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THE LAST DUEL: LOST IN TRANSLATION

BY SUZY JARRATT

It is one of the biggest commercial flops in director Ridley Scott’s career and he blames it on millennials “who don’t want to be taught anything unless it’s on a cell phone”. But he has no regrets about making The Last Duel (2021), a mediaeval tale of betrayal and vengeance.

Matt Damon, as Jean de Carrouges, plays a knight who challenges his former friend Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) to a duel after his wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) accused Jacques of raping her.

The film lasts almost two hours – it seems so much longer.

One of the memorable aspects of Scott’s 26th feature are the hairstyles. Matt Damon sports a mullet and closely resembles the lead singer of Metallica. Comer’s Princess Leia-bangs are eye-catching and Ben Affleck, who plays a count, has a platinum-dyed Caesar cut. Driver, however, just has simple shoulder-length locks which frame his long, gloomy face. He spends much of the film resembling a melancholy undertaker.

But he does look okay on the back of a horse, as does Damon who, over the last 20 years, has ridden in films such as All the Pretty Horses, True Grit and The Great Wall, where he was a mounted archer no less.

The Last Duel was made in France and Ireland using horses sourced from these two countries, together with hundreds of extras and stuntmen. There appeared to be even more up on the screen in the final edit due to the extensive use of CGI (computer generated images).

Also on the picture were specialists from The Devil’s Horsemen, which provides horses, carriages and armour for the film industry. Adam Driver worked with some of its riders and, in the duelling scene shot in Ireland, rode Xandor, one of this UK company’s Friesians. “They did jibe well,” complimented one of the Horsemen.

TRIVIA

Ben Affleck co-wrote The Last Duel with Matt Damon and screen and TV writer Nicole Holofcener. He has little to do with horses in this film but he did work with them several years ago when he checked into rehab for alcohol. The facility encouraged patients to embrace equine therapy, believing that horses can provide them with a nurturing relationship that could help them battle against emotional anguish.

When on location in France, some of the movie’s action footage was overseen by driving international Benjamin Aillaud, formerly the equestrian director of Cavalia, who took time away from training four-in-hand teams. Prior to working on the film he had participated in the 2019-20 FEI Driving World Cup, coming seventh at Lyon. The event was won by Australia’s most successful equestrian, Boyd Exell.

“I’ve created a new team of Lipizzaners,” said Aillaud. “Our Arab-Friesians proved too slow for indoor competition, which is my first love. These new horses will gain experience and increase their power during the coming months and we’ll be competitive again next year.”

Throughout the filming of TLD, animal safety was a priority and precautions were taken to ensure there were no injuries. In a battle scene where armour-clad soldiers gallop through water lopping off body parts and shouting a lot, a concrete base was added to the bottom of the river. “We didn’t want the horses hurting their ankles,” stated a very earnest action director.

Any dead horses on the screen were dummies, lances were made of easily broken plastic tipped with foam and no real limbs were severed.

TRIVIA

The chainmail worn in the film is plastic and was used in Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. It came from New Zealand’s Weta Workshop which was founded by Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson. The chainmail is manually crafted, with workers creating each actual circle, and joining them by hand.

The original duel, which took place in 1386, has been meticulously documented in history books. It began on horseback, the men charged four times then killed each other’s horses and ended the fight on foot.

“It wasn’t very cinematic, the guys looked like giant tin cans,” said Damon. “They had tiny eye slits and it would have been a very awkward affair, so the decision was made to free them up a bit with changes to the armour. It definitely isn’t logical that the characters would be wearing helmets with visors only covering half their faces,” he added, “but it’s extremely helpful for the audience in terms of keeping track of who’s who in the fight.”

It took a fortnight to film the duel, beginning with the jousting sequences which were largely performed by doubles. In scenes where the actors are cantering towards each other, there were stunt riders out of shot holding lances to which cameras were attached. The second week covered the action of Damon and Driver on the ground wielding a lot of hardware. Again, a lot of CGI was used, as well as a fake Adam Driver head.

Earlier in the picture there is some horse action which is very real – no dummies, special effects or doubles. A stallion is seen serving a mare – and that is exactly what happened.

ADAM DRIVER & THE BURBERRY COMMERCIAL

In TLD, Driver wears armour, and many different hats and capes. In a recent Burberry commercial he hardly wears anything at all apart from a pair of skin-tight pants.

This big budget 60-seconder for Hero cologne was directed by Jonathan Glazer in the Canary Islands. The actor worked on it prior to starring in the Ridley Scott picture and features him bounding down a beach towards the sea alongside a palomino. Underwater he swims up to the horse, a different one, and their limbs flail about in the murky water. In the final shot, where they’re on the sand, a backlit Driver stands against the sunset at one with the horse. In other words — a centaur.

Burberry, for those unfamiliar with this company, is a luxury fashion house which for over 150 years has been selling overpriced clobber modelled by sullen, overpaid, thin people. Its logo is a horse rider carrying a shield. Hero, its first fragrance, comes in an angular bottle which its creative director described as “an abstract reinterpretation of a horse’s hoof”. Actually, it just looks like a triangle.

Prior to filming Driver had trained long and hard to get into shape. “The pre-production briefing was: ‘your body will fuse with the horse’s body’,” he recalled. “Jesus, horses are pretty powerful, it was a lofty goal! It didn’t seem like a job where you’d just show up, be filmed and go home. It required a lot of work, consideration, travel and time.

“For two months I tried to become as sinewy as a horse, which is exhausting and interesting,” he explained. “And definitely peppered with moments of ‘what the hell am I doing?’”

Supplying and handling the horses was Madrid-based stuntman and trainer Ricardo Cruz who Driver had met before. “I’d worked with him on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote,” he said. “I’d done several things before with horses and I’d ridden, off and on, when I was a kid. I’d had a couple of scares so I knew if they were running at me to run in the opposite direction. But nothing quite like in this commercial — wading in a body of water and having them charge at you.

“There were lots of horses on the shoot because they can only run them so much. It’s like one horse and five of its clones. They’re big and they’re prima donnas,” he added. “It’s nerve-racking when you’re treading water in the ocean and they pull this horse out, and he turns around and just stares you down with his mouth open. Having to swim with him, then latch on and ride him to shore is definitely something I don’t think I’ll repeat in my life.

“Horses can only do so many laps, so you have like five horses that all have different personalities and relationships to swimming; some are more willing than others. You’re doing it with scuba divers who are battling technology and trying to communicate with you — I wasn’t wearing a headset — and all of those things made it really challenging.

“Normally I don’t like looking at my films, but I actually watched the Burberry ad. It was really exciting and ambitious.”

It is quite possible more people have seen this commercial than The Last Duel!

(The Last Duel is currently on Foxtel and is available on DVD.) EQ

Next time in Equestrian Life’s Horses and Movies, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse.

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