“The Last Duel”–A Fight to the End
The Last Duel (2021) is based on Eric Jager’s nonfiction account of the late 14th-century French trial in which an alleged rape of the wife of one nobleman is committed by another of lesser rank. The Last Duel is part medieval saga and part female revenge drama.
Set during the decade after the Black Death, and the calamitous Hundred Years’ War, social disturbances have ravaged France with debt and a reduced population to support the feckless aristocracy. Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon) is one such landowning but illiterate nobleman deeply in debt. Forced to become...