Lauro Filipe Reis
Ridley Scott’s film dramatizes the story of what — as the title inaccurately suggests — was the last fight to the death fought as a duel on French soil. The dispute between the two protagonists, Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) and Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), concerns an accusation of rape made by Marguerite (Jodie Comer), Carrouges’s wife. The film adopts a narrative technique based on conflicting perspectives, similar to that of Kurosawa’s classic Rashomon (1950), to recount the legal proceedings from the perspectives of the three protagonists. The intention would seem to be to give each character an opportunity to describe their version of events, in order to prove that one character’s honor had been insulted (Jean’s), that another had been falsely accused (Jacques), and that a third had been raped (Marguerite). Since it is impossible for all three versions to be true simultaneously, the film seeks to expose the characters’ cognitive biases, self-interest, and fallible memories — but only in the case of two of them. This is what makes The Last Duel worthy of analysis: it adopts a narrative technique designed to generate doubt or interpretive uncertainty, yet ultimately leaves no room for uncertainty or doubt regarding its own interpretation of events.
Contrary to what one might expect, the narrative does little to explore the adjective «last» in the film’s title. Aside from a brief remark by a supporting character about the rarity of settling disputes through a fight to the death, the film does little to develop the historical dimension of the event as the final episode in a judicial practice. A relatively brief investigation reveals that the film’s title — borrowed from the book on which the story is based — refers to the exceptional nature of the trial by combat held on December 29, 1386, often identified as the last of its kind in France. However, if we include this confrontation under the broader term «duel», we must also include the 1547 confrontation between Guy Chabot, Lord of Jarnac, and François de Vivonne, Lord of La Châtaigneraie. In other words, the adjective «last» becomes inaccurate when attached to the term «duel». The 1386 confrontation was not simply a duel of honor like the one in 1547, as the film itself seems to suggest on several occasions, and as this is one of the reasons Jean de Carrouges decides to pursue such an outcome: the 1386 confrontation was a trial by combat. The difference between this procedure and what we now more commonly call a duel of honor is worth noting.
Although both practices share a historical genealogy and a ritualized dimension, the medieval trial by combat was — unlike the duel of honor — a legal procedure: in the absence of means considered sufficient to establish guilt or innocence, combat was invoked as a form of divine judgment (Judicium Dei), on the belief that God would intervene and bring about divine justice. The winner’s survival was supposed to confirm the justice of his cause, while the loser’s death was interpreted as a sign of his guilt. The duel of honor, by contrast, was developed primarily as a practice for defending individual reputation, often outside the law and governed by its own social conventions. The point, therefore, is not merely to distinguish between two sets of weapons or two ways of fighting, but to recognize two different conceptions of the legitimacy of combat: one institutional and judicial (i.e. trial by combat), the other social and moral (i.e. duel of honor). In the case of Carrouges and Le Gris, the consequences of the combat extended beyond the lives of the two men. If Carrouges lost, Marguerite would be considered guilty of false testimony and could be sentenced to death by burning at the stake. The woman who had reported the violence thus had no control over the proceedings that would determine her fate. Mutatis mutandis, not only was The Last Duel not the last, it was not even a duel.
The film begins with preparations for combat — the donning of armor, mounting the horse, and the appropriate honors paid to the king — and ends with the confrontation itself. Between these two moments, the three versions of the events that led to the trial are presented. Each perspective is introduced by an intertitle: «The Truth According To Jean de Carrouges», «The Truth According To Jacques Le Gris», and «The Truth According To Marguerite de Carrouges». The different treatment the intertitles give to each character’s version is the first narrative problem that deserves to be scrutinized. Although all three are formally presented as subjective accounts, the intertitles’ graphic and temporal treatment introduces a decisive distinction between them. This unequal treatment provides the first indication that the film does not intend to place the three versions on equal epistemological footing.
At the beginning of the chapter presenting Marguerite’s version of events, all the words quickly fade into the black background, just as they did in the previous chapters. The difference lies in the word «Truth», which remains on screen slightly longer than the others. This not so subtle cue ensures that the viewer has already seen two versions of events that are false, or at least that the screenwriters consider less plausible. This intrusion of the screenwriters’ interpretation of the relative plausibility of one of the versions raises questions about their intentions at a metanarrative level: if they consider Marguerite’s version to be true, could that be one of the reasons they chose the order in which the chapters are presented? Are the screenwriters weakening the points of view of the other two protagonists as an exercise in retroactive historical legitimation? If so, why adopt a Rashomon-like narrative structure, in which the screenwriters supposedly seek to offer a series of mutually incompatible but epistemologically equivalent versions of events, only to demonstrate a clear preference for one of them?
In Rashomon (1950), Kurosawa constructs his narrative in such a way as to prevent the viewer from establishing a stable correspondence between the characters’ accounts and a definitive reconstruction of events. The bandit’s, the samurai’s, the woman’s, and the woodcutter’s versions do not merely differ in their details: they conflict in their very descriptions of what happened and in their assignment of responsibility. The film does not eliminate the possibility of factual truth, but it makes that truth difficult to access through the available testimonies. It is precisely this distance between the event and the account that sustains its epistemological ambiguity. In The Last Duel, by contrast, the structure of conflicting accounts does not serve to keep that distance open. A cinematic narrator external to the characters — through editing, mise-en-scène, and, above all, the intertitles — establishes a hierarchy among the testimonies and indicates to the viewer which one should be accepted as true. The structure seems to promise a contest between versions, but its formal organization announces the outcome of that contest in advance. The question it raises, then, is not whether the film should have left viewers without any conclusion as to whether the crime actually occurred, but whether the use of a narrative structure associated with epistemological uncertainty is appropriate to apply to this series of events, since it creates an expectation that the film itself decides, from the outset, to frustrate. The Last Duel thus moves away from the epistemological ambiguity associated with Rashomon and comes closer to what Nabokov describes as the writer’s power as «the perfect dictator in that private world insofar as [he] alone [is] responsible for its stability and truth»[1].
It is important here to distinguish between three dimensions that the film seems deliberately (but erroneously) to try to bring together: the factual truth of the event, the subjective truth of the testimonies, and the narrative truth that the screenwriters establish for the viewer through the film. The first concerns what actually happened; the second, what each character claims, remembers, or believes to have happened; the third, the authority exercised by the film’s own construction in determining which account should be accepted.
The screenwriters do not merely construct a fictional world in which the characters offer divergent interpretations of the same events; they also intervene in the hierarchy of those interpretations, indicating to the viewer which one should be accepted as true. If we take seriously the possibility that this was one of the screenwriters’ intentions — to foreground their narrative preference — we may ask why they felt the need to sacrifice ambiguity in favor of explicitly demonstrating a preference for Marguerite’s version of events, the victim’s account. The point is not to challenge the moral legitimacy of believing Marguerite, nor to demand that the film treat her accusation as one hypothesis among others of equal value. Rather, it is to ask why the screenwriters chose a narrative structure that invokes the uncertainty of testimony only to resolve it formally. The result is a tension between the narrative device and the moral intention guiding it: the structure promises a contest between perspectives, but the filmmaking ultimately announces a verdict. The first two perspectives thus cease to function as competing hypotheses about the central event and become instead distinct portraits through which two men interpret events in accordance with the image they have of themselves[2].
One of the film’s most interesting — and involuntary — ironies lies in its portrayal of supporting characters such as Count Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck, one of the screenwriters) and Jean de Carrouges’s mother, Nicole de Carrouges (Harriet Walter). The film denounces a society in which access to justice and the credibility of testimony depends on the social standing and power relations of those involved. Yet, while dramatizing — and criticizing — this institutional bias, the film also adopts an interpretive position toward the three protagonists. In other words, it too displays its own bias. The difference between these two forms of partiality is morally significant: the Count favors Le Gris for reasons of convenience and self-interest, whereas the screenwriters privilege Marguerite because they believe her version corresponds to the truth. The narrative problem does not lie in the screenwriters taking sides, but in their use of a structure built around conflicting accounts whose initial expectation of uncertainty is deliberately subverted by a formal cue that anticipates the verdict. This subversion, given the construction of the narrative, compromises the film's stakes and feels like an easy way out.
There is, a priori, nothing wrong with portraying certain characters’ partiality in a negative light, nor with the screenwriters adopting an unequivocal moral position on the events. The difficulty arises when that moral position is presented through a narrative device that seems to promise an investigation into the subjectivity and fallibility of testimony. More than six hundred years later, the contemporary viewer has no sufficiently sophisticated historical tools with which to independently reconstruct the events of 1386 beyond any reasonable doubt. The film, however, does not merely acknowledge this distance; it also seeks to overcome it through the authority of its own narrative construction. This is where the tension lies. The screenwriters denounce a society in which the credibility of a testimony depends on the social standing, interests, and power relations of those involved, yet reserve for their own interpretation an authority that they do not subject to the same scrutiny. This does not mean that their moral position is equivalent to Count d’Alençon’s; rather, it means that the film should acknowledge the difference between asserting a moral conviction and demonstrating a historical truth. By presenting the former as though it entirely resolves the latter, the film ultimately obscures the distance between the event and the representation it constructs of it.
Ultimately, the narrative structure of Rashomon works because it prevents the viewer from establishing a definitive correspondence between the testimonies and the factual truth of events. Although The Last Duel employs a similar structure, it does not accept the epistemological uncertainty that might follow from it. Instead of allowing the distance between event and testimony to remain open, the film resolves it through the authority of its own staging. The screenwriters thus refuse to accept the philosophical cost of the structure they adopt: doubt. They prefer to function as a modern moral tribunal, in which they do not merely present the testimonies but also assume the role of judge and ultimate authority on the truth of events depicted.
[1] Nabokov, Vladimir. Strong opinions. New York: Vintage International, 1990, p.69.
[2] Indeed, it is in Jacques Le Gris’s perspective that this distinction becomes most apparent. His version is not merely a conscious attempt to conceal the truth; it also demonstrates how easily someone can reorganize another person’s experience in a way that makes it compatible with their own desires. Le Gris does not represent himself as a rapist, but as a man who believes he is responding to a desire he assumes to be mutual. Violence is thus accompanied by an act of self-justification that allows him to preserve his self-image. The value of this perspective does not lie in making his version factually plausible, but in revealing the psychological and ideological mechanism through which an aggressor can reinterpret violence as a consensual experience. In this sense, Le Gris’s perspective serves an important dramatic function, even if the film grants it no legitimacy as a truthful account of events. The distinction is fundamental: understanding how Le Gris subjectively constructs his version of events does not mean recognizing it as having the same factual validity as Marguerite’s version.
REFERÊNCIA:
Scott, Ridley, realizador. The Last Duel. 20th Century Studios, Scott Free Productions, Pearl Street Films, 2021, 2h 33 min.