as a bit of a rebel as she's listening to hip-hop on her headphones. We also see her coach, Maryam (Zar Amir, see above) eyeing her suspiciously on the bus ride. When we arrive at the stadium, Leila bumps into fellow judoka, Shani (Lirr Katz), and they have a natter like fellow competitors do. But Shani being Israeli complicates matters slightly. Bout-wise, Leila is in the groove, dispatching opponents with relative ease. And here's where things get murky. The h...

The Monk and the Gun

This Bhutanese comedy drama is part of the Perth Festival and it follows the country's attempts to move from a monarchy to a democracy in 2006. In the small town of Ura, a novice monk, Tashi (Tandin Wangchuk) is tasked with finding two guns for his Lama, played by real life monk Kelsang Choejay. He's not told why but he gets on with the job. At the same time, a 'fixer/tour guide' from Thimphu, Benji (Tandim Sonam) gets a gig driving a newly arrived American, Ronald (Harry Einhorn) around the country in search of a particularly valuable US Civil War rifle. You might be able to see where this is going... This is satire in deep cover. It might even be satire adjacent, such is its mildness. This is not a bad thing. At times I felt like I was experiencing an old Ealing comedy, or maybe a low-key Ken Loach. The government sends officers around the country to run a mock election to show people how to vote, and one of them, Tshering Yangden (Pema Zangmo Sherpa) wanders through...

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

This will be a quickie review as there's a pod to follow that gets into it more. But I'll say right now, I loved this doco. It's an excellent cold war history lesson pieced together from fascinating archive footage, much like Asif Kapadia's films, Senna and Diego Maradona (I guess his other feature docs Amy and Federer are a similar style, but I've not seen them). This film, directed by Belgian, Johan Grimonprez and edited by Rik Chaubet, is about the murky removal and subsequent assassination of Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the (Democratic) Republic of Congo. It's a panoply of found footage, mostly newsreels and old interviews, interspersed with a jazz soundtrack and band visuals that really fit the era. Honestly, this sifting and compiling must have taken a fecking age, so big props to Chaubet and Gimonprez (who has some experience with this form of doc - Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y. , for example). The 'stars' include the likes of Nikita Khrus...

Ghost Cat Anzu (Me & Kid)

Here's a nice surprise. I find Japanese anime to be hit and miss, and the first look at this boof-headed feline didn't promise too much, but Ghost Cat Anzu knocked the bails off. It riffs on the Ghibli theme of children being forced to grow up quicker than they should, with 11 year-old Karin (Noa Gotô) as our focus. Her dad's a bit of a scally and he does a runner while visiting his father at his temple home in a sleepy town, leaving Karin alone with kindly grandad and huge, anthropomorphic cat, Anzu, voiced by Mirai Moriyama. Karin wanders the town, waiting for dad to return and meeting various locals, while being casually monitored by Anzu. The pace is a little pedestrian but the shenanigans make up for this. Anzu is pulled over by the police and told he needs a license to ride a scooter, though he protests that he's not actually a human, so surely these rules don't apply. He works as a masseur but also takes a gig to scare birds away from the river, roping Karin...

Film Shapes

Search This Blog