{"id":153539,"date":"2024-01-27T04:17:30","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T18:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/?p=153539"},"modified":"2024-01-26T14:43:21","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T04:43:21","slug":"anatomy-of-a-fall-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theblurb.com.au\/wp\/anatomy-of-a-fall-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a Fall – movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a crucial scene in Anatomy of a Fall, Sandra Voyter (Sandra H\u00fcller) tells her son, \u201cEverything you hear in the trial it\u2019s just… it\u2019s twisted. It wasn\u2019t like that.<\/em>\u201d Indeed, a lot about Justine Triet\u2019s Palme d\u2019Or winning drama isn\u2019t what it seems. This multi-layered film presents a complex narrative web that invites its audience into a compelling but unsettling drama.<\/p>\n

A computer algorithm would probably parse Anatomy of a Fall as a courtroom drama. But this is a only courtroom drama in the same way that To Kill a Mockingbird is a courtroom drama. Yes, much of the film takes place in the courtroom, but the story isn\u2019t about the trial. In this case, Triet uses the hearing in the film to explore the implosion of the relationship between Sandra and her husband Samuel Maleski (Samuel Theis); and its effect on the couple\u2019s child Daniel (Milo Machado Graner).<\/p>\n

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The film opens with Sandra, a writer, being interviewed about her work. But the interview is rudely interrupted by a rap track being blasted over the sound system. After the interviewer leaves, but the noise continues, Daniel decides to take his dog for a walk. When he comes back, he finds Samuel sprawled on the ground outside the family\u2019s chalet in the French Alps, blood seeping into the snow. Samuel is also a writer, but had been experiencing creative block. Perhaps as a way of trying to break through it, he had taken to renovating the chalet. When police arrive, they begin trying to piece together the events. Was Samuel doing work on the upper floor and slipped? Or was it something more sinister? When key questions aren\u2019t satisfactorily answered, they decide to prosecute Sandra. The enthusiastic Advocat G\u00e9n\u00e9ral (Antoine Reinartz) takes on the prosecution; while Sandra hires old friend Ma\u00eetre Vincent Renzi (Swann Arlaud) to represent her. And while the trial seeks to get to the truth, it exposes raw emotions and hard truths. But perhaps most worryingly, it imperils Sandra\u2019s relationship with Daniel.<\/p>\n

The title of the film clearly alludes to Otto Preminger\u2019s Anatomy of a Murder (1959). In case you\u2019re unfamiliar, in that film Jimmy Stewart plays a lawyer (as in Mockingbird) defending a man accused of murder. The defence is that the victim had assaulted the man\u2019s wife. Small-town secrets and questionable behaviour are exposed. Here the focus shifts from the lawyer to the defendant, but the themes are similarly resonant. It also picks up on the question of how much the actions of the victim should impact the outcome.<\/p>\n

The screenplay by Triet and actor-turned-writer Arthur Harari is a masterpiece of gradual revelation. Like the layers of an onion, one piece of evidence after another emerges. Each shifts the ground, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. Those shifts aren\u2019t however limited to shedding light on Sandra\u2019s guilt or innocence. The film moves into deep emotional, personal, even political, territory. The film\u2019s pivotal scene in which the tide is turned, is flat-out brilliant.<\/p>\n

If you watch closely, you may pick up on some of the script\u2019s more subtle moments. For example, Daniel is blind. This perhaps alludes to the old adage about justice being blind. But on a deeper level, he\u2019s like the jurors in a way – he wasn\u2019t there, and doesn\u2019t know what happened, but he has to try to make sense of it all from what he hears. Language plays a key role. Sandra is German; Samuel is French. To provide a \u201clevel playing field\u201d, they fight in English. At times during the trial, Sandra requests to use English because she says she can\u2019t grasp the finer points of French. Is this a ruse? She seems fluent in French when discussing the case with her legal team. Is she manipulating the system for her own ends? Or is she just using the language of \u201cfighting\u201d to fight for her, and her son\u2019s, future?\u00a0 You might also notice that Sandra and Samuel have the same names as the actors playing them, a nod to the film\u2019s blurred lines between fact and fiction.<\/p>\n