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I can't believe it took me this long (by which I mean my entire life) to see Ridley Scott's first feature film, THE DUELLISTS. This is a terrific film: visually striking, psychologically revealing, alternating drama with action and black comedy while delivering a profound message about the human condition. Wow. It's terrific, and easily stands as one of his best works. It's easy to see why he was given the go ahead to direct ALIEN after shooting this visual and emotional feast.
THE DUELLISTS begins, fittingly, with a duel. The time? The reign of Napoleon. The place? France. Lieutenant Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) skewers the son of the local mayor in a duel fought over some minor point of honor. Irritated by the mayor's fury, Feraud's commanding officer orders Lieutenant Armand d'Hubert (Keith Carradine) to arrest Feraud and place him under house arrest. Feraud, a short-tempered, touchy, irrationally vindictive man whose defining characteristic is blood-thirst, cannot challenge his sharp-tongued superior because military discipline limits dueling to officers of equal rank only, so he takes out his umbrage on the unassuming messenger, d'Hubert, and forces him into, you guessed it, another duel. Though Feraud is rather the better swordsman, and certainly the aggressor, d'Hubert wins the exchange, but is prevented from killing Feraud by the intervention of Feraud's mistress. This begins an epic feud between the two men, carried out with rapiers, sabers and pistols, on foot and on horseback, which goes on for years, from France to Russia and back to France again, against a lavish backdrop of period costumes and the European countryside, which is alternately portrayed as being as beautiful, and as cruel, as the film's two subjects.
If this seems like a very shallow recounting of the story, I can only say that the story itself is rather shallow, and I do not mean that as an insult. The attraction of THE DEULLISTS is not the plot per se, but its examination -- sometimes funny, sometimes horrifying -- of the concepts of honor and obsession. THE DUELLISTS effected me very much, in an oddly positive way. I completely identified with Keith Carradine's character of Armand d'Hubert. His entire life turns on the fact that a man “imprisoned by his own hatred” takes an irrational dislike of him and won't let go. Faced with this, D'Hubert does what any normal, rational man would do, and tries to avoid conflict, yet his pride and his sense of honor forces him to respond to every challenge even though he grasps their absurdity. In a sense, this is an analogy for parts of my own life, and speaking more broadly, for the attitude many have toward life, which is a persecuted attitude. Yet the attitude itself doesn't spring out of nowhere. It's rooted in personal experience, and I think this is why I was so affected by the movie. Feraud represents everyone who ever picked a fight with you on a playground or in a bar for no reason, or for a "reason" so trivial it could only be a pretext. He is every woman you ever dated casually for a month who still talks trash about you to all and sundry fifteen years later. He is that crazy neighbor who slashes your tires and sugars your gas tank because you accidentally bumped into his trash can while pulling out of your driveway. In other words, he is the antagonist you neither deserved nor wanted, a bully who does not back down even after you break his nose. Indeed, the very act of breaking his nose only fuels his need for vendetta. And that is another part of the movie's genius. It does not "explain" why Feraud is the way he is, because he is meant to be inexplicable. All we know is the inciting incident, a trivial one, snowballs into a lifelong obsession whose origins, I would bet, Feraud cannot even remember by the end of the movie. His need to hate is so powerful it must find an outlet -- period final. It is telling that even in the duel where he clearly defeats d'Hubert, he is unsatisifed, because d'Hubert is not dead, so he rejects the olive branch which is proferred and continues his vendetta. At the core of it is this awful truth: his hatred gives him no rest, so D'Hubert will have no rest, either.
THE DUELLISTS is not all psychology and violence. There is considerable humor, too. Ridley Scott pokes rude fun at the idea of people hacking themselves into horrors of torn flesh and pouring blood over points of honor so minor you need a microscope to see them. He relishes too, the absurdity of two men in the same army spending every moment trying to kill each other instead of the enemy -- indeed, in the Russian sequence in 1812, the two foes have to interrupt their duel to fight some Cossack cavalrymen, and afterwards, Feraud looks utterly disgusted when he realizes their pistols are now empty and they can't finish the fight. Similarly, though the years pass and at least five duels are fought, often to the point of death, the two characters do not really change. D'Hubert remains comically upright and decent, Feraud comically single-minded and bloodthirsty. If either man learns anything much from their private war, they aren't at pains to show it.
THE DUELLISTS has been accused with some justification of being shallow in its depictions, curious in its casting, and also of marginalizing its antagonist, but I think those criticisms, while valid, are also irrelevant. What we have here, in essence, is the story of two distinct parts of the human spirit. Feraud is "they" -- the enemy, the antagonist, the schoolyard bully. D'Hubert, on the other hand, is "us," just as Jamie Lee Curtis is "us" in HALLOWEEN or Toni Colette is "us" in CLOCKWATCHERS. He's there to show the audience not so much how we would react to this kind of bullying, but how we should react to it, without being preachy or unrealistic. D'Hubert may or may not lose his life, but he will not lose his identity.
So, while some may find it curious to see Harvey Keitel -- the quintessential Brooklyn actor -- and Keith Carradine -- the quintessential cowboy actor -- playing 19th century French officers, all I can say about THE DUELLISTS is that you will take more away from it than you brought. And that is saying very much indeed.
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Customer reviews
An absolute delight! wonderful opera prima... napoleonic film par excellence.
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2020
The fact that is loosely based on a Conrad's novel... that is based in absolutely incredible real FACTS! is probably the less important part of it.Beautiful photography, excellent acting and a sense of "making movies" close to perfection.My wife hates it. I do not know if that matters at all for you but it means that the senseless violence and hatred of Feraud is hard to understand if not acquainted with the napoleonic times and the XIXth Century as a whole.For once I respectfully disagree and recommend for what it is a gem of a movie.
Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2020
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rob crawford
neglected masterpiece
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 25, 2011
