Saturday, October 23, 2021

Ridley Scott. The Last Duel.


The action is good, period details are excellent but the movie characters are underdeveloped. There is no ambivalence in them. Ridley Scott freely borrowed cinematic stuff from Alaine Resnais--repeated shots of the same scene to enhance realism, and used the template of the "Return of Martin Guerre".  

I am sure that his characters were such in real life: J. de Carrouge was a dependable but tempestuous and semi-literate boor, his wife--a wronged woman, LeGris--a social climber devoid of any scruples and Count d'Alencon--a scheming Renaissance prince straight from Machiavelli--enlightened but ruthless and immoral. But this does not make a movie interesting. I would wish a conscious retreat from the historical chronicles--that LeGris was really madly in love, that Marguerite was torn between her true feelings and conjugal duty, and that the Last Duel was essentially a glorified suicide of LeGris to save the honor of his beloved, even at the cost of his own soul--not a trivial consideration for the Middle Ages.   


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