Ridley Scott's The Last Duel tells the story of the last sanctioned duel in France through three distinct points of view. There's knight Sir Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), his squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), and Carrouges' wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer), who accuses Le Gris of raping her. The film was written by Nicole Holofcener, along with stars Damon and Ben Affleck from a book by Eric Jager.
Screen Rant spoke with The Last Duel composer Harry Gregson-Williams, costume designer Janty Yates, and cinematographer Dariusz Wolski about crafting the historical film and bringing the different stories to life.
Screen Rant: What was the best part about collaborating with Ridley Scott and each other?
Harry Gregson-Williams: What he's really open to is allowing creativity into his world. He's obviously a really creative and inspiring chap and is rewarding to work for in that respect, but what's really appealing as a composer is that he'd bring a movie like this to me, [or] The Martian [or] Kingdom of Heaven - these are wonderful, they look so beautiful by the time they reach me.
The Martian, I remember, being just staggering when I was watching. I couldn't believe I was going to get to score this thing - the same thing with The Last Duel. I felt, really, really fortunate and a little intimidated because starting off is easily the hardest part. I mean, it really is. It's pretty difficult letting go as well as finishing, but a deadline will do that for you.
Janty Yates: With Ridley, I always feel so grateful and lucky to be asked and it kind of stops there. I always get completely terrified, every project is so terrifying. And then we just have a great big briefing session and I sort of go off from there.
His guidance is essential because he's very aware. He's an extraordinary inspiration, he will just sit and draw a helmet or something like that. He has so many ideas [and] I am but a facilitator to his genius and his vision.
Darius Wolski: I grew up on his movies and I'm just fortunate to photograph them. It's great. It's absolutely great; very visual, very cutting edge, challenging himself, challenging everybody around him. [It's a] very creative atmosphere here.
I'm curious for you three if there were any subtle changes that you made between the three different POVs?
Harry Gregson-Williams: Well, certainly, and what I was able to focus on [was] it being in three chapters [with] three main protagonists of the movie. I'd laid out some thematic material for each of the characters during chapter one and, as we got into chapter two and into more into Jacques Le Gris' story I was able to focus more musically on that, and likewise with Marguerite at the end.
But we were chatting earlier about a couple of key scenes that in many ways, could have been throwaway scenes, like when Carrouges comes back from fighting the Scottish or one of his wars - he's been away. And he comes back in during the second chapter, but doing each chapter, we see this slightly different POV of him coming back. And the third time we see Marguerite has put on a special dress that she's made. And he totally insults her in front of everybody else. I think that's the power of this movie; we always see the roots of misogyny taking place, taking root right there in Medieval France.
Darius Wolski: We didn't do any extravagant stylistic changes from one story to another. But it's just subtle subtleties and whatever the story calls for. But most of it is in the performance. We photograph it simply as is, almost the same way.
Maybe the biggest difference is when we photograph the last chapter, Marguerite's version as her POV is a little more into her face. But, everything else is basically story-driven. In the first story [Carrouges' story], it's not an issue - her dress - and in her story, she's facing humiliation after trying to make an effort.
Given that we're in this Medieval period of time, when it came to composing were you using instruments that you wouldn't normally incorporate? Was there a big challenge there getting into that time?
Harry Gregson-Williams: It being set in the 1380s, certainly, I needed to bring something to the table which was believably medieval. Ridley said to me on numerous occasions, "There's no prizes for authenticity, but there can be prizes for perfect storytelling". The point is that in the 1380s there really weren't too many instruments at one's disposal, perhaps an old wooden flute or drum.
In order to be able to help the story here and bring something to the party, I needed to utilize an orchestra of various voices of different ilks. And indeed, some instruments, if you hear them, you might be forgiven for thinking of those are from the time, actually they were developed a little bit later like the precursor to the violin, the precursor to the cello, they're viola da gambas. Actually, the bows are held underhand, kind of awkward [if you think about it] now.
You recognize it to be a stringed instrument, but it has a different number of strings and the bow is held in a different way. They make a quite a nasal sound, it's quite rusted. I first came across them on Kingdom of Heaven and we used to in Kingdom. Again they weren't perfectly, authentically correct for the time but they served a purpose and that's really what it's about.
Ridley said that this isn't a documentary. And it's not. It wasn't supposed to be documenting how things would sound at that time. So from a musical point of view, I'm just looking at trying to follow the arc of the story, and hopefully, bring parts to the sensor of the viewer that aren't necessarily up on the screen.
The most striking costume to me was Jodie Comer's black outfit during the duel. I would love to hear how you approached that look.
Janty Yates: Well, in actual fact, Ridley had drawn her on the scaffold just in black. I also got a reference of an effigy of a woman with a high collar, like a necklace, but a high collar fabric, and it was not attached to the dress. So I made one of those and we pushed on with a simple black dress for Jodie and he loved it. Ridley loved it, and so I just went a bit bonkers with the fabrics and found this fabulous - well my buyer found it for me, I have to say - fabulous fabric which I'm so delighted is on one of the new posters close up, which is brilliant. I get fabric in close-up.
Thank you for loving that dress I was mad about it.
All of you are working on House of Gucci next. If you could describe in a few words what we're in store for, what would you say?
Harry Gregson-Williams: Flashy. Actually, the reverse of what we've just been talking about, not too subtle. Fun, fun, fun. A lot of fun.
Janty Yates: It was a lot of fun. It was completely over the top, great fun to do.
Darius Wolski: Yeah flashy, a lot of flashes. Because it's a fashion world so it's a lot of flash photography.
The Last Duel is now playing in theaters.
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