Jones on Scott on the Middle Ages

For the anniversary of Agincourt over the weekend I started reading Dan Jones’s Henry V, a biography released late last year. I’m enjoying it so far, though I am still skeptical of the stylistic decision to write the story in present tense. I may have thoughts about here if and when I review it.

I began reading with some wariness but I came around quickly when, in the introduction, Jones strongly, straightforwardly argued for Henry’s greatness, something he aims to prove in his book, and several chapters in, when Jones dropped this footnote about a high-profile incident of trial-by-combat in France just before Henry’s time:

This case was the basis for the 2021 film The Last Duel, which made the 1386 battle between Carrouges and Le Gris a vehicle for a ponderous meditation on the politics and ethics of twenty-first-century sexual abuse.

The Last Duel was a Ridley Scott movie, of course, which means that it was only ostensibly, superficially historical. And “ponderous” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Don’t take my word for it.

I love many of Scott’s movies but this presentism afflicts every one of his historical stories except, perhaps, his first feature, The Duellists, where the point is very much the look and technical perfection of the visuals. Style over substance may be Scott’s other besetting sin, but when he caves into that temptation there at least he’s not indulging in middlebrow navelgazing. I first wrote about this here with regard to Kingdom of Heaven way back in 2019 and—more recently and specifically on Scott’s cavalier disregard for history—before the release of the disastrous Napoleon. And of course I wrote about The Last Duel here. In the years since I saw it, my positive impressions have faded a great deal but my misgivings remain.

It’s just nice to see such succinct confirmation of the problem. Jones knows how to use a footnote.