This one’s a bit rough, so I’m going to go ahead and say it, because you should know exa

This one’s a bit rough, so I’m going to go ahead and say it, because you should know exactly what you’re getting into if you decide to see this movie:The Last Duel is a story about a rape and rape culture.The story, based off of what was supposedly the last trial by combat in France (I think that’s not actually true but I’m not a history), goes like this: Marguerite, the wife of Jean de Carrouge, is raped by her husband’s frenemy Jacques le Gris and when she makes it public, her husband challenges him to a trial by combat. That’s the gist of it. The movie decides to tell the story through the points of view of these three people: first by Carrouge, second by Le Gris, and finally by Marguerite, before showing us the duel and what came of it.I think overall it’s a good movie and it’s worth watching, but it’s rough to deal with because it’s a movie explicitly about a rape. And you see that rape from two different points of view. Considering Le Gris’s defense is that it isn’t rape, I assumed that his version would be… well, not rapey, but it totally is. And Marguerite’s is more so. And I get why they did this, and I don’t want to dismiss it, but it still means that they show you a rape scene twice. I could easily watch this movie again if not for that. I would probably wait until this movie was released for streaming and home video, and then skip at least one of those sequences. I get it, but I don’t really… I have trouble with that.I think the format, showing from different points of view, is a relatively ordinary one in crime stories, so using it to tell the story of a horrendous crime, albeit a medieval one, feels like a natural fit. It lets you not only get to see different events the other characters weren’t there for, but it lets you see things though the context of different viewpoints. It lets you put those interactions into meaningful context. And it makes you question how things actually happened.Carrouges, for instance, sees himself as being a basically good guy in a rough patch of his life through a lot of the movie, unable to gather the money he needs because of the rough conditions of the past few years. Le Gris on the other hand depicts him as being entitled and whiny. Marguerite’s version of events shows him as a near-incompetent and could easily raise the funds he needed if he bothered to pay attention to his job as a land-holding nobleman.Supposedly, the makers of the film were disheartened at finding out that some audiences did not see Marguerite’s portion of the film as the absolute Truth, and judged her as biased as the others. I generally saw her portion as more truthful, in that it seemed the more realistic version of the events presented. But the fact is that the format of the film lends one to reading it as portraying different people’s biases. You can’t fault people for working with the setup that you presented them with.There are some obvious nods to more modern culture and events–the instance in which a man asserts that a woman cannot conceive by rape is incredibly reminiscent of the time a politician claimed that a woman will not conceive in a “legitimate rape” and it’s just as head-bashingly stupid in medieval France as it is today. I think this mostly works to tell the message of the film, but I do wonder how accurate it is to the time period? Is it because this stupidity is eternal, or are we just transposing modern stupidity that seems medieval into the medieval period?I don’t know!It’s also worthwhile discussing how well this movie ultimately does–because while it’s important to tell Marguerite’s story I also think it’s frustrating how long it takes to really give her any sort of agency in the movie. And ultimately it’s not like this movie is that much of a female empowerment story–and I understand that some people may think that it’s still a movie about a woman getting abused without any agency and so maybe it doesn’t quite work the way it’s meant to?I think it’s a worthwhile movie, but I also think it’s rough and it’s not a movie one should get into lightly. You need to know exactly what you’re getting into before you start screening the film. And like I said, I’d skip at least one of the rape scenes if you’re able to–and I get that it might be a dishonest way of watching the movie but I also think given the subject matter maybe I feel okay suggesting that?That’s my thought anyway. -- source link

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