The Last Musketeer: A Portrait Defined by Its Missing Subject

Kyzen Del Aguia’s The Last Musketeer is a documentary in tribute to the late Canadian fencer, Douglas Jackson. Slated to be a character study of the fencer and coach with the man himself on screen, the film diverged down a different path when Douglas passed away early in 2023. In its place, Douglas’ peers and apprentices cast his shape around the hollow through their memories.

Four interviewees feature in the film in various degrees of solemnity; Jackson’s lifelong friend and fellow fencer Dennis Wendel speaks with the most warmth, the intimacy of their friendship undeniable in the richness of his tales. Like him, each brings their version of him. In Cameron Gunn, taught by Jackson, the film finds reverence. Erica Emery and Kirk Brecht, both experienced enough to be Jackson’s peers but young enough to have been apprentices when Jackson was already a coach, bring a quasi-analytical account of Jackson as a coach who brought together communities. In each case, the interviews also shed light on the participants’ view of fencing as a sport, and by extension, their own experience of it.

The documentary is personal and self-reflexive. Not only does Del Aguia embed himself in it, but also preserves the remnants of its original form, giving the film a note of wistfulness that overcomes the shortcomings of its low-budget, shaky cinematography. Devoid of music for the film proper, the melancholy notes of Duke Ellington’s (In My) Solitude, performed by René Floyd, play over the closing credits in a fitting closing for all that was and that which never came to be.

Watch The Last Musketeer Documentary