The Last Duel (2021)

Period pieces aren't in vogue. it was always a tough sell.

Made worse as wokesters don't like history, and the anti-sjw people are sick and tired of historical pieces being rewritten with a modern lens, or outright having history be rewritten to inject "diversity". So neither side is going to get excited to watch without knowing what its going to be first.

Bandwagon said:

Ben & Matt in a period piece. That's your fucking problem, dude.

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That's all there is to it. Watching it now, and it is wildly miscast.

I just finished it, I thought it was pretty good. It's a complex story, and the fight scenes were REALLY well done.

While I thought Matt and Ben (and Adam Driver) all did a fantastic job, I can see why others might have a hard time picturing them in the roles - they so often play modern characters that your brain automatically rejects them in the period setting.

Angerz said:

the duel itself is very good. The acting in the 2 and a half hours leading up to it, was also very good.

The rape scenes are very long and feel even longer. I am not a person generally bothered by things in movie, and during the second time they are showing it, i was sitting there like, "I get it, can we move on? I really do not want to watch this any more", which is probably the point, but there is still a good chunk of movie to go to get any catharsis for what you had seen.

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The duel was properly meaty and brutal.

Would have been a much better movie without Damon.

Interesting. Just got done watching Ridleys 1st movie, The Duelists. Was actually pretty good and not very well known surprisingly. Interesting he chose a very similar sort of movie.

Lumi said:

Interesting. Just got done watching Ridleys 1st movie, The Duelists. Was actually pretty good and not very well known surprisingly. Interesting he chose a very similar sort of movie.

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That is an excellent movie. I'm surprised I never knew it was one of his.

LachiusTZ said:

Lol, as soon as I saw "Her story" and "She defied a nation" etc I nope'd out.

This is the type of movie I would fucking LOVE, but they had to put in some progressive nugget in there, so thats a negative.

And like the progressive stack of diversity is going to have any interest at all in this.

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Having seen it, I think that is more reflective of the marketing (what little there was), than the movie itself.

However, it does start with Damon's point of view (the story is told 3 times from each character's view point) and his would be the "wokest", but he also fancies himself a hero and a knight, so in his eyes, he was a great husband who believed his wife and stood for her honor. A literal white knight.

The men in the other 2 points of view are roughly as shitty as you would expect a man to be in the 1300s France.

There is one other scene towards the end, kind of, between some of the women, but its quick and serves more as a slight bright spot for the woman who just gets shit on the whole movie, before she gets shit on some more (if I remember the order of things correctly).

Angerz said:

However, it does start with Damon's point of view (the story is told 3 times from each character's view point) and his would be the "wokest", but he also fancies himself a hero and a knight, so in his eyes, he was a great husband who believed his wife and stood for her honor. A literal white knight.

The men in the other 2 points of view are roughly as shitty as you would expect a man to be in the 1300s France.

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I'd say her POV would be the "wokest" if only because it paints every man as a piece of shit. Not that they weren't pieces of shit - apparently everyone but Marguerite was a piece of shit.

Titular duel was good, rest of it was mostly meh, albeit well acted for the most part.

Yeah, it definitely devolves into, "BELIEVE ALL WOMEN! WE SO POWERFUL!!" by the 3rd act. Prior to that it's pretty solid and the duel is great.

Screenplay was done by Damon and Afleck, so it's no wonder it's so woke.

Movie is probably worth watching just because its one of those rare films where armor actually works and is somewhat historically accurate. Fucking loved it when arrows were bouncing off him, or when he'd take some ridiculous hit right in the chest and keep going only to use his armor like a damn battering ram.

As for the story...meh. There is just so much bullshit that its kind of laughable. The wife in reality risked little, burning at the stake for lying was almost unheard of and typically people were just flogged (And often women had that sentence suspended--kind of like today with most punishments for false accusations. The whole little scene where they speak about 'why would she speak up when she risks so much!' is just me too horse shit. Les Gris literally had a knife to his throat, and still denied it--he also didn't take an easily winnable trial in order to clear his name, if "risk" gives weight to truth than Les Gris wins, easily.) In reality the wife was probably powerless through the whole affair anyway. The idea that she was bravely telling her truth is laughable. Most likely Jean de Carrouges used his wife as a pawn to fuck over a political rival who was rising far faster than him.

The choice to have Le Gris's point of view have the rape in it, and then have him deny, is ridiculous (And again, clearly modern era commentary)--as if there is ZERO question the sex happened, and it was all about consent. In reality Les Gris had strong alibis showing he wasn't even in the area. In addition the whole order of events was a fairly clear set up to give the accusation enough weight for him to push through a duel (All the servants leaving ect)--which he had good reason to be confident about winning. (Dude was a beast).

Skip her point of view, go right to the duel.

Enjoyed the movie, but damn Matt Damon really looked like Theo Von in there

Zweischneid said:

Well, the actual "truth" is unknown. Which is why novel and movie go by the multiple-PoV variant to begin with.

In theory, any one of the three could be 100% on point by accident. Or more likely, all three are pretty far from actual events.

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As far as the film goes, it is not unknown. When the title for chapter 3 says "the truth according to Marguerite", the words "the truth" linger after the rest fade. The film is clearly telling us "this is how it really went down".