I remember hearing several months ago (or years ago?? Time is so strange during plagues) about a new Ridley Scott movie coming out. I love his movies, and I heard that this one would have sword fighting in it, so I immediately was invested. Then, I believe, the next thing I heard was that Matt Damon would be starring in it, and that he would have a mullet. I don’t remember hearing anything after that.

Lo and behold, last week I learned that The Last Duel was available to watch on streaming. I immediately watched it (twice, if you want to get technical). And I loved it. First, my second complaint about the movie besides the mullet, was Matt Damon’s duel helmet.

What in the traumatic brain injury is that.

Now that those are out of the way, I’ll get on to everything else about the movie that I didn’t know. Adam Driver (of Kylo Ran fame), Ben Affleck, and Jodie Comer round out the rest of the main cast. The film immediately started with a duel scene between Adam Driver and Matt Damon’s characters, and then goes into three separate “flashback” sequences. This was a very unique approach, because (and, if you haven’t scene it yourself, PLEASE don’t read further, it has so much more impact if you don’t realize what is coming!) each of these sequences are of the same section of story, from the perspective of the three characters who experienced it. This was an absolutely fascinating way to tell the story.

I’m not going to rely heavily on recapping the plot, because I truly hope you watched it yourself (and, if you didn’t, please DO IT NOW). But essentially it’s the story of Matt Damon and Adam Driver and their battle camaraderie, their struggles with one another and power and pride, and the story of Matt Damon as Sir Jean marrying Jodie Comer’s character Marguerite. The lynchpin of it all is when Adam Driver’s character Le Gris shows up when Jean is away, and rapes Marguerite. She bravely tells Jean when he returns, and he decides to challenge Le Gris to a duel and allow “God to settle it”.

You will become so familiar with this shot.

Going into this movie, I assumed it was a rather typical medieval war movie, and I had high expectations since I think Ridley Scott is incredible at this. Master and Commander is my favorite movie of all time, so I assumed this would be an excellent historic war movie (clearly one of my favorite genres), and in that I was not disappointed. The battle scenes are visceral, intimate, and brutal. They truly didn’t disappoint. Of note is the scene where a volley of arrows launches in a forest in Scotland; I had to rewatch that scene several times just to truly appreciate how terrifying that experience would have been. As in Kingdom of Heaven and Gladiator, the grace and glory of hand to hand combat with simple tools is stripped down to its essential and bloody truth: while I am fascinated by it, this is truly an awful and terrifying way to die. The Last Duel achieved this pared-down storytelling with aplomb, as before. He has not lost any of his brutal clarity in telling the stories of battles. In the final duel scene, you truly are left with a sense of what an eternity the microseconds of hand to hand combat truly encompass. It’s an earth shattering feeling that is well communicated.

All of the above is exactly what I expected, and love, from Ridley Scott Films. I assume that there were many in the audience who were there for those exact reasons, as was I. Here’s what I didn’t expect: A complex and empathetic story of pride, power, and the powerlessness of women in Catholic France. I did not expect an entreaty that would show the perspectives of two empathetic male characters who have their own views and complexities, and the erosions and micro aggressions of their relationships over time. And I definitely did not expect to see the story of a woman doubted, loved but ignored and downtrodden, and her complex emotions in what to sacrifice and what to save, due to her position. I didn’t expect to see the complexity of Le Gris, who was intelligent and empathetic, even going to bat for his friend when his friend had wronged him. We see him viewing a woman that he “loves” through the lens of “woman as property”; a system that he was born into. He doesn’t realize the full horror of what he has done, because he is too blinded by his own position, power, and wants, to see the true impact of what he his actions.

The story of Jean as a less intellectual, but still intelligent and in many ways honorable man, again the product of his times and the systems in place, was equally fascinating. We see as he over time refuses to adapt or learn, but continues to see “wrongs” against him (without his own self at fault, of course). But we are still empathetic; he is built for a simpler world, and doesn’t understand that. We see his perspective as a man who loves his wife, but ultimately still lives in a world that values her as a breeder and property, and on some level, he sees her that way too.

And finally in the third iteration of the story, we see Marguerite’s own view. That of a woman who must bear the shames of the men around her (first her father’s treason, then her husband’s impetuous actions that result in his losses of station), who was raised literate and as an intellectual but lives in a home with an illiterate husband and a hostile mother in law. She is still happy and takes on the duties of the house as much as possible, but over the five years of her marriage that we see, she very much feels the weight of not having born an heir yet. When she has her child but feels the weight of possibly being burned at the stake depending on if her husband loses the duel (and therefore proves that she lied about the rape), she clearly sees how other women chose not to speak out.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie with characters so deeply and well written. In an era in which analysis of current events and others continues to grow flatter by the day, with little room for nuance or empathy, this movie upsets the status quo. It explains a horrific event, without justifying it. It reminds us that humans are ugly, beautiful, good and evil, often within the same skin. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.