** Notice to the reader: this essay discusses sexual assault in the context of The Last Duel **
And I guess it also contains some spoilers.
Last night I watched The Last Duel. I hadn’t intended to watch it because even from the trailer I got the impression it was a fakey feminist film. I didn’t bother looking into the movie (I can say now that if I’d known how it was going to unfold I wouldn’t have gone), but I was hearing chatter about it, so I figured why not just go see it?
It managed to be worse than I imagined it would be.
I’m not really on film Twitter, but I remember a few weeks ago a lot of tweets saying things along the lines of ‘In 2021, why are there still rape scenes in movies?’ I didn’t know what they were referring to, but at some point into the movie it became clear what those tweets were probably about. This movie has not one, but two scenes showing sexual assault.
I’ve tried to think about how this inclusion was discussed at a meeting, before the cast was set and the storyboards were made. I’d like to know the ways in which Nicole Holofcener, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon (the screenwriters) rationalized this as part of the story; and then how Ridley Scott (the director) decided it would be portrayed; and then how it was discussed with Dariusz Wolski (the cinematographer); and then how they spoke to Jodie Comer and Adam Driver (actors) about it. I’ve thought of the women on set—especially the young women—who were subjected to watching this scene happen in real time. I though about how Comer felt, having to embody this violation, to access that kind of pain and suffering in two different ways.
I would like to begin with an examination of the “narrative” “function” of this inclusion.
The movie begins with the duel scene and moves backwards, using three parts to narrate the same story from each of the main character’s perspectives—beginning with Matt Damon’s Jean de Carrouges, then Adam Driver’s Jacques Le Gris, and ends with Jodie Comer’s character Marguerite de Carrouges. The first perspective shift is interesting, we see the degrees of separation that differentiate one’s view from another’s. You see how bratty, blonde Ben Affleck is unequivocally blonde and bratty. You get used to the fact that in this corner of medieval France they spoke with a vaguely British accent and couldn’t pronounce their own names correctly. You quickly learn the natures of the men involved. In their own ways they’re both impatient, entitled, power-hungry, prideful, perpetually unsatisfied people—the difference is one is good at fighting and the other at counting. At first it was interesting to see how these men perceived her, it seemed in accordance with the times—she was something to be looked at, seldom heard. So, for the first chunk of this movie we seldom hear her.
The way this movie is set up, since Marguerite is put in a Madonna-whore complex through the eyes of these two mens, reinforces a sense of doubt as to what really happened during the assault. That sense became stronger after a scene where she seems to willingly go to Le Gris’ room during his section of the movie, a scene that is revealed to be a fantasy of his. This means that we are then suspended for a chunk of time, left questioning what really happened, ultimately questioning her. Even if the film “redeems” itself by telling us plainly her story is meant to be seen as “The Truth,” this movie was still very irresponsible in its treatment of this subject matter.
At some point it was decided by the aforementioned people, and I’m guessing approved by some higher-ranking body, that the ambiguity of this matter should be resolved in an upsetting, lengthy portrayal of sexual assault. Then they decided that it would be best resolved by showing that upsetting, lengthy portrayal twice. Since there aren’t many female DPs I could’ve guessed this movie’s DP was a man. The reason I knew the DP was a man was because of how those scenes were depicted, the second scene in particular. Somehow in both versions of this scene we see it in all angles besides her own—even in the part of the movie that’s supposedly hers. In the context of this movie, if that section was truly hers shouldn’t we have been staring at the pillows for most of this scene? Shouldn’t it have gone hazy or black at a certain point? Yet, in the second version we see the same focus on Le Gris as we did in the first one, showing him as an aggressor and making us bystanders in her agony. And unlike other scenes, that showed us new angles on the same scene, we effectively saw the sexual assault scene from a man’s perspective twice—save for the close up on her face and when she crumbles onto the floor after he leaves.
The overarching narrative that this story reinforced is the unfair hero arcs that women in film are often subjected to. Namely, that a woman’s strength is only affirmed on the other side of violence, subjugation, humiliation and contempt. I don’t know much about the technical aspects of film, but I’ve learned that, like all artistic mediums, choices are deliberately and precisely made to influence how we perceive a character and feel about a scene or dynamic. Other scenes, such as the verbal sparring between characters to reveal their feelings towards one another and the vague tension between Marguerite and her mother-in-law, are examples in which we see the writers and director capable of nuance. It’s then both surprising and not that the violent scenes are explicit renderings of these concepts, revealing Scott’s background in action and sci-fi movies, and the fact it was a movie led mainly by men based on a book written by a man. I don’t write that to be patronizing or rhetorical, but rather as a reminder of how perspective informs a person’s approach—the biases they’re privy and blind to—and why it matters who is telling the story and how.
There were moments when you see the writers and director winking at us, apparently trying to tell us they know what they’re doing. Those things seem more like pats on their own backs for: telling this story, calling it what it is instead of using medieval euphemisms, the horse metaphor, her steadfast dignity when she says things along the lines of “I’m telling the truth,” the invasive questions at her hearing, etc. But those details only go so far. Just as the disapproving reactions of women sitting behind or beside the decision-making men was certainly a new and interesting aspect for a period film, they still weren’t enough because all it showed was a general, slightly fictitious understanding of solidarity between women—best revealed by her supposed friend who doesn’t believe her. Similarly, the mother-in-law’s revelation that she herself experienced sexual assault more effectively positioned Marguerite as brave, and diFferEnT frOm oThEr giRLs, within the story than a wider-reaching acknowledgment that the physical, emotional, and sexual subjugation of women is transhistorical. Many of these moments were too fleeting and shallow to be of any real importance.
In fact, when I think about it as a whole, the scenes with women are so few and far between as to seem incidental. It’s noticeable because there are plenty of scenes in which we get insights into the interior worlds of the men and the lives they lead. The closest we get to a moment like this for Marguerite is when her maid tells her there’s a queen with pierced nipples, and I guess when they’re gossiping, but do those moments even count when the only thing they’re talking about are men and marriage and babies? It’s very cliché, very boys incorrectly guessing what women talk about with each other.
I guess what this movie does offer is a temperature check on the way sexual assault is perceived right now, mainly by men, but perhaps by us all considering our norms are androcentric. It would seem we lack a real conceptualization of the physical and emotional damage of assault, which, per the movies treatment of it, means it’s impossible to empathize with unless we see it. When Hollywood, as well as other industries and institutions, reckoned with sexual assault the takeaway, which continues to exist more as an ideal than a practice, was that we were going to start believing women. Showing the scene twice reinforces that underlying all the Progress™ we’ve seemingly made in this time, we still can’t believe that pain unless it’s directly in front of us. It brings to surface the dearth of understanding, particularly by cis and/or straight men, when it comes to sexual assault against women. It’s difficult for me to understand how the exploitation of women’s suffering in such a visual way was justified as a creative tool in this movie. The fact that the building of a world, the progression of this story and its characters, came into focus in the explicit moments of violence against a single woman—be it the assault scenes, or the way her husband violently grabs her by the neck and initially doesn’t believe her, only to then force her to have sex with him after he agrees to help her, thus revealing he’s not the doting, loving husband he thinks he is—renders the approach to this movie callous.
In the end, this movie’s objective is best summed up by its title, The Last Duel. Perhaps it’s a little bit about mirroring up our own biases when it comes to sexual assault, an examination of power, as well as the pettiness of men and the fragility of their delicate egos. But it’s mostly a story about a woman who is violated in service of its beginning and culminating scene: a long and violent pissing contest between two men, with intense sound design. Though the movie ends with a close-up of her face, it doesn’t change the fact that this movie isn’t really about her. The trailer makes her out to be much more of a main character than she actually is, conflating her looming presence over the story and Jodie Comer’s weighty performance with a false sense of agency they insisted on throughout and forced into the story whenever they could. Whether it’s the nature of the story itself or how this version rendered it, she’s still just a catalyst for a story about men, albeit one with more meaningful lines than women in period films are often afforded.
I left this movie with a deeply sunken feeling that turned into anger. I’m tired of the quiet dignity we see in women on screen, and then quietly expect from women in real life, who’ve had power inflicted upon them. I wonder what the adjacent stories about women “reclaiming” their power in retribution for violence inflicted upon them (movies I haven’t seen and am not rushing to)—The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Last Night in Soho, Promising Young Woman (it’s worth noting this is the only one of the aforementioned titles spearheaded by a woman), etc.—is actually accomplishing. A story can still be challenging and thought-provoking and compelling and meaningful without sacrificing other people’s anguish, particularly when it’s speculative, in the pursuit of art. To that point, while I still have yet to watch I May Destroy You, I’ve gathered from friends and Twitter that Michaela Coel’s story was compelling and remarkable in its honesty—something that takes a great deal of courage and sensitivity.
After thinking about this since last night and writing about it today, I’m left with a firmer understanding of the fact that not everybody can tell every story. I wonder how many more films like The Last Duel it’ll take for Hollywood to really accept that.