THE LAST DUEL: power, gender, superstition and knights in armor

Photo caption: Adam Driver and Matt Damon in THE LAST DUEL. Courtesy 20th Century Studios.

Based on accounts of the last medieval trial by combat, The Last Duel is both a thriller and a thinker. Director Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, The Martian) brings alive medieval superstition and savagery, and embeds an exploration of the power dynamics within feudal society, especially for women.

The setting is France in the 1380s. Jean (Matt Damon) and Jacques (Adam Driver) have been born into the nobility as squires, which means that they serve as mounted, armored warriors and can own land and castles supported by their very own peasants. Jean is later promoted to the higher title of knight. That puts Jean and Jacques in the elite one percent, but they are totally subservient to the region’s count, Pierre (Ben Affleck), who in turn owes the same absolute fealty to King Charles VI (check him out on Wikipedia).

Jean is an impressive fighter, but not very strategic. He’s a dunderhead, devoid of any social or political skill. Jean has married the beautiful and intelligent aristocrat Marguerite (Jodie Comer), whose father had fallen out of royal favor. Try as she might, Marguerite is only moderately successful in helping Jean from bulling his way through life’s china shop.

Jacques is a canny smoothy, with a rare business sense and charm that melts the ladies. Those financial smarts, along with his appreciation for culture, makes Jacques a protege of Pierre, the count. Pierre favors favors Jacques over Jean, who resents it.

Finding Marguerite alone at home, Jacques rapes her. When Marguerite accuses him, Jacques denies it. Jean presses the case, which culminates in the film’s titular trial by combat.

Ridley Scott tells the story first from Jean’s point of view, then from Jacques’ and, finally, from Margeurite’s. Unlike in Rashomon, the three versions of what occurred don’t diverge much from each other. Instead, we see how Jean and Jacques, who both adhere to the code of their class, see themselves. Jean really thinks that he is a good husband. Jacques, although he has forced himself on Marguerite without her consent, really doesn’t think he has committed rape. (They have their Code of Chivalry, but it sure isn’t very chivalrous.)

Jodie Comer in THE LAST DUEL. Courtesy 20th Century Studios.

We learn that, in 1300s European legality, rape wasn’t even a violent crime against the woman, but was a property crime against her guardian; (she was essentially the property of her father or husband). Ridley Scott slyly emphasizes this when he shows Jean’s reaction to an equine assault on his favorite breeding mare.

Margeurite’s insistence on bringing the rape charge publicly is a major problem for both Jean and for Jacques. It’s also an annoying inconvenience for the count, the king and the Church, who would sweep it under the rug. Jean thinks that he cleverly found away around the cover-up, but he overlooks one disturbing factor – if he dies in the duel, Marguerite will be immediately burned at the stake.

The performances by Comer, Driver, Damon and Affleck are all excellent. Harriet Walker is very good as Jean’s mother, a role which seems at first like a stereotypical stereotypical shrewish mother-in-law, until we learn of her own complicated journey navigating a world where men are unaccountable.

Scott shows us some savage medieval battles to prepare us for the final duel. Warfare at the time was desperate and brutal hand-to-hand butchery, within a sword’s length, like fighting in a phone booth. To stab, slash or impale an opponent, a combatant needed to find an unarmored body part. The jousting in The Last Duel seems especially authentic.

The Wife didn’t want to accompany me when I described it as the “medieval rape movie”; I should have said it’s the “trial by combat movie”.

I was late to The Last Duel, catching up with it several months after its summer 2021 release. Due to the distributor’s blustery publicity campaign, I had underestimated it; it’s one of the Best Movies of 2021, The Last Duel is streaming from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu, YouTube, HBO and redbox.

DVD/Stream of the Week: THE MARTIAN – an entertaining Must See

Matt Damon in THE MARTIAN
Matt Damon in THE MARTIAN

The space adventure The Martian delivers what the best big Hollywood movies can offer – a great looking movie that convincingly takes us to a place we’ve never been, inhabited by our favorite movie stars at their most appealing.

In The Martian, Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, a member of a scientific expedition to Mars who is (understandingly) left for dead when his team must make an emergency escape from the Red Planet. The next manned mission to Mars is scheduled to land four years later 1000 miles away and he only has a four months supply of food, so his chances don’t look promising. But Mark Watney is a character of irrepressible resilience, with a wicked sense of humor, and he immediately embarks on solving the many individual problems that stand between him and survival. NASA leadership (Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean and more) and his team en route back to Earth (Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Michael Pena) all try to help.

Directed masterfully by Ridley Scott, The Martian pops along and there’s never a dull moment. It helps that the character of Watney is very funny.

I’m not highly scientifically literate, but the science in The Martian seemed to be at least internally consistent. I do think that – in real life – the NASA team would have immediately come to the solution thought up in the movie by the geek in the Jet Propulsion Lab.

The awesomely desolate Marscapes are fantastic. It’s all CGI, but you can’t tell – it looks like it is shot on location.

Here’s why The Martian isn’t a great movie:

  • Other than Damon’s Mark Watney, the other characters are types, getting all of their authentic texture from the performances instead of from the writing.
  • Never for a moment does the audience think there’s any chance that The Martian is really going to kill off Matt Damon.

But, overall, The Martian is so entertaining, it’s a Must See – even for folks that usually pass on science fiction.  You can rent The Martian on DVD from Netflix now and from Redbox on February 9.  You can stream it on Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE MARTIAN: an entertaining Must See

Matt Damon in THE MARTIAN
Matt Damon in THE MARTIAN

The space adventure The Martian delivers what the best big Hollywood movies can offer – a great looking movie that convincingly takes us to a place we’ve never been, inhabited by our favorite movie stars at their most appealing.

In The Martian, Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, a member of a scientific expedition to Mars who is (understandingly) left for dead when his team must make an emergency escape from the Red Planet.  The next manned mission to Mars is scheduled to land four years later 1000 miles away and he only has a four months supply of food, so his chances don’t look promising.  But Mark Watney is a character of irrepressible resilience, with a wicked sense of humor, and he immediately embarks on solving the many individual problems that stand between him and survival.  NASA leadership (Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, Sean Bean and more) and his team en route back to Earth (Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara, Michael Pena) all try to help.

Directed masterfully by Ridley Scott, The Martian pops along and there’s never a dull moment.  It helps that the character of Watney is very funny.

I’m not highly scientifically literate, but the science in The Martian seemed to be at least internally consistent.  I do think that – in real life – the NASA team would have immediately come to the solution thought up in the movie by the geek in the Jet Propulsion Lab.

The awesomely desolate Marscapes are fantastic.  It’s all CGI, but you can’t tell – it looks like it is shot on location.

Here’s why The Martian isn’t a great movie:

  • Other than Damon’s Mark Watney, the other characters are types, getting all of their authentic texture from the performances instead of from the writing.
  • Never for a moment does the audience think there’s any chance that The Martian is really going to kill off Matt Damon.

But, overall,  The Martian is so entertaining, it’s a Must See – even for folks that usually pass on science fiction.

Behind the Candelabra: when sugar daddy is a queen

BEHIND THE CANDELABRA

HBO’s Behind the Candelabra is the well-worn story of a rich older guy and his pretty young thing – except the rich older guy is Liberace.  Michael Douglas (of all people) completely inhabits the character of Liberace, nailing his every mannerism of speech and gesture and delving deeply into his ego, neediness, self-absorption and genius for showmanship.  Matt Damon (of all people) enthusiastically and skillfully plays Scott Thorson, Liberace’s boy toy of the late 1970s.

We have all seen the arc of this story before, with the relationship doomed by the power imbalance between the lovers.   Of course, this is the story of a celebrity who was tightly closeted while he was intentionally projecting the persona of a flaming queen.  And because Liberace was the Emperor of Excess, we don’t get often a chance to witness such extravagance (except for historical movies about Louis’ Versailles, Cleopatra’s Egypt, etc.).

Steven Soderbergh directed Behind the Candelabra in the smart and economical way he uses to elevate genre films like Side Effects, Haywire and Magic Mike.  Rob Lowe is hilarious as a 70s Dr. Feelgood plastic surgeon to the stars.

There’s not that much to Behind the Candelabra, but it is entertaining.  If you were missing Liberace, Michael Douglas definitely brings him back to life. 

Promised Land: so good until the corny ending

Promised Land is an engaging drama about the exploitation of natural gas in rural America –  until the corny ending.  Matt Damon and Frances McDormand play a team of corporate road warriors who persuade farmers to lease their land for the fracking.  Based on the experience of his own hometown, the Damon character believes that the American rural way of life has become an unsustainable myth, that small farming communities are doomed without the cash from natural gas.  He believes that he is suckering them into their own salvation.

It’s an “issue movie”of the kind that I often dislike. My day job is in   public policy, and I see more nuance and tradeoffs than usually make it into these movies, which are often too “black hat/white hat” for my taste.  Promised Land doesn’t fall into that trap because Damon’s character and because the locals are not uniformly saintly.  Most of the struggling farmers can’t sign their leases fast enough.  Ken Strunk plays an elected official right out of Mark Twain’s Hadleyburg.  Lucas Black plays a guy who is a puddle of bad choices waiting to be made.  Scoot McNairy (Argo) plays an inarticulate man of firm principles; he’s right, but he doesn’t know why.

Director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Elephant, Paranoid Park, Milk) creates a rural community that is completely authentic without using clichés.   Damon is outstanding.  McDormand, John Krasinski, a frisky Rosemarie DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married, Your Sister’s Sister) and Hal Holbrook are all reliably excellent.

Unfortunately, after navigating through the conflicting values, difficult tradeoffs and shades of gray that are found in real life, the movie takes the easy way out – an improbable ending that is happy for all.  Too bad – a little cynicism would have gone a long way here.

DVD of the Week: True Grit

Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, Blood Simple, No Country for Old Men) have brought us the splendid Old West story of Mattie Ross, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in a breakthrough performance.   Without her performance, the movie could not have been the success that it is, and Steinfeld has no problem standing up to the likes of Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Matt Damon.  Mattie’s merciless smarts and resourcefulness become clear in her negotiations with prairie mogul Col. Stonehill (magnificently played by Dakin Matthews).

Jeff Bridges is perfect as the hilarious, oft-besotted and frequently lethal Rooster Cogburn.  Damon, Brolin and the rest of the cast are excellent, especially Matthews and Barry Pepper.

This film is made from the same source material as, but is not a remake of, the 1969 John Wayne oater (a movie that I particularly dislike).  The 1969 film is burdened by a hammy effort by Wayne, the miscast and undertalented Kim Darby (playing a 14-year-old at 22) and Glenn Campbell.

The film opens (without title credits) with the old hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, signaling that the Coen Brothers will play True Grit absolutely straight within the traditional Western genre – no ironic winks at the audience.

True Grit is one of my Best Movies of 2010.

DVD of the Week: Hereafter (and its tsunami)

For the first time, Clint Eastwood ventures into the supernatural with the story of three people and their individual experiences with death.  It’s also a departure for screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United).   The most skeptical, nonspiritual viewer (me) finds this to be a compelling film.

The question of What Comes Next is unanswered, and less interesting than the film’s observations of what happens on this Earth to living humans.  Eastwood’s genius is in delivering moments of complete truthfulness, one after the other, across a wide range of settings.  Young boys enabling a druggie mother.  People in a hostel watching for the last breath of a loved one.  Experienced, skilled and loving foster parents facing a challenge that they cannot fathom.  Every instance of human behavior is completely authentic.

Equally realistic is the big CGI-enhanced action sequence at the beginning of the film – an Indonesian tsunami, not overblown in any way, but frightening in its verisimilitude.  The sequence lost the special effects Oscar to Inception.

Eastwood is an actor’s director, and star Matt Damon leads a set of excellent performances.  Bryce Dallas Howard gives an Oscar-worthy performance of a woman achingly eager to move past the painful episodes of her life.   The child actor Frankie McLaren carries significant stretches of the story with his unexpressed longing and childish relentlessness.  Cecile de France ably plays a successful television anchor compelled by events to veer her life in a different direction.  Richard Kind delivers a moving portrayal of a man seeking closure after the death of his wife.

It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2010.

The Adjustment Bureau: Avoiding the Curse of the Delayed Release

My hopes were not high for The Adjustment Bureau after the studio had delayed its release for several months.  That can be the telltale marker of a movie disaster.  But not this time – The Adjustment Bureau is a first rate love story embedded in the action thriller genre. A couple meet by chance and are drawn together – only to have scary guys in hats try to enforce different destinies for them.

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have excellent chemistry, and the screenplay by director George Nolfi is smart and inventive.  Nolfi also wrote the smart and inventive screenplay for The Bourne Ultimatum.  I’m certainly looking forward to his next project.

The supporting players – Terence Stamp, Anthony Mackie and John Slattery – are excellent.

Given the scarcity of them these days, it must be pretty hard to write a smart and authentic romance.  So all the more credit to Nolfi, and to Damon and Blunt for pulling it off.

True Grit

Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, Blood Simple, No Country for Old Men) have brought us the splendid Old West story of Mattie Ross, a girl of unrelenting resolve and moxie played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in a breakthrough performance.   Without her performance, the movie could not have been the success that it is, and Steinfeld has no problem standing up to the likes of Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Matt Damon.  Mattie’s merciless smarts and resourcefulness become clear in her negotiations with prairie mogul Col. Stonehill (magnificently played by Dakin Matthews).

Jeff Bridges is perfect as the hilarious, oft-besotted and frequently lethal Rooster Cogburn.  Damon, Brolin and the rest of the cast are excellent, especially Matthews and Barry Pepper.

This film is made from the same source material as, but is not a remake of, the 1969 John Wayne oater (a movie that I particularly dislike).  The 1969 film is burdened by a hammy effort by Wayne and the miscast and untalented Kim Darby (playing a 14-year-old at 22) and Glenn Campbell.

The film opens (without title credits) with the old hymn Leaning on the Everlasting Arms, signaling that the Coen Brothers will play True Grit absolutely straight within the traditional Western genre – no ironic winks at the audience.

Hereafter

For the first time, Clint Eastwood ventures into the supernatural with the story of three people and their individual experiences with death.  It’s also a departure for screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United).   The most skeptical, nonspiritual viewer (me) finds this to be a compelling film.

The question of What Comes Next is unanswered, and less interesting than the film’s observations of what happens on this Earth to living humans.  Eastwood’s genius is in delivering moments of complete truthfulness, one after the other, across a wide range of settings.  Young boys enabling a druggie mother.  People in a hostel watching for the last breath of a loved one.  Experienced, skilled and loving foster parents facing a challenge that they cannot fathom.  Every instance of human behavior is completely authentic.

Equally realistic is the big CGI-enhanced action sequence at the beginning of the film – an Indonesian tsunami, not overblown in any way, but frightening in its verisimilitude.

Eastwood is an actor’s director, and star Matt Damon leads a set of excellent performances.  Bryce Dallas Howard has an Oscar-worthy performance of a woman achingly eager to move past the painful episodes of her life.   The child actor Frankie McLaren carries significant stretches of the story with his unexpressed longing and childish relentlessness.  Cecile de France ably plays a successful television anchor compelled by events to veer her life in a different direction. Richard Kind delivers a moving portrayal of a man seeking closure after the death of his wife.