Rashomon should have just told us what actually happened

Bad exposition is always tedious. But in "The Last Duel" it undermines everything about the movie

One of the biggest dividers between good and bad writing is how they handle exposition. Obviously, when possible show don't tell. And I'm not talking about when a character basically exists to be the viewpoint of the audience. That’s usually a necessary evil in genre movies. Although less so in TV where you have much more time to expand out the world.

The bad way is when a minor character explains some obvious fact to a major character that's a basic part of their world. This bugged me about “Margin Call.” And perhaps a reason the movie didn't do better.

But I've been doing a “Game of Thrones” rewatch. And even though I’ve rewatched the seasons a few times since for the first time since the show ended I've watched season 6 (I just pretend 7 & 8 don’t exist). And the Iron Born priest has to explain how the laws succession work to Yara (the heir apparent). Which is one of many examples of how the writing dropped off after season 4.

But to my mind the worst example of this is “The Last Duel.” Because not only is it bad exposition. But explaining something the character should know becomes a plot point which undermines what they’ve been establishing about the character. And makes the themes of the movie less interesting.

Now if like most people you’re unfamiliar with the movie it’s set up sort of like “Rashomon”. Which is a movie about the same story told through the lens of different unreliable narrators. In “The Last Duel” it’s a dramatization of the story a married lady (lady as in nobility) who makes an accusation of rape against a knight, who has had a years long complicated relationship with her husband. And it’s inspired but the true story of the last time a duel was legally fought in France.

But where “The Last Duel” differs from “Rashomon” is that only the first two are unreliable. In introducing the different perspectives the movie lets you know that Jodie Comer’s character is the accurate one. You don’t need a film studies degree to get it. It wants no ambiguity. I don’t think it’s even subtle enough to count as subtext.

The missed opportunity about making Jodie Comer’s character “the truth” is that it there are details which don’t make sense. But could have been interesting if it left open the possibility her perspective might be true or might also be flawed. The revelation scene could be how it happened (however unlikely). Or that she prefers a scenario where naive about the law pushed into a scenario that she didn’t know was so dangerous. Where she demanded the truth be told. But didn’t know she would (also) be killed if her husband lost the duel.

Now given what the movie has established about this character from the beginning this version is completely implausible given that in every version she was cultured, educated, and presented as the smartest person in any room. Or that in the long process leading up to the duel, where the king is trying to avoid it altogether, that no one had mentioned it to her. The inquisitor mentions her husband specifically. But this seems like a cheap trick to make the audience forget that lots of people could, and almost certainly would, have told her. So not only does the movie deliver this information to the audience with ham fisted exposition. But in doing so it undermines how worldly and sophisticated she has been. And it removes what should have been an interesting question about this scene with her mother-in-law.

If her version isn’t “The Truth” but just “her truth” the viewer might wonder when her mother-in-law says that she didn’t come forward about her own rape because she didn’t want to die did Jodie Comer later change the conversation in her own mind because of her resentments towards her husband. Preferring to think that the whole thing was motivated by his own vanity. And that she didn’t have agency when she chose to risk making her child an orphan.

Or maybe it happened exactly like she recalled. I tend to think that the writer wanted to eliminate any nobility from Matt Damon’s character. So she had only been a victim of both men. But the ambiguity of that would have been far more interesting than telling you exactly what happened.