The Last Duel is 2021’s Best Film
Some horrible hair, an abundance of medieval #smalldickenergy, a woman who decided to do the unspeakable — tell the truth, constructed in 3 POVs and culminating in probably one of the best one-on-one fight sequences in cinema for the last decade. The Last Duel was torture to watch but for all the right reasons so.
Even now. Even in 2021. Men get “rape” so very wrong. And it’s horribly heartbreaking that you have to explain it. In essence, any sexual act without active and enthusiastic consent is rape. However, Ridley Scott, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck tried to get it right one time. And they did. To be completely honest, I didn’t like that they invited a female writer to co-write the story and “get it right”, just because she is female and heavily broadcasted this. It didn’t feel honest. Nonetheless, it worked. The script is marvelous.
It tells the story of the last legally permitted trial by combat in history. The story is simple. I rarely tell the story or any part of it during my reviews but only the feelings you may get by watching it. But I’ll do an exception because it doesn’t matter here. So here it goes: A married woman in medieval France tells her husband that while he was away for a battle, his friend came by and raped her. The movie is divided into 3 parts and tells the exact same story from the point of view of the husband, the friend/rapist and the woman. It’s such an exceptionally great way of storytelling and insanely necessary when telling such stories.
The movie got hard backlash. People were saying that Damon, Affleck and Scott are not the right people to write and direct this. Damon and Affleck worked for years with Harvey Weinstein while knowing about him. Damon even made a very insensitive remark after Weinstein’s conviction where he said “I think the good guys, who don’t rape anybody are not getting enough praise.” Like wtf dude? Do we now have to praise every guy who doesn’t rape us, like it’s some kind of angelic act? And Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner where he just changed the script at the last minute to make his leading man basically rape his leading lady.. well.. just because he wanted so, without fulfilling any meaning. Just because the consensual sex was too boring for old, white, straight Hollywood men of the 80s. And in Blade Runner 2 he, acting as a producer, made a love story out of rape and made it the central plot. Is this movie an atonement attempt for them? I don’t know.
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I just have one problem with this film. It basically spoonfeeds you the rape trope. The rape is extremely apparent. A man chases a woman in her house where she is alone, grabs her and violently attacks and rapes her while she is screaming, crying for help and asking to stop. It’s so fuckin’ sad that in the 21st century we still have to explain to men that THAT is not ok, while, let me repeat myself, ANY sexual act without active, continuous, enthusiastic, vocal, verbal and loud consent is rape. Baby steps huh?
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The Last Duel bombed at the box office. $100M budget and only $10M grossed domestically. This is bad for a lot of reasons. The main being, the studios will pass on another opportunity to make another such film that is not a blockbuster or a superhero movie. That’s at least $90M loss. Please go and support this film in the theatres or don’t bitch about the lack of good original films in the future.