 movie show here on Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. It's a five o'clock block on a given Wednesday. And that's George Kaysen. He's my co-host for the show. And we talk about movies here in the movie show. And today we're reviewing a movie called The Last Duel on cable. It's a very recent movie. It's a very good movie. It's got a really powerful cast. And the cast does a good job. And really Scott was the director. And George has some feelings about that. And it is a study of the 14th century. I mean, you did want to know about the 14th century, didn't you? It was an important century. In France it was. This is set in France in the 14th century. And it's right after the problem with the black plague. With the black plague in the, I guess, 1340 or so, 1345, it swept across Europe. And that included France. And they had no way of dealing with it. It killed half of Europe. It killed half of Europe. So this is after that. And our hero, let's call him Jean for this purpose, Matt Damon, who's an excellent actor, had lost his first wife to the plague. And that sort of sets the environment what happens now. So George, it's like 1455 or so. I make that 1355 or so. Where are we with this? Where are we in France? And where are we with the territories and the nobility involved here in the last duel? Well, not only did he lose his first wife, he lost a little son as well from the plague. Thank you. He lost his wife, which was his heir. So you have all these machinese that the British had taken over part of France. And they were battling, the French were battling the British to try to throw them back over the English Channel to get them out of there. So you have all these different noble players. Ben Afflecht is playing one of the the king's cousin who's in a very powerful position. And they've got Ben Afflecht with blonde hair. I didn't initially, I didn't recognize that it was Ben Afflecht because he's sort of lost weight and he's got blonde hair. And he's playing this arrogant role. And he has a one of his close associates played by Alan, by Driver, Alan Driver, and driver, Adam driver, Adam driver. And he, he's, that's LaGrie. You know, that's Jacques LaGrie, right? Really mean. Yeah. And so mean, he's like to the point of pathological. Yeah. And then you have Jean de Courage, Courage, Courage. And that's Matt Damon. And he, he marries the daughter of another noble who had been like a traitor, had been siding with the British, but they didn't execute him. They, you know, they, they jailed him for a while. Yeah. And he had the mark of Canaan. They, they didn't like him. The French nobility didn't like him. They didn't trust him. Although he didn't, he wasn't executed because of his collaboration with the British. They treated him as low life. But he had a beautiful daughter, Marguerite. And, and he married the Marguerite off to, to the Matt Damon character, Jean de Courage, right? Married, married him off to him. And, and, and he promised him some, some, some special land, right? Of his as dowry, because in those days, everything was dowry. So not only are you going to get this beautiful wife, right? But he got, he got some land, but he wanted this one specific parcel that he really wanted. And what happened is that the King and, and his King's cousin ended up giving it to Jacques, Jacques de Crete, right? So, so, so it seems that, that Matt Damon's character had saved the driver's, driver's character in an earlier battle. And they had become close friends. But as Jacques was rose, you know, in the hierarchy, they started to get to be a rivalry. And then when he was given this piece of, this parcel, you know, big parcel that had been promised to, to Jean, that, and there was jealousy here because Adam Driver was not from nobility. He had just risen, you know, he was a squire and the, and Jean was a, was a knight, right? So there was this rivalry that developed, right? So thing is that the key thing to this whole thing is that Jacques ended up raping the wife. I mean, you're moving too fast. Okay, all right. You know, because, I mean, it was more than a rivalry. Matt Damon was relatively inocente, trying to do the right thing, trying to have a good life with this very pretty wife that he had, who was very accomplished. And his childhood friend was Jacques, and Jacques was pathological. And every time Jacques had a chance to screw Jean, he did. And he screwed him out of that land. He screwed him out of, ultimately out of his, almost out of his wife. He screwed him out of position with the Lord, Ben Affleck, and he screwed him out of position with the king. So it's really a story of competition, of unfair competition, of rampant politics in the French nobility and the French court in the middle of the 14th century. And, you know, from my point of view, it's a study of the society at the time. How important land was, how important the nobility and your lineage was, and how important the church was, the church was a big player in all of this. We knew that. And it's the calamitous 14th century by Barbara Tuckman, a history professor at Columbia, who wrote some fabulous history books. This was one of them, the calamitous 14th century. And we saw inside that century in this movie. So I like this movie so much, because we saw how they lived. We saw their homes accurate. You know, he kept looking for the tension to detail this movie. Is this, you know, an accurate portrayal of the way it was, the way they conducted themselves, the way they related to each other, the way they related to their wives, even down to, you know, their sexual experiences with their wives, and their principles, their mores, which were not the same as we have or we had before, you know, before we lost our mores here the last few years. The way the government worked, the way the nobility worked, the way the king worked. I mean, Ben Affleck's position, for example, he wasn't a particularly smart guy. He just happened to be in that lineage. And the king was not a smart guy at all. He was a teenager. He knew nothing. And it was hard for him to function, because he didn't have any experience or education or any inclination, I mean, any talent as king. You know, it surprises people that kings could be idiots. And yet here we see a king, a king of France as an idiot. So, you know, to me, I kept thinking, you know, was it a place that I'd like to live? Would I like to live in the 14th century in France? Would I like to enjoy the Black Plague? Would I like being around people who are trying to take things from me and belittle me, marginalize me, undo my credibility? It was, in a funny way, it was like grade school or high school, where the kids are, you know, kind of a little mean, and nobody stops them. There was nobody to stop them. And the only thing they had was the ability to call upon the church, which was ineffective, or call upon the rituals of the day, that is dueling. And dueling was decided not by the talent of the individual involved in the duel, but by God's will. God spoke through you. If you were right, God would make you win. If you were wrong, God would make you lose. It was all, you know, from the church and it was all religious. And finally, I mean, you did some research on this, and I'm interested, you know, this seems to be a true story. There's a lot of things that you could learn about the 14th century that are true, according to my reading of the Tuckman book and French history in general. But was the story true, George? Yes, it was a true story, basically very true story. And they filmed at actual castles. So the castles were all realistic, right? That was definitely true. And, you know, basically, to me, my view was a little different than yours. Jean was also a flawed character. There was some flaw now, because he had lost his first wife, and as his kid, he was obsessed with an heir, having an heir, he had to have an heir. So what he was making love to his wife, I mean, it wasn't very sensitive. I mean, he was just like a boor, you know, you don't make love to your wife or any woman. Well, what you're seeing it through the lens of the 20th, the 22nd century, 21st century, you're seeing it in romantic, in terms of romantic love. I think you have to give more credit for the fact that if he did not create an heir, if his wife did not provide him with an heir, he was that was the end of the line. Exactly. And he would lose his power. He would lose his wealth. He would lose his lands. He needed, absolutely needed to create an heir. So it was a job. You know, you and your wife had a job to do, and you had to get there in bed and do that job until she got pregnant. And if it was hard work, I mean, I guess it's hard work when you do it under pressure that way. And, you know, I could see somebody losing any level of romanticism in sex, which is required of you. And the thing is, they had a scene with his mayor, white mayor, especially that he had bought, right? And the stallion came into the pen and wanted to impregnate the mayor. And he got his stick, because he didn't want this stallion to impregnate. He wanted a finer stallion. So he started beating the black stallion off his mayor, right? And then he ended up hurting the mayor, you know, which they showed. So, you know. This is Mendelian, Mendelian heredity. It's they understood that you would get a better outcome if you bred two high value horses. And they knew enough to know that if you didn't do that, the line of the horses would diminish, the value of the horses. It was their perception of genetics, of heredity, of Mendelian heredity, that came, you know, much later. So that was a very interesting scene. God forbid the mayor should get pregnant by the wrong stallion. Yeah. Now, the thing is, where was I here? Yeah. So the thing is, yeah, but the church and the judges were asking Marguerite, the wife, do you take pleasure when you have sex with your husband? And she lied, because you could see on her face, she wasn't, it wasn't pleasurable for her. So the thing is, because they were trying to figure out whether it, I don't want to get the whether the gree had actually raped her, and, you know, whatever, right? So, so bottom line is she got pregnant, right? And we'll get into that too. I have some theories about that. So the thing is, they were asking and she lied because you could see when they were having sex that with John, she was not enjoying it at all. It was like, you know, and the church believed that only if a woman is has is gaining pleasure, is she going to get pregnant, right? So this, this all plays into this later in the movie, right? And it gets really, really interesting. So, so that, you know, you tell me when we should start talking about the rape, because there's some other issues. Okay, well, yeah, just discover a couple of other things. So there was a certain amount of military action. And the French were adventurers. And they had the English on on French soil. We forget that the French were fighting the English a lot. And the English came over from England to take pieces of France. These guys were both involved in it. You had a very interesting twist on how it worked, what the command relationships were in the army, what it meant to be the leader. And then battle itself were plenty of battle scenes there that that really made you wonder what kind of experience that was. You get in there and you swing that sword in every direction. You kill everybody you can kill. At the end of the day, you have a field full of dead people. It was no fun being in the army. And somehow they got people to do that. So it begins to, you know, it begins to show you how life was. I mean, if you can see how things are going in the army, and why people are going to really near certain deaths in these battles, why? What was going on in that society that you would do that? What was going on to elevate certain individuals like John and Jacques to be to be leaders in the army? And by the way, John was a real hero in those battles. And Jacques was playing around. He was avoiding the risk. He was doing politics with the higher ups. So he avoided having to put his life on the line. You could hate the guy. He was really pathological. On the other hand, as you said, the relationship of husband and wife different. And in terms of old fashioned romance, you think of the French and you think of looking back with a movie made now back to the 14th century, and you could find romance in there. Hey, romance was different. The relationships, not only sex, but the whole relationship was different. You know, the wife had succumbed to the husband's will. He could tell her what to do, went to come, went to go and all that. And wives except Marguerite, you know, were not supposed to be educated very much. And they weren't supposed to know stuff and speak other languages. And she was special. She was really a class act, which made her attractive in a way, but also hard to manage. So the relationships of the husbands and the wife and the children and the people and the nobility, all different. And you try to find common denominators that you try to see it in terms of Ridley Scott's view of it through the lens of modern times. And it's hard to connect. What it does is it's teaching you that life in general, the society of this French community was different, way different. Now we enter Emil Zola and the human experiment. Now you have these guys. Jacques had always coveted Marguerite. He wanted her. He was always making eyes at her. And she was making eyes at him so that it was not simple. And all of a sudden, now he breaks into, by deception, he gets into her house when Jean is away on some visit to Paris or something. He gets in her house and, okay, this is the kernel of the movie. What happens? Before I get into the actual thing when he violated her, right? Jean's mother was a pretty hard woman. Harriet Walker, she played the role very well. She took all the servants and left Marguerite alone in that house, which sort of bugged me a little bit, right? Why did she do that? Now they had been married five years, Jean and Marguerite. She hadn't gotten pregnant. It was critical that she had to have an heir. She had to get pregnant and have a child so that eventually, when Jean goes back into battle, if he dies, she'll still have a place to live, right? The mother, right? If there's no heir, she's going to be in the street, right? It's always Marguerite, by the way. The two of them are in the street. Yeah, the two of them. They'll both be in the street. So my gut feeling, and this may be all totally wrong, that she set up that thing for Jacques to rape. And that's reinforced, Jean, by the fact that, and this is again a view of the 14th century, is before Jacques left on his military adventure that day, or before Jean left, he said to her, make sure to lock the door and make sure there's somebody with you, he said. And that opens up a whole kind of cultural point that reminds me of chastity belts. You know, women were always subject to this kind of rape, abuse, what have you, and they had to be locked up. They had to be protected. You couldn't leave them alone, because there were a lot of people that would take advantage of them. It was, after all, the 14th century. And so he says that, and you get very concerned when the mother leaves, leaves Marguerite alone in a castle, a way big castle, with no protection, no staff, nobody there to help her in case somebody got in. And Jacques knew that, okay, and he got in. And then he essentially had his way, according to the rendition, the first rendition, there's more than one rendition of what happened here. This is ultimately a legal movie, isn't it? Rashomon, what's his name? This was based on Akira Kurosawa, 1950 movie. This was a Japanese movie where there were three different views from the three different players. And that's what they did here. And that's one of my problems with this movie. It went too long. We'll talk about that too, because of this Rashomon style, right? The same scene three different times with slight variations, depending on whose view. So what were you saying, Jay? I've just lost my train of thought from him. Okay, so here we are. We're in the crucible. Jacques uses his manservant to gain by deception access through the castle. Marguerite opens the door. Now, Jean and Marguerite, who have winked and blinked at each other in the past, are alone in the castle. And Jacques can have his way for what happens. Well, he tells her he's in love with her, that he's obsessed with her, right? And she says, no, I'm married. I can't, you know, I mean, this happens a lot, you know. No, no, no, no, I'm married. I'm married to my husband. So he chases her up into the, and she runs into her bedroom so she can lock the door, but he's able to just push the door as she's locking it, right? And then he ravishes her. He rapes her, right? And, you know, obviously, it's a traumatic experience, but, you know, she was moaning. So maybe she was enjoying it. I mean, you know, I mean, she knew that this was wrong, you know, but from my perception, you know, this was a rape, but maybe my perception- She succumbs. She succumbs. She protests. I suppose, you know, in a court today, he would be found guilty of rape for sure, seeing that version of it. But ultimately, she succumbs. And then he says to her, don't tell anybody, I'm leaving now, and he left. End of that. But then it goes from there. She does, she cannot keep quiet. Yes. Jean gets back and she has to tell him. This is a horrible thing that happened. It violates every norm in the culture. She has to tell him, and he has to have, he has to require accountability from Jacques. And Jacques denies it. And you hate him because because you saw this with your own eyes. And you saw that it was pretty much a rape. But now Jacques is denying all the bad things that Jacques has done to Jean over their lives together in this region of France in every way. Now he lies. And so we have honor. We have honor. Marguerite is going to back up her husband. And she says, I was raped. And, you know, I kind of believe her because she's a nice person, essentially. John is in a state of outrage. And then all the facts point to Jacques as a liar. But it's not all that clear, right? Because we have the Rashomon repetition of what happened. And every time you see the scene, you see it over and over again, it seems to suggest that she went to the bedroom knowing that he would follow her. She went to the bedroom because that's where you make love. She went to the bedroom not to escape him but to invite him. And it's not at all clear that she was resisting. But tell us, how did that evolve? And where does it wind up for you? Did she or did she not agree? Did he or did he not rape her? Well, from Jacques' perception, he's telling the priests that he has sinned, you know, Catholics, you go to confession, and that he has committed adultery. He's not saying rape, he's saying adultery, that he slept with somebody else. So from his perception, she was a willing participant. You have that today too, you know? But from what I could see, initially, she was not a willing participant. She might have just, as you said, succumbed at the end. And maybe even enjoyed it, maybe a little bit, you know? Because her friends, you know, she had told them that Jacques is a practice, he's handsome, right? So there's that fine line. But yes, she was married. And that was, and at least he admitted it was adultery to the priest, right? Now, one of the things that really bothers me is the whole thing with God, and I'll get into that. We don't have that much time left. But, you know, that God would make the decision, whoever won that duel. And both of these guys, because of their, because of their arrogance and their egos, right? The church told Jacques, we can, you know, you have a better chance with us to get off, right? And with Jean, there were other options for him. But what he did is by having, forcing a duel, his margarite could have been burned at the stake if he lost that duel. But he didn't care. It was his ego. He thought he's going to win. Both ego maniacs, both of them. So both of them wanted a duel, when, you know, either one or the other was going to die. So they had this bad blood between them. And I guess Jacques really wanted his former friend to die so he could get margarite, you know? And Jean, it was his own. I wouldn't have gotten margarite. If she was found to lie, if she was found to lie, she would have been burned right there. At the stake. In the dueling ground. They wouldn't have wasted five minutes burning her at the stake, you know? You're right. You're right. So I forgot. So I think what's really interesting at this point in the evolution of the story is that she makes the charge. Jean makes the charge. The local Ben Affleck crowd, they, they're sympathetic to Jacques because Jacques has compromised and corrupted all of them. He's a corruptor. And the question is whether there will be a duel. Because duels in the 14th century in France were on the way out. It wasn't a productive experience. And the church was backing up Jacques. Jacques really had it wired politically. And Jean was having an uphill battle to insist on a duel. You're right. He had other options. He could have not dueled. He probably would have been very embarrassed, lost his honor. Because everybody knew, you know, there was at least an adultery here. Okay. So they go to the king. That adolescent king. And they try the case before the king. And it's interesting. The question before the king was not guilt or innocence. It's whether Jean's demand for a duel would be granted. Okay. He could have said no. But he said yes. Jean made a persuasive case that at least was an issue that would require Jacques to respond in a duel. And of course, everyone in the room said, well, God speaks through the duel. If Marguerite is innocent, then Jean will win the duel. Because God has given us, you know, this truth. If Jean, you know, ends the duel to the death. If Jean doesn't win, then A, Marguerite gets burned because it means she's lied. And God has spoken and Jacques, you know, survives. Very interesting influence by the church, by the nobility, and this very strange legal proceeding in front of the king. Okay. And then we go to the final chapter. Because the king has said, yes, all right, you want a duel? Duel. And everybody shows up. And it was, I really loved this touch. It was in the wintertime. So the ground was covered with frost. It had snowed. You don't think of medieval France like that. You don't think of the 14th century, but they had, they had seasons. This happened to happen in the winter. Okay. Let's talk about the duel. What happens, George? Well, they get, they're on their horses, right, with their lances, right? And then one of them, I think Jean falls off his horse, or the horse has a problem. So then, then Jacques is the only one, and then Jean is able to get him off his horse. So then they're battling back and forth, right? And, and Jacques in his arrogance, he sort of gets sidetracked, you know, for a moment. And that's when Jean takes charge, right? And he gets him down and he tells him, admit it, admit it, that you rape my, you rape my wife, you're right. And he says, no, no, I didn't rape her, right? So then Jean goes and takes the knife, his sword and slits Jacques's throat. And then Jacques is dead. And then they take his body and they hang him naked. And they drag his body and then they, you know, then put up his body upside down to show, you know, that he, he's the wrong, the wrong one, that God make the decision, thank God for Marguerite, that, that her husband won because otherwise she would have been burned at the stake. So that's, that's the final thing. And then, yeah, so, you know, that, that's how it, that's how it ends. And then the crowd is cheering, you know, because, because, you know, the right man won, you know, but I think that Jacques, he sort of knew, you know, that he was wrong. And I think that sort of impacted his ability to in the, in the battle. I mean, he, he knew he was guilty, you know, he, he was obsessed with Marguerite, obsession. He had all these other women. He had loads of women he could have sex with, but he was obsessed, was in love with this woman, right? So he knew he was wrong. So I think that's why he lost because subconsciously, he knew he was wrong. And that, so, and maybe in that way, God prevailed, but bothers me to think that, that, you know, that God will make the decision, you know, people, my family, when someone gets ill is dying, they pray, you know, God helps those who help themselves, you know, if someone's sick, you don't get medical, you don't get medical help, the proper medical, you're gonna, you're gonna go, you know, I mean, God praying is good, but, but it's also getting the proper science, this, you know, what medical science can do for you. And nutritional science, we get into that too. I, you know, nutritional and medical science will save you. And, you know, ultimately, like so many things over the confidence game, I agree with you, John was confident because he felt he was on the right. And if there were issues about whether Marguerite had succumbed, you know, to the rape, he didn't see that. He saw the way she presented it to him, which was, you know, when he had returned, she told him she accepted that. And so it became a matter of honor. And if it was a religious experience, it was also an experience of confidence. And I agree with you, the Jacques, who was a psychopath, he didn't really have the same kind of confidence, especially when he was unable to beat John in the first part of the duel. And I also thought it was interesting that all these guys were wearing, you know, metal, metal night, night's armor. Okay. And around their necks, they had this mesh, this, okay. And in the battles that we saw in the movie, as you're right, it's a long movie, a lot of material, you can see how they would kill their adversaries. The idea was to get a knife under that mesh and go for the throat. The mesh would stop a knife, but if you could get under it, they could win them. Okay. And that's exactly what happened in the duel, that he found a way to get under the armor. And he, it wasn't what happened. He killed them by stabbing them through the mesh, I think. Anyway, there's so much violence in the movies these days, that did not disappoint. There was plenty of violence there. And she watched it being chained. She had these foot cuffs on her legs. She couldn't run away. And she was on this big stand watching. And her life was equally in jeopardy. But I think, don't you agree that all of that experience, although it was a redemption, the success of honor and for that matter, religious, religious imprimatur, fact is the marriage was wrecked. Because she didn't like the fact that he took this position, put her life at risk. And he was a crazy bugger that he would do that to her. And although she lived, luckily, I think she was pretty ticked off at him, the marriage didn't work after that. Am I right? Yeah, he died six months later in battle. And she lived there for 30 years. And that's one of the feminist things. They showed her, she was a pretty smart manager of that castle. But she, in those days, she was property. She was his property. She wasn't the, I mean, women were property at that. So that was, he was protecting his property more than her honor. Right. And so, yeah, so she lived for 30 years later. And she was, she ran that castle for 30 years, never had another kid, but had that one kid who, from my gut feeling was driver's seat. Was that, that was not Sean's kid, it was, you know, Jacques's kid. But so she, yeah, that's, that's the whole, my major problem that they put made this as a feminist thing for today. But it was a different era. It was women were property. I mean, she was just one of these real smart cookies, right? Who was able to run that castle and that plantation for like 30 years on her own. But she was a rare, rare bird in those days. They were, Well, she did well. She came from a dishonored family. We didn't have great prospects. She was lucky to find Jean who had was landed and a night he was. And she came out of it, all this trouble. She came out of it pretty well with the castle, with a child, arguably a child would inherit the castle. So that was the way it worked in France. But I, you know, I asked you earlier, George, whether you would like to live in 14th century French, you know, 1350, 1360 like that. And I, I've, from this discussion, it's clear. I don't want to live there. I wouldn't go. I wouldn't go there. It was no fun. I would not want to live there. Definitely not. I mean, I would rather be in this age now where we're living with all the problems we have with everybody battling and killing each other. But, but we live in a better age with science, with sociology, the way we deal with each other, more like, you know, Pono Pono, they call it. I think, yeah, here, you know, much, much better time to be living in today than the 14th century in France. You know, yeah. Yeah, I was mostly structured around the royalty and the church, and you didn't have a whole lot of control over your life. That's what the message was. And I mean, it makes me want to go read Barbara Tuckman's book, The Distant Mirror, the calamitous 14th century again, this outstanding discussion that really helps to appreciate the movie. So what would you give this movie? The production values were terrific. The acting was absolutely great. These stars really showed us their stuff. The script writers really had done a lot of research. I know, you know, like the way really Scott handled the, you know, the women's rights issue, but gee whiz, this was a movie to teach you and to also get you involved in a very difficult experience historically. So what do you give it on a scale of 10? Given all the plus historical stuff, I would only give it an eight because I have some issues with this movie in terms of trying to make, put it in the current day, you know, directing that. So I would give it an eight. The acting was really excellent. The historical was excellent, but I'd give it an eight, not a nine or a 10. From my perspective, you may probably give it a better one. I would, I'd give it a nine. And if we were talking about fractions, I might give it a fraction more than nine. I really enjoyed the movie a lot. And mostly because of the historical nature, the quality of the acting and the challenges it presented because you didn't know for sure. It left you wondering, it left you interpreting. And I think that's probably the way it was in those days. So George, what about, what about our next movie? Got any ideas? You know, I've talked about things like Schindler's List and then, you know, my family in Turkey 15, but you know, those kind of things, you know, but I would pretty much let you do your thing. You know, whatever you want to, whatever you find, you just watch a lot more movies than I do because I'm involved with school. So if you want to, if you want to see, if you see something you like. I have, and I want to suggest it to you now in hopes that you will look at it. Cable movie again. They're all cable movies now. It's called The Last Day of Capitalism. Oh, okay. The Last Day of Capitalism and it is a very, very, very unusual and intense movie. You love the characters, but you also hate them. You love the, the colloquy, you love the script. It's very, it's riveting. Anyway, take a look at the last, the last day of capitalism. And we'll circle back in a couple of weeks, maybe examine that one. We'll do. Thank you, George. Thank you, George. George Kasin. Now, this is the movie show here on Think Tech. Thank you, George. Aloha. Aloha.