The Last Duel
or
"Deny...Deny...Deny"
Now, that's a big deal—we're all familiar with duels and jousting from the movies and their romantic notions of such brutalities—but this particular episode resonates now, for very deliberate reasons, and the 2004 book by Eric Jager, from which the film is based, predates that resonance, but it has been taken, and been transformed by recent cultural and sociological events (at least the acknowledgment of such), with a new, more informed and ironic eye. More towards that after the brief synopsis.
The players are real people and their stories are intertwined with the politics and fealty of 14th century France:
—Jean de Carrouges (IV) (played by Damon), a French Knight and governor of Normandy, of "rash and temperamental" manner, who after several campaigns and the death of his first wife and son, married Marguerite de Thibouville receiving as dowry several parcels of her disgraced father's land, which would lead to acrimony with Count Pierre d'Alençon.
—Jacques Le Gris (played by Adam Driver), friend and neighbor of Carrouges, and favored member of the court of Count Pierre d'Alençon (over Carrouges). The Count gave a parcel of land to Le Gris that Carrouges assumed was part of his wife's dowry, and the subsequent suit over that land infuriated the Count and caused animosity between the two French knights. It should be noted that Le Gris had a reputation as a womaniser.
—Marguerite de Carrouges (played by Jodie Comer) Second wife of Jean de Carrouges, and who accompanied her husband to a fete celebrating the birth of a friend's son. At this festivity, Carrouges and Le Gris publicly put aside their differences and Le Gris first met his friend's wife. Although the friendship was strained, it is here where things started to seriously deteriorate. The events that led to the duel are based on an accusation by Carrouges against Le Gris—that while the former was away fighting in Scotland, Le Gris forced his way into the Carrouges castle while his wife was alone and raped her. Knowing that when the crime is presented at the court of Count Pierre it would be dismissed, Carrouges pressed his charges to the Court of France, demanding a judicial duel. Le Gris denied the charges, and his lawyers called witnesses for Le Gris' account and against Marguerite's charges—she was six months pregnant at the time of the trial. Calling on her to testify, she swore the truth of the accusations, but the lawyers argued that, as she was pregnant, and she swore she didn't "enjoy" the encounter, that she was lying, as "science said" that rape could not produce a pregnancy, but a satisfying sexual experience could. The implication being that she had an affair with Le Gris and sullied his good name rather than invite the wrath of her husband.
The duel was allowed to determine the truth of the matter, as the winner of the contest—the last man standing—was obviously, by God's hand, telling the truth. If Le Gris won the duel, then not only would Carrouges be dead, but the charges would—God says—be proved false and Marguerite would be burned at the stake for committing perjury while testifying. There's a reason the period is called "medieval."
But, there is one truth hanging over it all: it's a man's world. As a cleric says at one point "rape is not a crime against a woman. It is a property matter." Women are a means to an end—the acquisition of property and brood-mares for progeny. It is no comfort at all that The Last Duel is set in the past as the arguments and attitudes have a familiar ring to them—I've heard the "rape could not produce a pregnancy" garbage come out of a U.S. representative recently discussing the abortion issue and a cleric's advice to "deny, deny, deny" the accusations against Le Gris are an all-too-familiar tactic in The Attorney's Handbook. Even the idea of burning a woman at the stake for perjury has the same base core-values of roasting her in the press. If the stakes weren't so high, one could take satisfaction in the spectacle of men chopping at each other with battle-axes just to keep them occupied and from doing more damage.
"A man's home is his castle" goes the old saying (you can tell that it's old in that it ignores the existence of women). And we've gotten used to period dramas in which those fortifications are "stormed." The Last Duel is just another deliberate forward assault on the impregnable stature of male dominance and the patriarchy—as backward a notion as royal ascendancy and as heretical as the divine right of kings—and we're just as slow to topple those structures even if we rushed to disprove those latter two. But, walls are vulnerable to time, and they eventually crumble with or without human intervention.
Human intervention helps, though. "Man" the battering rams and catapults.
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