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Why Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is a Medievalist’s Guilty Pleasure
At History Hit we don’t need reminding that films purporting to describe history can play fast and loose with the facts – and that sometimes those dramatic swerves from the historical record are not just tolerable, but worth indulging.
For Gone Medieval co-host and medieval historian Eleanor Janega, Ridley Scott’s 2021 film The Last Duel is such a film. It depicts a theoretical rape trial in the medieval period, presented from three different points of view. “So there’s the woman in question who is wronged, her husband and the man who did the wrong thing,” she explains.
“This is kind of a controversial one because, in the first place, people will ask: Eleanor, why are you having fun watching The Last Duel?” she says in an episode of Gone Medieval.
“But the reason why The Last Duel is for me a guilty pleasure is it hits the thing that usually annoys me about medieval history movies, which is that the ones that look like they’re incredibly historically accurate, they’re purporting to give you a super accurate picture of the past, and then they just aren’t.”
“But I really like it anyway, because I think it’s gorgeously acted, and I love the costumes, and I think it’s a really interesting story about how different people can experience things in different ways. And it gets enough medieval things just right that I do like it.”
The Last Duel is set in medieval France and stars Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Jodie Comer and Ben Affleck.
To its credit, Janega tells co-host Matt Lewis, “it’s got all these things that I love. There’s a rowdy banquet scene where they are reading out Andreas Capellanus’ De Amore, or The Art of Courtly Love, being flirty and sexy. I think that’s really fun, because I don’t think that enough medieval movies show that that happens.”
The Last Duel also depicts a contemporary understanding of conception, known as the two seed theory. “There is an idea that when men ejaculate during intercourse, so do women internally,” explains Janega, author of The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society. “And those two things mix together. Both men and women have semen, and that’s how you get a baby. So there is real emphasis put on, well, if you become pregnant as a result of what you say is a sexual assault, it can’t be because you enjoyed it. So there’s a lot of tension there.”
The film’s depiction of a banquet is less convincing. “They’re at a banquet and they’re looking at this beautiful spread that’s out in front of them, all the little nibbling bits of food. And she’s holding a little china plate and it drives me up the wall. China is very, very much an early modern thing in Europe. Occasionally a vase makes its way over from China. But you’re not going to have dainty little plates at a castle in France.”
And what of the film’s violent, main event – its trial by combat?
“It’s not something that you actually see in everyday life,” says Janega. “And so unfortunately, because the entire thing hinges on a big trial by combat in the end, my worry is it’s going to lead audiences into thinking, oh yeah, that’s just how medieval people are. They just get out a sword, the drop of a hat, you know?”
“I think it’s a really beautiful film,” Janega adds. “And the only reason I guess I feel guilty about it is that it’s almost too good. That’s my problem, is that when things look too good, then people might think that it’s accurate. And I’m like, no, just turn your brain off, baby. Just go with it.”
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