Director: Justine Triet (France). Year of Release: 2023
A tennis ball bounces down a set of wooden stairs. It is shortly followed by the dog which obviously dropped it. Scenes of a boy trying to bathe the dog are interspersed with an interview which is going on downstairs. Zoé, a graduate student is here to interview the successful novelist Sandra. The first words that we hear are from Sandra, speaking English with a light German accent: “What do you want to know?”
Zoé asks Sandra some direct questions about the relationship between her novels and her real life, which Sandra answers slightly vaguely. She asks the younger woman questions about herself, almost flirtatiously, saying “What I do know is my interest in you.” When Zoé asks if she has time, Sandra assures her that this should be no problem. We later learn that Sandra has moved with her husband to an isolated chalet near Grenoble, where he grew up.
The interview is interrupted by loud music from upstairs – a steel band instrumental version of 50 Cent’s misogynistic classic P.I.M.P. Sandra explains that her husband plays loud music when he’s renovating the attic. She seems unconcerned, but the music is too loud for Zoé to be able to record the interview. Zoé leaves, and as she goes, her paths cross with the young boy and his dog, going out for a walk in the snow.
The camera follows the boy and dog, and when they return to the chalet, there is a body lying outside in a pool of blood. It is Samuel – Sandra’s husband, Daniel’s father. The steel band rendition of P.I.M.P is still blasting out on a loop from a top floor window. Daniel calls his mother who takes a while to arrive, before comforting her son and calling an ambulance. Medics arrive, but Samuel is already dead.
The police pay a visit, wanting to know whether Samuel had an accident, did he suicide, or did maybe Sandra hit him with a blunt instrument causing him to fall to his death? As the film progresses, police and lawyers will try to answer these questions, but these questions are secondary to director Justine Triet who is much more interested in dissecting the disintegration of Samuel and Sandra’s marriage.
Most court dramas consist of a series of witness statements, or, at best, the witness being interrogated by lawyers. These long scenes of dialogue can make a film drag. This film is helped by what is either a peculiarity of the French legal system or something Triet has made up. While a witness is being questioned, a lawyer or the judge will halt proceedings to ask Sandra, the defendant, to explain herself. It makes the film more lively and less procedural.
Triet deftly uses conventions which are in danger of becoming clichés in court based films. Almost inevitably, a last minute piece of evidence is produced. Suffering from writer’s block and seeking inspiration to write again, Samuel had taken to recording his conversations, including a row with Sandra the day before his death. This is handled less as a dramatic revelation and more as further evidence of Samuel and Sandra’s shared unhappiness.
As we feel for the characters, particularly the boy Daniel, the court case must go on. The skinhead prosecutor bullies Sandra, demanding that she account for herself. He brings up items from her personal life – an affair with another woman, other dalliances which, she argues, don’t count as cheating as she told her husband about them. He even reads out a passage from one of her novels where a minor character contemplates murder.
As the pressure increases, Sandra’s testimony switches from French to English. Maybe it’s because she feels the need to express herself clearly – she is a writer after all. Given that much of the film shows how language can be used to obscure meaning, maybe she finds it easier to lie in English. Either way, the multilingual dialogue in court heightens the feeling that Sandra is an outsider, somewhat excluded from the society in which she lives.
Daniel, meanwhile, is forced into an unwanted position of having to choose between his father and his mother. He doggedly attends the court hearings, although it causes him to learn unwelcome facts about his parents. Daniel starts by being loyal to Sandra, but the more he hears, the less sure he is. Eventually, he asks her to leave the chalet so that he can be alone with his court-appointed guardian.
What is the film about? Well, for one thing it’s about 2½ hours, which is usually a bad sign that a film will be flabby and self-indulgent. Recent films like Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon would have been much better if anyone had the authority to tell the directors that an audience doesn’t need to see everything. While Anatomy of a Fall isn’t quite as long as those films, I was still concerned that it would go on too long. I didn’t have to worry.
For a start, despite its length, there is so much that is left to our imaginations. We often hear about the accident which cause Daniel to have severe sight impairment, but don’t learn the exact circumstances of what happened – just that his parents blame themselves and each other. Each piece of new evidence causes us to reassess the characters. This means that we are always engaged and called to think about the scenes playing out in front of us.
We never learn whodunnit. We hear what the jury decides, but are never shown compelling evidence either way that they reached the correct verdict. This may frustrate some viewers, but I was pleasantly surprized that Triet chose not to tidily wrap up the plot at the end. As Sandra says at one stage: “sometimes a couple is a chaos”. And often life is chaos. It may be satisfying to have explanations for everything, but the real world is rarely like that.
Perhaps some final words about Sandra Hüller, who is probably best known outside Germany for playing straight woman to Peter Simonischek in Toni Erdmann. Since then, she has chalked up a series of excellent performances in German indie films, so it shouldn’t be a surprize that she is excellent here. The fact that she does this in 2 languages which are not her own makes her performance all the more impressive.
This is an intelligent film featuring morally flawed individuals. I found myself wanting Sandra to get off, partly because it’s Sandra Hüller, without necessarily being convinced of her innocence. This brings up a question that the film doesn’t explicitly ask: What if Sandra did kill her husband but was justified in doing so? Obviously this is fiction, where lives are more expendable, but in encouraging us to think like this, the film makes us complicit.
Second viewing – March 2024
This appears to be the time to revisit old, or rather recent, films. Part of this is because there’s not much new out in Berlin at the moment. Well, there is Dune 2, but I’m rather looking for films for adults (light blue paper and retire). Also, the Oscars are coming up, so the cinema is full of films which will ultimately lose to Oppenheimer, but only because the Oscars are unjust. And most of the ones that I’ve been seeing seem to be starring Sandra Hüller.
Anyway, my cinema viewing of the last few days have me thinking that The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall are heads and shoulders above the rest (even though I have some sympathy for Poor Things which is not a feminist manifesto, and thinking that it is or isn’t means that you miss how delightfully silly it is). Also I’m undecided whether Jonathan Glazer or Justine Triet more deserves to win best director, but am resigned to the fact that they’ll be beaten by someone with a fraction of their talent.
Whatever, we probably shouldn’t care about awards anyway, But here are some reactions to watching Anatomy of a Fall again:
I’m generally ok with synchronised films, but it just didn’t work here.
Funnily enough, I rewatched this just 2 days after rewatching The Zone of Interest, where I mentioned that subtitles added to my experience. Now, I’m generally agnostic as to whether I prefer films with subtitles or those which have been synchronised. It is amazingly quick how soon you learn not to notice that the words being uttered on screen are quite different to what you are hearing. And when there’s a lot going on on screen, it can be nice not to be distracted by subtitles.
Not in this case, though. One of the strengths of Anatomy of a Fall is that it is conducted in 3 languages. Sandra is a native German who speaks French with her husband and occasionally reverts to English in court. This strongly emphasizes the film’s interest in truth and interpretation, of the difficulty of expressing yourself accurately. In the synchronised version, everything takes place in German, The film is strong enough to deal with this, but the use of subtitles means that one of the film’s key strengths just disappears.
The focus is set in the opening scene
When you see the film for the first time, at first you struggle to understand who is saying what and why. So you’d be excused for missing the significance of the discussion which Sandra has with the student who is interviewing her. The student is interested in Sandra’s novels and the extent to which one can separate fact and fiction. Let’s just say that this is a subject which will turn up several times in the subsequent 2½ hours.
That piano piece is haunting, isn’t it?
The film’s trailer is dominated by a piano piece which occurs a lot in the film. It is played by Daniel, Sandra’s son, who rarely gets it perfectly right. The piece is difficult to play, as the pianists’ right and left hand are often going in different directions and different tempos to each other. I hope I don’t sound too pretentious if I say that this music is a good metaphor for how the film as a whole sees life – something which is complicated could be wonderful but is always compromised by people’s personal limitations.
The subversion of courtroom drama
One one level, Anatomy of a Fall is a simple courtroom drama. Someone dies, and there is an in-court tussle to find whodunnit. Except that the film does not offer the catharsis which most courtroom dramas are expected to provide. At the end of the film, we are no wiser than when we started. Sure, we may have our suspicions, but we are never told whether Sandra is guilty or innocent. Some may find this frustrating. I think it’s brilliant.
What if Daniel made up his testimony?
I will dance around this one to avoid plot spoilers. But there is a significant point towards the end where Sandra’s son Daniel gives an important testimony which may sway the case, This follows a discussion between Daniel and his court appointed ward where she says that he must make a decision based on what he thinks is true. But all the film has been arguing so far is that there are occasions when we simply don’t know whether something is true or not.
Anyway, let’s leave it at that. Daniel tells a story which has a large effect on the final verdict. And we are never asked to spend much time thinking whether Daniel has made his statement in good faith. I am not saying that this is a weakness of the film – quite the reverse. But you can think back and see that significant points of plot development should not be accepted with the trust that you initially give them.
The function of the skinhead lawyer
I think I also mentioned this one in the initial review. When Sandra goes to court, she is brutally interrogated by a skinhead lawyer. He seems arrogant and sexist – at one point he uses the fact that she has slept with women as proof that she is sexually promiscuous. At the same time, he seems to be an effective lawyer. We do not want him to succeed, and care less about whether Sandra is innocent or guilty. Because he is such a dick, we want her to get off, regardless.
Does Samuel deserve to die?
On a simple level, of course Samuel – Sandra’s husband – does not deserve to die. He, too, is self-obsessed and unable to empathise with his wife without bringing everything back to him (with the exception of Sandra’s lawyer, men do not come out of Anatomy of a Fall looking very good at all). But being a substandard human being is no justification for being killed, is it? Well, not under normal circumstances, but as the film often tells us, this is a made up drama.
Samuel is not a real flesh and blood person, he is a creation of an unseen author. And does the drama function better with or without him? Put another way, is the film’s moral centre enhanced by his elimination? Maybe it is. And maybe this is the sort of abstract thinking which gets too much, as the technical term goes “up its own arse”. But, for better or worse, Anatomy of a Fall is the sort of film which encourages us to think. And that’s surely a good thing, isn’t it?
CinePhil 