The first time Matt Damon and Ben Affleck wrote and starred in a movie together, they both won Oscars for 1997’s Good Will Hunting. What has taken them so long to attempt a repeat? After their filmic breakthrough, Damon took many low-risk yet smart roles, steadily building himself up into one of the more reliable Hollywood stars. Affleck took risks, most of which didn’t pay off. By the early 2000s, it looked as if Affleck’s Hollywood career might be over. But he slowly began to redeem himself, culminating in his 2013 best director Oscar for Argo. Now, nearly 25 years after their original star turn, Affleck and Damon are back together in The Last Duel, which they have co-written with Oscar-nominated writer and director Nicole Holofcener.
The Last Duel, adapted for the screen from the book by Eric Jager of the same title, is based on the true story of a trial-by-combat that took place in 14th-century France. The movie opens with Damon, sporting a beard and some kind of medieval mullet, girding his loins (yes, literally) and body for battle. Opposing him will be Adam Driver, whom we also see, as the camera cuts back and forth between the two combatants, donning armor and chain mail and preparing to meet his fate.
“The action is at the end; first comes the thought” — this is a line from Friday night Jewish liturgy, but it applies equally well to The Last Duel. From its very first shots, we know how this movie will end: with an epic duel between Driver and Damon. The question, though, is how did they get there? The rest of this nearly two-and-a-half-hour swords-and-castles spectacle is devoted to showing us exactly that: the scandals, intrigue, and betrayal that led our leads to mortal combat.
The story proper begins by taking us to the Battle of Limoges in 1370, where two noblemen, the knight Jean de Carrouges (Damon) and the squire Jacques Le Gris (Driver), are fighting together against the English in the middle of the Hundred Years’ War. Carrouges and Le Gris lead what appears to be an ill-fated cavalry charge through a river toward an English garrison, but the heroism of their men saves the day, and Carrouges saves Le Gris.
After the battle, Carrouges, decompressing in a candle-lit pub, notices an attractive young blonde woman. Carrouges, who has just lost his wife and son to the bubonic plague, is looking to remarry. A companion of his, knowing that the woman’s father is looking to pair her off, quips to Carrouges that if he marries her, “I don’t think you’ll suffer too greatly at the task of producing an heir” — 1300s-speak for “she’s hot.” A few dowry deliberations later, Sir Jean and Lady Marguerite (Jodie Comer) are wed.
Carrouges seems happy with his choice of bride, though it’s harder to tell how Marguerite feels. What does seem certain, though, is that Carrouges is a man who is just as good at making enemies at home as he is slaying foreigners on the battlefield. Through a series of disputes about a piece of land he believed should have been his as part of his dowry, he makes a powerful enemy in Pierre d’Alencon, the debauched cousin of the king. Le Gris is a friend of Pierre (played by a nearly unrecognizable Affleck) and attempts to maintain cordial relations between him and Carrouges. Carrouges, however, takes offense at Le Gris’s attempted mediation, and the two former compatriots have a falling out.
When the two finally see each other again at a banquet the following year, Carrouges brings Marguerite, who immediately catches the eye of Le Gris. Here is where the movie begins to take its even knottier turn, from a chivalric epic to a medieval #MeToo drama involving a rape accusation. Carrouges, Le Gris, and Lady Marguerite will each give their respective accounts on the accusation, which the film, by highlighting the horrid way in which women could be treated in an era in which rape was considered not a crime against women but a crime against their male guardian, treats with genuine empathy, even if it occasionally slips into voyeurism.
All of this is presented in three separate narratives: We first see the story from Carrouges’s perspective, then Le Gris’s, then Marguerite’s. This Rashomon-esque narrative device, if at times making for a bit of repetition, helps us not only untangle some of the thornier plot points but also uncover layers of story and character that would have been left out in a more conventional plot structure. Ridley Scott proves to be an ideal choice as director, imbuing the film with as much Gladiator-style brutality, revenge, and romance as he can squeeze in, with plenty of cinematographic borrowings from the wintry palettes of The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.
Everything pays off in the ultimate duel-to-the-death scene, but what makes the movie so enjoyable is all the thought that went into it and the questions it forces viewers to ask as they await the action-packed finale. Somewhere, maybe back in Boston and maybe over Zoom, Affleck and Damon must be smiling, shaking their heads, and wondering what in the name of Will Hunting took them so long?
Daniel Ross Goodman is a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of Salzburg and the author of Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Wonder and Religion in American Cinema and the novel A Single Life.
