Ridley Scott to direct 'The Last Duel'

[Ingwar]

More and more positive reviews. We have to wait another month to judge it.

[Stolen]

It sounds great.
Especially when you remember the usual and unfair terrible reviews for every new Scott, especially in the epic genre.
It's very promising, the structure of the film seems modern for an epic movie.
Then in terms of action, Scott seems to deliver the best sequences of his career, and that means a lot!

And like so often with Scott, I think a second viewing will be even better. So I'm optimistic, a new classic is coming ...

If I had to rank my favorite historical epic Ridley films:
1/ Kingdom Of Heaven (director's cut of course) 10/10
2/ Gladiator 9/10 (a classic)
3/ 1492 8/10 (one of the most beautiful Scott, a bit long but great adventure film)
4/ Duellists 8/10 (impressive start, visually crazy)
5/ Exodus 7/10 (this film deserves a better editing, what potential, what vista in the action, the framing ...)
6/ Robin Hood 6/10 (well done, superb visual, but not very memorable)

[Ingwar]

So I'm optimistic, a new classic is coming ...

Don't jinx it. We haven't seen it yet

3 out of 5 from HeyUGuys

Ridley Scott directs this epic medieval tale based on the true story of the last trial by combat (in this case jousting) fought in France. Although touted as a film about a woman's fight for justice after rape, this is very much a film by the boys for the boys, namely Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who both co-wrote and produced the film as well as taking leading roles.

The premise is a fascinating one: in 1386 Marguerite de Carrouges (Jodie Comer) accused Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) of rape. Her husband Jean (Matt Damon) was given the opportunity to fight for her honour, the winner of the duel also the winner of the trial. The writers have decided to offer an account of the back story and the rape from three perspectives, the first chapter Jean's point of view, the second Jacques' and the third (entitled 'The Truth') Marguerite's. This trio of viewpoints mirrors Rashomon, but this is really the only comparison that can be made with that masterpiece.

To their credit, Damon and Affleck decided to hand over the writing of the third chapter to Nicole Holofcener (of Friends with Money fame), which was a good call. In the first two chapters Comer is reduced to an almost silent sideline, all wide-eyed glances and narrow substance. In the third, she is given a meatier role and a voice. Yet despite the story, which is very much Marguerite's, the writers have focused almost entirely on the men: on their friendship, on their rivalry, on their relationship with the spoilt and debauched Count Pierre d'Alençon (Ben Affleck) and of course on the duel. Despite Marguerite's learning ('A woman who reads!') and intelligence, little is revealed about her inner life, her thoughts on her marriage or her role as a mere chattel to be bartered and sold.

As with Gladiator, Scott provides memorable battle scenes that swoop down from above to place the viewer in the midst of the bloody and visceral fighting. With every sword thrust and axe swing comes the sound and sight of lives being lost and pain being inflicted. The ruler is a spoilt child whose blood lust and desire to see suffering is matched only by his inadequacy as a man (in this case, Charles VI, played by Alex Lawther). Lawther's gestures of glee during the duel recall those of Joaquin Phoenix during the combat scenes in Gladiator.

Much will be made of the men's hair: Affleck with his peroxide bowl cut, eyebrows and beard, and Damon's truly hideous mullet merit a few disparaging words. So awful are their combined tonsures that they momentarily distract us from the action. Only Driver's luxuriant locks are spared. Having old chums Affleck and Damon on screen together again – this time playing mortal enemies – probably amused them more than it will amuse viewers.

Despite plenty of Latin being spouted and a focus on language, there are a few issues with how language is used here, Pierre calling Jacques a 'libertine', which in 14th-century English had no connotations of debauchery or decadence. American accents have been toned down to sound British, but strangely Harriet Walter, who plays Jean's mother, has given herself an odd accent that is not exactly French but which conceals her own glorious natural voice.

Despite coming in at 152 minutes, this is not a turgid tale. Like a medieval knight-errant, Sir Ridley Scott gallops apace and the time passes quickly enough as he shifts the action from battlefield to court to hearth and home. His focus – the peasants at their work, the muck and bustle of medieval daily life – ensures the film is crammed with interesting visual detail. The sets, particularly Pierre's castle, are wonderful. There are some fine performances and some cracking scenes, particularly the final duel, which is beautifully crafted and genuinely riveting. It's ironic that a film whose central character is a woman with little power or voice should allow her – or any other female character – to say so little. Nevertheless, Scott provides plenty to enjoy in this knight's latest tale.

https://www.heyuguys.com/the-last-duel-review/

69% at tomatometer but at least 8 positive reviews haven't been added yet (don't know if all of them will be added as I don't have a clue how exactly RT works. Does RT count everthying?).

Gamesradar
Collider
IGN
Slashfilm
Discussingfilm
CRPWrites
Firstshowing
WeLoveCinema

Not sure about Deadline and ScreenDaily, as scores aren't showed, but I think they're positive overall.
https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/the-last-duel-venice-review/5163202.article

I've checked on twitter and there is zero negative apart from those that we already know.



Damon, Affleck and Holofcener interview with NY Times:

Let's start at the beginning. Matt, it's December 2018 and you've just read Jager's book. What happened next?

MATT DAMON Ridley and I had been looking for something to do together since "The Martian," and we'd had a few near misses. So I sent it to Ridley, and he loved it. In March 2019, Ben came over for dinner, and he took the book that night and called me at 7 the next morning and said, "Let's do this." And that was how we set off to writing. But very quickly, through a bunch of different conversations we were having with a bunch of people, we decided that it would serve the story best if we found the best female writer we could to write the female perspective.

NICOLE HOLOFCENER [Dryly] Plus, Ridley and I have been looking for something to do together for years.

DAMON [Laughs] Oh, now I'm an [expletive]. Oh, God.

HOLOFCENER No — no. Am I making fun of you? I didn't mean that. I was just thinking about how different my sensibility is from Ridley's. That's all.

DAMON Yeah, yeah. Well, Nicole was our dream writer and our first choice. And thank God she said yes. And she said yes in large part because Ben, behind my back, sent her about 10 or 15 pages that we hadn't shown anybody. And I was so embarrassed, like professionally embarrassed, that he sent them to Nicole Holofcener.

HOLOFCENER They weren't good, but they were good enough for me to say, "I want to work with these guys."

DAMON I think they were bad enough that she was like, "Oh, these guys need help."

HOLOFCENER Bad enough so that I wasn't intimidated to be able to write for medieval language, at least in English. But they're so talented, and I was immediately very flattered. The only hesitation I had was, "Can I come out of my own little world and write about something like this?" And as soon as I started and I got their support, I found that I could do it.

So why three chapters?

BEN AFFLECK Very quickly, we recognized that the film has a clear point of view on who's telling the truth. And that this incredibly heroic character, Marguerite de Carrouges, had this story that deserved to be told. It was evident that it was going to be an exploration of the dynamics of power, roots of misogyny and survival in medieval France. It had all the elements of what makes a story really great to tell — the idea of an unreliable narrator, a second unreliable narrator and then a kind of reveal of what happened through the eyes of a character who was both the hero and whose humanity was denied and ignored.

HOLOFCENER But also, you get the fact that it wasn't black and white to the men, and it was so black and white to the woman about what happened. So, the male point of views offer this perspective of male delusion.

Nicole, Marguerite wasn't nearly as fleshed out in the book. How did you go about creating her world?

HOLOFCENER I did research about what women were like then and what they had to put up with. I gave her a friend to be able to talk to. I knew that she would have to take over the estate when he was away fighting. So I read up, "Well, what did they do?" Took care of the animals and the horses and the harvesting. And I really tried to imagine just how awful it was for her and how she dealt with the awfulness. Her life was pretty bad being married to Jean de Carrouges and so when she was violated, she had nothing to lose, really. I mean, she was going to suffer. She had the potential of suffering dearly and dying, but at that point she was just tired of having no voice.

How do three writers keep things straight?

AFFLECK Once the script got close to a completed stage, then it got passed around, emailed. In fact, one of the biggest challenges was the maddening technological aspects of keeping up with various versions — that they had included everyone else's changes.

HOLOFCENER We kept working off the wrong drafts. It was like: "Wait a minute. I took that line out two months ago. Why is it still there?" We're not the most technically savvy.

DAMON We had one of those moments where I think we'd done half a day on one of these things and we're realizing, "Oh no, this is the wrong draft," and then you have to try to go through and figure out what you've done.

HOLOFCENER Matt doesn't even have a laptop. So don't get me started.

How did you make sure you were portraying Marguerite's rape accurately without exploiting it?

AFFLECK We were especially sensitive and careful to really listen and do research, whether it was consulting with RAINN [an organization that helps victims of rape, abuse and incest], survivors of assault, historical experts, women's groups, and trying to allow all of those other experiences to inform the story and make it as authentic as possible.

HOLOFCENER I think that those organizations really, really wanted to make sure we were making it clear what the truth was — that this is not "he said, she said." This is not ambivalent.

AFFLECK We had questions like: "Are we whitewashing if we don't show the emotional toll and the severity of this? To what extent does it become too much? And where do you feel the bounds of tastes are?"

HOLOFCENER A lot of it was about how often do we see the rape and how long is it? How long do we have to suffer through this? That was a topic of conversation. And so we took their notes seriously and did a lot of trimming. We had to show some scenes twice, but it was necessary. We had to see the rape twice, as disturbing as it was to watch.

What choices did you make to either stick with or depart from the book?

DAMON The biggest departure is the rape scene. Marguerite de Carrouges, what she said in court and over and over again to an ever-widening group of people and eventually all of France, was that Jacques Le Gris entered her home with another man, Adam Louvel. We have in the movie Louvel coming in, but then Le Gris tells him to leave. In Marguerite's actual testimony, the rape was much more brutal. She was tied down and gagged. She almost choked to death. And Louvel was in the room.

HOLOFCENER [Le Gris] told himself he loved her.

AFFLECK What was fascinating was the degree to which this behavior and attitude toward women was so thorough and pervasive, and the vestigial aspects that are still with us today. That's really powerful. What we have hoped is people will look at it and go: "Have I always understood how my actions were being perceived by others? Have I always recognized other people's reality, truth, perspective, in the course of my behavior?" And maybe reflect on that.

Ben, I understood that you were originally going to portray Le Gris. And then you decided to play the libertine Count Pierre d'Alençon instead of facing off against Matt onscreen. Why?

HOLOFCENER He came to his senses.

AFFLECK What happened truly is that —

DAMON We heard Adam Driver was interested. [Everyone laughs.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/movies/the-last-duel-story-screenplay.html

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

HeyUGuys commiting an entire paragraph to bellyaching about the hairstyles again. 

That review reads like it was written by a teenager.

RT is supposed to count all the major critics. The likes of Collider, IGN, Slashfilm, Deadline etc. are definitely counted.

[Necronomicon II]

No wonder Ridley doesn't read press anymore lmao Damon's mullet or commentary on serious and poignant themes? Mullet it is!

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

I'm beginning to think that I should follow Ridley's example as well.



MATT DAMON AND BEN AFFLECK SPEAK OUT ABOUT LAST DUEL HAIRSTYLES SHOCKER!!

"IT WAS RIDLEY MADE US DO IT!!"

Ben Affleck as Shocked by 'Last Duel' Hairstyles As You Are: 'You Think This Will Work?'

To perhaps the surprise of 20th Century Studios and Disney, one of the most buzz-worthy takeaways from "The Last Duel" trailer in July was the ghastly-looking hairstyles worn by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Affleck rocks a bleach-blonde look as Count Pierre d'Alençons, while Damon sports a mullet as Jean de Carrouges. IndieWire's "Last Duel" review says the film is home to "a few of the worst hairdos ever put on screen." It turns out Affleck himself was just as shocked by the hairstyles. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Affleck and Damon said it was director Ridley Scott himself who came up with the looks.

"Ridley is very visual, and he sent these looks, he put our faces on these looks," Damon said.

"We were sort of shocked," Affleck added. "But because he's such a stunning visual artist and he's the director you trust him. I hope people don't walk away from the movie focused on that. But it does serve to help us both feel not like how people generally see us and also a part of this other world. That's my guess about [Scott's] intention. But he basically said, 'This is how your hair's going to look.'"

Affleck continued, "At first, I was like, 'Wow this is shocking, you really think this is going to work?' But he really believed in it, so it was like, 'Ok, I trust you. Let's do it.' I also didn't understand the degree to which the added cyan and desaturation would change that look a little bit."

Damon explained that his mullet is the result of his character going to war constantly. "He wanted to fight. And Ridley liked the idea of the mullet as if I just took a knife and cut the sides of my hair just so I could get my helmet on," Damon said. "That's all I cared about."

Affleck said his look is all about "representing power," adding, "I am the patriarchy, the power structure, all of these things embodied in this character, and visually, from the way I was dressed, adorned, and the hair."

"The Last Duel" opens exclusively in theaters October 15, 2021. The movie will have at least a 45-day theatrical window before it becomes available on streaming.

https://www.indiewire.com/2021/09/ben-affleck-matt-damon-defend-last-duel-bad-hair-1234664647/

[Ingwar]

I'm beginning to think that I should follow Ridley's example as well.

Likewise. Read this review and try not to cry.

1 out of 5 from oneroomwithaview:

The Last Duel, Ridley Scott's latest men-with-swords epic, is a medieval courtly tale for the #MeToo era. If this take sounds utterly meaningless, that is because it is, a state of affairs that entirely suits Scott's feeble attempt at political relevance, where feminism is a regurgitated script and progressiveness a thin patina for disguising the same tired narratives.

The film's #MeToo credentials, such as they are, derive from its central premise (a scene played twice, no less), in which Marguerite (Jodie Comer), the neglected wife of dour knight Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) is raped by his comrade-at-arms Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), and – refusing silence – seeks justice. "I am speaking the truth," Marguerite insists, the noble tears in her eyes betraying more about society's fetishization of female testimonial and righteous victimhood than any granular emotional truth.

Every line feels similarly anachronistic, from Marguerite's soundbites on 'speaking out' to a bizarre conversation about her and Le Gris' favourite novels (a good three centuries before the literary form was invented), as if the screenwriters have little faith in their audience grasping the story's ongoing significance without contemporary signposting. The only glimpse at innovation is an unusual structure detailing the same events from each character's viewpoint, but once again The Last Duel's sledgehammer subtlety rewrites each scene, so that what could have been a fascinating study in tone and perception becomes a clownish demonstration of... the myopia of masculinity? The Cassandra-esque veracity of the female voice? Who can say.

It has been four years since #MeToo promised seismic socio-political change and that The Last Duel is what has trickled, The-Devil-Wears-Prada-like, into the mainstream cultural consciousness is unspeakably depressing, if woefully inevitable. It makes a sick kind of sense that corporate Hollywood turned women's overwhelming rage into something so reassuring, and so trite.

https://oneroomwithaview.com/2021/09/11/the-last-duel-venice-2021-review/

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

Dude is so hung-up about the sociopolitical aspects of the film that he doesn't even consider the performances, the production design, the cinematography or the score. Just a straight 1 out of 5 'cause "I don't likes the political aspect".

[Ingwar]

Dude is so hung-up about the sociopolitical aspects of the film that he doesn't even consider the performances, the production design, the cinematography or the score. Just a straight 1 out of 5 'cause "I don't likes the political aspect".

It's a woman

[KiramidHead]

Everyone: We don't think they wore helmets like that.

Ridley: Well they bloody well do now!

[Ingwar]

Dude is so hung-up about the sociopolitical aspects of the film that he doesn't even consider the performances, the production design, the cinematography or the score. Just a straight 1 out of 5 'cause "I don't likes the political aspect".

Seems she didn't get it. Luckily other people do. 8 out of 10 from Italian lostincinema:

The Last Duel: Ridley Scott's feminist epic
The director demonstrates a more unique than rare freshness of gaze, taking advantage of Eric Jager's novel The Last Duel. The true story of a crime, a scandal and a trial by combat in medieval Francefor a lucid examination of how rape is still perceived today by the various people involved in these horrors. Fortunately, many things have changed since the 14th century. For example, there is no reliance on the so-called duels of God to establish the truth, and the justice system rightfully continues to evolve in favor of the victims. However, many aspects of these facts have tragically remained unchanged, such as the double damage that women are forced to suffer, the physical and psychological and the social one, which leads them to be frowned upon in the communities for an event for which they have no fault.

Taking big risks from a narrative point of view (three versions of the same event, albeit with substantial differences, are difficult for the modern viewer to digest) and thanks to the fundamental contribution in the script by Nicole Holofcener , Ridley Scott goes even further, representing in succession: the point of view of the men who stand next to the raped women, too often focused on dishonor and the desire for revenge than on the necessary empathy for those who have suffered violence; the perspective of the rapists, who to motivate their actions use non-existent signs of interest on the part of women and never received consensus; finally, the version (or rather, the truth) of the victim, which is both the simplest and the most disheartening.

To all this are added the inevitable hasty judgments of strangers, ready to exchange an aesthetic appreciation for a man in an implicit consent to sexual intercourse, thus diminishing the violence suffered by the victim.

The contribution of Jodie Comer, Adam Driver and Matt Damon
However, The Last Duel  is not only theoretical and conceptual cinema. Ridley Scott also dusts off the epic action that had characterized some of his appreciated works such as The Gladiator and The Crusades - Kingdom of Heaven , which explodes especially in the final act, when a duel to the death is used to make justice triumph , yet another emphasis by the director of the distortion of a system that entrusts the solution of a human drama to elements external to the drama itself. Despite his advanced age, Scott proves that he still has few equals in terms of visual storytelling, resulting in one of the most intense duels seen in recent years on the big screen. Term that we do not use randomly, since The Last Duel it is a perfect project to reiterate the need for the room, at least for works of this magnitude.

In fact, only in the place par excellence of the cinema can one savor the work done by Scott on the sound, on the choreography of the clash and on the special effects, which transports us directly to the battlefield, making us live the excitement of the moment and perceive the danger of the duelists. The lack of action in the central phase of the story is so perfectly balanced by a gripping and adrenaline-pumping epilogue, in which the director does not skimp in terms of violence and blood, once again distinguishing himself from the majority of his colleagues for the realism of the staging. The direction of the performers is also excellent, with Adam Driver, Matt Damon and Jodie Comer who literally challenge each other in skill, representing all the nuances of an extremely complex situation from a human, ethical and social point of view.

The Last Duel: a severe critique of the contradictions of mankind
44 years after The Duelists , Scott again uses the concept of dueling as a symbol of the profound foolishness of mankind, which despite the evolution of history and society continues to cling to violence and empty ideals such as honor to resolve issues. far more complex. As a maestro he is, the director demonstrates once again that even from the most distant places from our life, such as space, the dystopian future of Blade Runner or the France of centuries ago, a severe and biting criticism can be made against vices and contradictions. of mankind difficult to eradicate.

https://www.lostincinema.it/recensioni/the-last-duel-recensione/

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

A page from the script:

Screenwriters Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener divided the story's three points-of-view — that of knight Jean de Carrouges (Damon), his friend-turned-adversary Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), and Carrouges' wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) — between them.

While the pages evolved and their fingerprints eventually touched every aspect of the script, they tried to maintain a distinct voice and perspective in each of the three acts. Sharing with EW an exclusive script page from the second act, they walked us through the particulars of this scene.

Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener on 'The Last Duel.'
The Last Duel puts audiences through its (ten) paces with its shifting perspectives, telling a story of honor, revenge, male vanity, and the women injured by it through three distinct lenses.

Screenwriters Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener divided the story's three points-of-view — that of knight Jean de Carrouges (Damon), his friend-turned-adversary Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), and Carrouges' wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) — between them.

While the pages evolved and their fingerprints eventually touched every aspect of the script, they tried to maintain a distinct voice and perspective in each of the three acts. Sharing with EW an exclusive script page from the second act, they walked us through the particulars of this scene.

While act one depicts this moment of wounded pride from Carrouges' point of view, this time we see it through Le Gris' eyes. "The first story is my story and it's the standard knight's tale about a man who's dishonored and requests a duel to the death because of this dishonor that he has to address," Damon details. "And then Adam's story is, 'Now hang on a second, that's not exactly what happened.'"

Adds Holofcener: "It does push the story forward in ways we don't know yet," trading off the ways the changing pov slowly reveals more of the truth of the situation.

"In the first story, [Matt's character] is more wellspoken, more composed," Affleck notes. "[This scene] is seeing him not composed and him being vaguely incoherent."

This also meant making some changes from script to screen. "What you see is more anger and envy and pettiness," adds Affleck. "The way it's written, it's got a progression that feels linear whereas when he played it, it felt more disjointed. It helped tell the perspective. We always viewed it as 'How would Le Gris tell the story in court in retrospect? How would he say, 'This is what happened?' He would say Carrouges showed up, interrupts our lunch, and is not making sense."

Affleck's role, that of Count Pierre d'Alençon, the arbiter of the titular duel, also expanded in this scene when putting it on its feet. They wanted to emphasize his role as the most powerful (and contempible) man in the room, adding interjections that further humiliate Carrouges.

Another notable change was the take that director Ridley Scott used of Damon's riff on his line demanding Le Gris call him "sir."

"I kept looking at Adam [Driver] because he was making me angrier and angrier," says Damon. "I'd say, 'You call me "sir," ' and he's looking back at me, and I went, 'Sir! Sir!' I kept repeating it, goading him, because [Carrouges] wants to fight all the time. Adam, as we wrote in the script, he decides to be political. He stands and addresses me as 'Sir;' he's the bigger man in the scene, which is in keeping with the story."

Replaying scenes from different perspectives also produced a unique acting challenge for the cast, shading or shifting their performance to fit with whatever version of the story they were telling.

"We had our script supervisor write whose story we were in next to every scene," explains Damon. "We would talk with Ridley before the scene about like, 'Let's remember we're in Carrouges version because in his version, the hero always does everything right and everyone else is wrong.' As actors, you modulate your performance based on which story you're in."

"You're not really playing your character, you're playing the other character's version of your character," adds Affleck.

Affleck also found personal inspiration – for his performance and his own career as a director — in Scott's approach to shooting. "He has this brilliant technique of doing a bunch of cameras all at once, creating different shots, which I really was inspired by and would like to experiment with going forward directing myself," he reflects. "It's almost more like a play. Everybody's on camera all the time, and everybody feels more alive and you know we're not going to do a bunch of takes so there's a sense of urgency and vitality to the scenes."

He breaks down how that impacted this scene in particular: "What Matt is saying to Adam in that scene — they're both being photographed at the same time, so they're able to react to one another and be intercut in ways that are just more authentic. That was a brilliant approach to making movies."

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

We are pleased to reveal that 2 tracks from our 'Troubadours' album, composed by renowned TV & film composer Richard Harvey, will feature in the upcoming Ridley Scott film 'The Last Duel'!

https://twitter.com/WestOneMusicGrp/status/1438477030975229957

[Ingwar]

Harriet Walter shortly about working with Scott in The Last Duel in Kermode on Film podcast. Starts at 25:15.

https://podfollow.com/1436700945/episode/e915c24545c19cd67c8f734b055ab03963c95d3e/view

[Stolen]

https://twitter.com/tgt6617/status/1439020710551248900


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