Nasty, brutish and short

My disappointment with The Northman on Friday night made me realize I had a thirst for a movie set a thousand years ago that actually immersed me in its world. 

Okay, the 1386 setting of Ridley Scott's The Last Duel is 636 years ago, not a thousand, but I was still only too quick to put it on Saturday night once I found it was streaming on Disney+ -- casually disregarding the advanced mental preparation one usually makes before embarking on a two hour and 35-minute time commitment. 

You may remember (though why would you) that this was my #4 film of 2021. It was not nearly that sort of slam dunk for others. Critics generally supported it, some passionately, but audiences famously did not go see it, though I'm sure some of them ended up loving it as much as I did when they caught up with it on video. Some of them hated it. 

I'd say The Last Duel took a sort of typical second-viewing drop in my estimations, which is, not very much but enough for me to notice it. I still think it's great, and I was already surmising that it will be in the conversation at the end of this decade when I consider candidates for my top 25 films of the past ten years.

Today I want to focus on the appearance of Matt Damon in this film -- which could be one of those character details, along with Ben Affleck's platinum blonde hair, that turn off viewers who already feel predisposed against a movie, kind of like a character dressed up in a fat suit. 

I was going to call this post "Matt Damon's brutish mullet," but the use of the word "brutish" put me in mind of Thomas Hobbes' famous quote about life. Since all three of those adjectives effectively described Damon's character, I went with that title instead.

A far simpler film, made 20 years ago, would have had the man fighting for his wife's honor (Damon's Jean de Carrouges) unambiguously heroic, and the man who violated her (Adam Driver's Jacque Le Gris) unambiguously loathsome. In fact, both men are loathsome, and because de Carrouges is on the right side of the central conflict, we need to know it through his appearance -- though it's pretty damn evident in his behavior as well.

And what an appearance. I think most people agree that Damon is a good-looking man, but they've really uglied him up here. The scar on his cheek is one obvious way, though in reality, it speaks to his courage in battle, which even Le Gris in his own accounting of events does not attempt to dispute. I noticed in Le Gris' account, which comes second, he does not paint a different picture of de Carrouges saving him in battle, so it must have gone down the way de Carrouges depicts it. A simpler movie also might have showed Le Gris remembering it as him saving de Carrouges instead. But I'm getting sidetracked.

The real thing that makes him gross to look at is the hair. I have no idea if a mullet is authentic to the period of time -- just as I have no idea if Affleck's platinum blonde hair was a thing -- but it certainly speaks volumes about this man. He's a real brute with no sense of style whatsoever, whose hair might have been cut by a butcher. 

He's also a "small" man, hence the Hobbesian "short." Damon's only three inches shorter than Driver -- though those are an important three inches metaphorically -- but he's notably petty, constantly worried about personal slights and threats to his honor. He's concerned about whether Le Gris addresses him as "sir," and he's highly litigious, twice trying to sue Affleck's character for transactions related to real estate. What's more, he takes on the titular duel primarily to defend his own honor -- since, as we learn, rape was actually considered a property crime, perpetrated against the man who owns the property rather than the woman who is his property. With de Carrouges, it's all about property.

Even in de Carrouges' own telling of events, he doesn't come across as very righteous, which I think is one of the best things about this movie -- both he and Le Gris characterize their obvious weaknesses as strengths, which speaks to the blindness of men to their own faults from time immemorial. 

It may have been a radical conception of Damon's appearance by the hair and makeup people -- who are obviously doing the bidding of the director and the writers, one of whom is Damon -- but it's a great way to remind us, just by looking at him, not to get it twisted. This man may be fighting a righteous cause in the sense that he's trying to prevent his wife from getting executed -- a foregone conclusion if Damon loses the duel, thereby "proving" that her claim of rape was false -- but his motivations are all wrong-headed, his perspective all backward. When he says he's risking his life for her, she reminds him that he's really risking her life -- for his vanity.

Vanity? Just looking at him, you wouldn't think he had any. 

Neill Blomkamp used time travel technology to make Elysium

As I was watching Elysium for the second time last night, it occurred to me that the actor playing a young version of the main character, credited as Maxwell Perry Cotton, looked almost exactly like the actor playing an older version of the main character, credited as Matt Damon.

It turns out they should have both been credited as Matt Damon.

In looking up this uncanny similarity after the movie ended, I discovered that director Neill Blomkamp recently released a bombshell: both actors are Matt Damon.

No, he didn't do some kind of Boyhood-type project of filming over many years, starting with Damon when he was about ten, then waiting for Damon to reach his early 40s before filming the lion's share of Elysium.

In fact, what actually happened is probably more incredible. While experimenting with his cyberpunk visual effects and the various machines that are featured in Elysium, Blomkamp inadvertently cracked the long-sought formula for time travel. Instead of publicizing his discovery, he kept it a secret in order to make Elysium the best and truest feeling version of itself.

He needed help from someone else, though: Matt Damon.

Blomkamp discussed his idea with Damon of traveling back to 1980 to talk the ten-year-old version of himself into appearing in a film 33 years in the future. Damon, ever committed to his roles, slept on it for a night and agreed. He first asked Blomkamp if it would cause any rips in the space-time continuum, and Blomkamp assured him that as far as he understood, it would not.

So Damon found his younger self in the greater Cambridge, Massachusetts area in a local Baskin Robbins eating bubble gum ice cream. At first the younger Damon didn't believe him, but he'd just seen The Empire Strikes Back and had decided that he wanted to be like Han Solo someday. Or really, the guy who played Han Solo. Older Damon happened to catch younger Damon just after he'd decided to pursue his career as an actor. He was overjoyed to learn that he had succeeded in his goal, and after being assured that it would not cause any rips in the space-time continuum, agreed to accompany older Damon back to the present of 2013.

Young Damon shot his scenes in only three days, and as they had a time machine, they got him back to that Baskin Robbins only a few minutes after he'd told his parents he had to go to the bathroom. Someone was actually in the bathroom at the time young Damon materialized there again, but he was a man in his late 80s and suffering the beginning stages of dementia, so no one believed him.

Blomkamp had to bring the young Damon back one more time when he realized that the young actor would be expected to appear on the red carpet before the premiere of the movie. Hence the picture you see above. When it came time to return him, they used that moment in the Baskin Robbins again, but this time brought him back just before the old man began doing his business.

Because Blomkamp could not reveal to the world that Matt Damon had been the world's first time traveler, and thereby lose control of his invention, which he planned to use again in future films, he came up with the name "Maxwell Perry Cotton" for the young Damon.

However, after a recent viewing of Black Panther, Blomkamp came to the realization that technology that can help the world must not be hoarded and kept secret. So Blomkamp came forward to tell his story, in the hopes that maybe his time machine could next be used to, I don't know, go back and kill Hitler or something.

He said he'd be a fool not to share this gift with the world.

Bourne again

Is it just me, or do you also feel like you need a fourth Bourne Identity movie like you need a shard of light bulb in your eye?

Of course, Green Zone, out today, is not technically another Jason Bourne movie. But it stars Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) and is directed by the guy who directed the last two Bourne movies (Paul Greengrass), so for all intents and purposes, it is. If Green Zone were these two collaborating on a 19th century costume drama, that would be one thing. (And that would be a pretty funny name for the movie). But it's an action thriller about a Jason Bourne-like character, who's like Jason Bourne if only because he has combat skills and is played by Matt Damon.

It may only be me, actually, because the vast majority of people I know seem to feel quite strongly about The Bourne Identity and its ever-more-ridiculously-named sequels. Me, I got off on the wrong foot with them.

It all started when I went to go see The Bourne Identity with a friend back in 2002. My office was in the same building as the local multiplex, and I got off work at 4. He wasn't working predictable hours at the time, so he met me soon after I quit for the day, and we probably went to see a 4:30 show. It wasn't the only time I'd gone to a movie right after work, not hardly. But on this particular day, I must have been tired, because I yawned throughout the whole thing. Whether or not I should blame that on The Bourne Identity (directed by Doug Liman, before Greengrass got involved in the franchise) is debatable, but I do anyway. To make a second reference to that theoretical 19th century costume drama, I'd be able to understand yawning through something like that, with its necessarily slower pace. But a spy movie full of fisticuffs and gunplay? I shouldn't have been checking my watch. So I did blame The Bourne Identity, for making me yawn a lot more than the other movies I'd watched immediately after work had made me yawn.

Needless to say, I wasn't that excited for the theatrical release of The Bourne Supremacy in 2004. But there had been a change in directors, to some guy named Paul Greengrass with whom I was not really familiar. So I retained some hope that I'd like the second movie better. This hope was still not enough to prioritize a viewing -- until I saw Greengrass' United 93 in 2006, that is. The gritty realism of that movie impressed me and moved me hugely -- it was my third-favorite film of the year. Friends told me to expect the same kind of gritty realism from The Bourne Supremacy, which was supposed to look like one of those European spy movies from the 1970s. (I don't know exactly which movies I'm referring to here, but I imagine you get what I'm going for.) Well, upon finally renting it, I ended up being just as disappointed with The Bourne Supremacy as I was with The Bourne Identity, if not more so. Maybe I just don't buy Matt Damon as an action hero. Or maybe I just don't care that much about movies involving spies and international intrigue. Or maybe I just think amnesia is a dumb and lazy screenwriting gimmick. Maybe it was just a perfect storm of all of these, with my own maturation as a viewer and the particular ingredients of these films combining to leave me underwhelmed. However you slice it, I was simply not a fan of the Jason Bourne movies. Trying to make myself one was just an exercise in futility.

Which is why I skipped The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) entirely. What was the ultimatum? I may never know. Just how I never figured out what the "supremacy" was. Maybe it was "Get your memory back once and for all, or I'm leaving you." I guess I associate ultimatums with women telling their boyfriends they need a ring by such-and-such date, or we're through. That's probably not what The Bourne Ultimatum was about.

At least an actual fourth Bourne movie does not appear to be on the verge of materializing. In 2008, production was ramping up with screenwriter George Nolfi working on a script, and Damon and Greengrass both attached. This despite the fact that Damon had previously said they'd "ridden this horse as far as they can ride it," and that Greengrass had jokingly titled the fourth movie The Bourne Redundancy. However, the movie went into turnaround, and Damon recently described it as "at least five years away." What's more, Greengrass would no longer be attached to this theoretical project, with Doug Liman listed as a candidate to replace him, bringing the franchise right back to where it started. But all of this seems pretty speculative at this point, as does the potential existence of a Bourne prequel that would not involve either Damon or Greengrass.

But Green Zone seems like it will function pretty well as a fourth Bourne, doesn't it? Okay, Damon isn't a spy here, but he is a CIA officer, in search of weapons of mass destruction in post-Saddam Iraq. I'm sure there are not nearly so many fisticuffs or gunplay, but I do remember seeing at least one explosion in the ad. Maybe this will resemble a Syriana more than it will resemble a Bourne movie, but it's still Greengrass and Damon, two guys I like plenty well individually, but not so well in concert.

And as long as they don't become the next Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, maybe I'll continue to like them plenty well individually.