it reminds me of Ad Astra in a way

Finally I finished The Last Duel last night. Previously I needed to stop because I know there will be a rape scene in it and while I was watching, around 20 minutes in my 8 yo kid barges into the TV room.

Anyhow, now that I've watched it fully I could see why it didn't succeed in the box office.

First, the movie probably pissed both sides of the political spectrum off. I don't think it's woke, but it's clearly a feminist movie. It's just how they did it. In fact, showing that women are discriminated and treated unjustly in the medieval times are not new. Game of Thrones did that too. However, this movie (probably intentionally) somehow insinuates to how women are being treated nowadays, which GoT doesn't. This might have pissed some conservatives.

On the other hand, by how the story unfolds, it really did feel (at least to me) when his husband ultimately wins (not a spoiler, it really what was happened in real life) it somehow (but probably intentionally) felt like God actually did work intervening the duel and made him win. This might have pissed some liberals. Also there were no black people in medieval France depicted.

Secondly, this movie reminds me of Ad Astra (an another well-made flop) in the way that it defies it's genre. Ad Astra, in my understanding, was not an attempt on typical sci-fi story. It was in a rather unique position of being a futuristic fantasy. In a way that medieval stories usually are presented, in a fantasy world.

The technology and situations depicted in Ad Astra were somewhat ridiculous and don't make any sense, just like magic and dragons make zero sense. There were no such things in medieval times. We all know that, but we acknowledge it as part of the story. The tale of legendary legends. Nobody would say dragons are unrealistic, anachronistic, illogical, etc. They're simply accepted as part of medieval stories, no questions asked.

However, turned out audiences could not accept that in a futuristic setting. Every piece of tech in Ad Astra were criticised as silly, nonsense, unrealistic, etc. Which they are. But what's the difference with magic and dragons? The difference was just the setting. A futuristic movie shouldn't be a fantasy, because that just isn't how it always has been.

The Last Duel felt the same to me. It really is a crime thriller at heart, just in a medieval setting. Which is totally unusual. When we see medieval movies it's normally about epic war, heroes, bravado, and/or magic and dragons. But not here. It has nothing of those stuff, it's simply a crime thriller (which is even weirder because we all know the ending anyway.) And to be honest, it doesn't really work, not unlike Ad Astra.

The Last Duel is a well-produced, well-acted, well-directed piece of unorthodox genre-defying cinema that ultimately didn't really work that well. But I like it.