The Last Duel
Dec. 6th, 2021 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootWaste of a good base story. Waste of Matt Damon. Definitely a waste of Adam Driver. Adam Driver is fast becoming my favourite actor in bad films. He wasn't to blame for the mess they made of the last SW trilogy, or that bizarrely bad zombie thing, but god, I want to see him in something strong. Alan Tudyk had a similar place in my head for a while, as my favourite actor who gets so-so parts in fun movies (Wat, Wash, Pete the Pirate) but he's clearly come home in Resident Alien.
The Last Duel seems not to know what it wants to be. A nobleman's wife is raped by his friend, only they are not really friends(!) and it's three different viewpoints of the event, and all those viewpoints are strangely insipid, and then there's a duel and justice is done. The real life story, where they are actually good friends, would have given it a bit more sinew. It should be fierce or strange or something. But it just falls between two stools - at least two stools. Possibly more stools. Possibly it's just all stools.
More worthy of a screenplay are the ongoing adventures of Orb Lord. I watch the buzzing gossip with a kind of fascinated schadenfreude; He claims that Pythagorus is now the Commander of Time, and his earlier experiences of being very ill with HIV have metamorphosed into his actual death in hospital, only to be resurrected by aliens, a miracle apparently referred to in the BMJ. But this is not the stunner, no. The latest rumour doing the rounds is that he got his penis out on the 7.20 to Euston. Turns out that the ultimate source for this tidbit is Orb Lord himself, who seems to have taken photos of the event and posted them to Instagram.
He's now denying it, and I presume the photos have disappeared though I don't do Instagram so have no clue. But don't tell me this wouldn't make a film as interesting as The Last Duel.
Admittedly, it's not a high bar.
The Last Duel seems not to know what it wants to be. A nobleman's wife is raped by his friend, only they are not really friends(!) and it's three different viewpoints of the event, and all those viewpoints are strangely insipid, and then there's a duel and justice is done. The real life story, where they are actually good friends, would have given it a bit more sinew. It should be fierce or strange or something. But it just falls between two stools - at least two stools. Possibly more stools. Possibly it's just all stools.
More worthy of a screenplay are the ongoing adventures of Orb Lord. I watch the buzzing gossip with a kind of fascinated schadenfreude; He claims that Pythagorus is now the Commander of Time, and his earlier experiences of being very ill with HIV have metamorphosed into his actual death in hospital, only to be resurrected by aliens, a miracle apparently referred to in the BMJ. But this is not the stunner, no. The latest rumour doing the rounds is that he got his penis out on the 7.20 to Euston. Turns out that the ultimate source for this tidbit is Orb Lord himself, who seems to have taken photos of the event and posted them to Instagram.
He's now denying it, and I presume the photos have disappeared though I don't do Instagram so have no clue. But don't tell me this wouldn't make a film as interesting as The Last Duel.
Admittedly, it's not a high bar.
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Date: 2021-12-06 01:24 pm (UTC)https://mallorys-camera.dreamwidth.org/1031446.html
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Date: 2021-12-06 01:26 pm (UTC)What made it work for you?
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Date: 2021-12-06 03:39 pm (UTC)I wouldn't say it worked. 😊
But like I say in the review I linked to, I found Ridley Scott's (historically inaccurate) fixation on turning France into a weird subArctic environment fascinating. Just the oppressiveness of the light. And also, I found the fact that the film was apparently based on historical fact, and the husband actually believed the wife when she said she'd been raped pretty interesting. One has to figure that rape was a default for all women in the 14th century who dared immodestly to raise their gaze above the ground.
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Date: 2021-12-06 04:06 pm (UTC)Yes, it is a strange thing to consider that having sex you didn't want with a man you didn't desire was very much par the course for the medieval woman. People talk wonderingly about anchorites/nuns etc. Personally I can see why some women would have preferred it.
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Date: 2021-12-06 04:09 pm (UTC)