Ridley Scott
The Last Duel

The Last Duel, the latest film by Sir Ridley Scott. In which the great English director returns, over forty years after his sensational debut with The Duellists, to depict chivalric honor, the duel as a reckoning for an extremely personal matter, whether it was a whim, an enmity, or a violence suffered, as in this case, by a woman.
However, in this regard, the differences are substantial between the two cases, and not insignificant.

In common, the two films have the French setting and, indeed, the duel, with its related codes and rituals. But what changes, besides the century of reference (and the directing style, which Scott has evolved over the decades), is the very nature of the confrontation.

In The Duellists, it was a feud, a regulation, spanning decades, in the Napoleonic era, due to issues, in truth, all in the head of Keitel's character, and the literary source was only vaguely inspired by a real episode, and very romanticized.

The Last Duel, however, is indeed inspired by a book, but above all by a highly relevant historical event in French culture: that of the last duel of God (a duel, with legal significance and decreed by the King, which was thought to have even divine implications, that God could not make the one in the wrong win) on the land across the Alps, which occurred in 1386 between Jean de Carrouges and Jacques Le Gris, after the acknowledged rape of the former's wife by the latter. Although the issue is subject to various revisionisms. But Scott does not concern himself with that and focuses on the most recurring historical truth, as addressed in the novel.

The peculiarity of the film is that Scott employs point of view, dividing the work into three parts. Using the same narrative device, to be clear, already characteristic of a series like The Affair. To give a recent example, where the division into chapters was similar, even for the net rewinding of the story; but the more appropriate reference is certainly to Kurosawa's epochal Rashomon. In this way, one can grasp the nuances between the different (but not that much, indeed, concerning the fatal and incriminated episode) versions, but especially how the three protagonists experienced their respective relationships within this menage a trois.

The Last Duel doesn't possess the infinite refinement of the masterpiece with which Scott made his debut, metaphorically challenging none other than Kubrick, but it is much more similar, aesthetically, to the Scott we admired from Gladiator onwards and in his historical and epic films from the 2000s to the present. Always notwithstanding the licenses, which have often been criticized but are fundamental to Scott's artistic discourse, beyond, of course, legitimate tastes.

The aesthetic experience with Scott has always been central and never waned. Certainly, over time, the brutality and the spectacle of his blockbuster staging have increased.
The Last Duel is certainly no exception: it is an imposing, stylistically impeccable product, endowed with an exceptional cast.

What stands out is especially the figure of Marguerite, the young woman victim of rape. A figure undoubtedly restless, which might be an overstatement to define "modern," but undoubtedly endowed with a courage well above the average of her own time.

Scott's film highlights especially her, this woman treated like an object akin to land, betrayed, raped, and mistreated, but capable of enormous strength of spirit.

Scott certainly cannot be accused of portraying a past era in an idealized or apologetic way, but equally certainly never hides his fascination for rituals, battles, and forms belonging to worlds passed into history.

For me, a great film, not at all impartial, as I mentioned, regarding the culpabilities of the ex-squire who died with the brand of infamy Le Gris nor the general male misconducts. In this sense, one cannot help but think that Scott is still the director of Thelma & Louise, which remains one of the true, few, and authentic feminist cinematic manifestos of our generation.

Despite the change and evolution of his style, Scott — who does not have the twilight passion and is not interested in showing the end of something, but rather in staging the spirit of an era, always casting an eye also on our present — remains, however, consistent, and demonstrates he is still in the game and still has much to say and give to cinema.

Long live Grandpa Ridley.