Tag: Anatomy of a Fall

Paul’s 27 Dirtiest Movies of All Time: Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)

Posted on by Paul Risker

This is the alphabetic list of the dirtiest movies ever made, as carefully selected by this humble film critic. I’ve whittled down over a century of films and assigned each one of them to a letter of the English alphabet, beginning with a numeric one.

I’ve always looked at cinema as being like a kid in a sweet shop. There’s an abundance of choice – multiple lifetimes worth. In keeping with this metaphor, this series will include cinema from different decades of film history, and from across the world.

From Sidney Lumet’s 1957 jury room drama 12 Angry Men, we continue our 27-month-long odyssey, jumping forward more than six decades to a suspicious death, of which, the only witness is a blind boy.

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Justine Triet’s crime and courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, co-written by Arthur Harari, is a near-perfect film. From the opening scenes, Triet and Harari have the audience on the proverbial string. The courtroom drama unfolds like an intense duel as the players battle over their convictions. The razor-sharp dialogue, plotting and character development show their deftness for talky dramas. It recalls the writing of some of cinema’s most attuned screenwriters and directors, including Howard Hawkes, Billy Wilder and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Then there’s the obvious comparison to the tension in Otto Preminger’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959), albeit with a modern sensibility.

While only in its infancy, Anatomy of a Fall is already showing itself to be a sassy film. Triet was more than equal to her male co-nominees at the 2024 Academy Awards and should have walked away with the Oscar for Best Director and Best Picture.

Anatomy of a Fall is prone to labour under the stuffy and rigid clichés and procedural tropes of the courtroom drama. The filmmakers, however, re-energise it with entertaining, thought-provoking and emotional storytelling. The film exudes a confidence with a Bresson-esque touch. Triet and Harari include only what’s essential, omitting those unnecessary or extended scenes one anticipates. In their hands, every scene has a point and the introduction of specific themes in the courtroom scenes elevate its stature. The relationship between the author and their stories, and how fiction and reality relate to one another, are only two engaging ideas that emerge. The demand from the prosecutor for those giving testimony to describe complicated ideas, thoughts and feelings, to the bias of the therapeutic model, are other intellectual ideas, that creates space for the audience to enter the film and critically engage.

There appears to be a genuine anger towards the legal system, where the fate of a person’s liberty is decided by competing versions of events. The emphasis is on interpretation and how Sandra is perceived by others. Here, the truth can be an inconvenience in the courtroom, that is a stage upon which the characters perform. The prosecution’s case is even accused of offering theories and not explanations. The noticeable misogynistic and patriarchal rhetoric of the prosecutor and his witnesses towards Sandra’s sexuality and professional success fuels the simmering anger beneath the film’s surface.

Triet and Harari’s detailed exploration of human nature, makes Sandra psychologically and emotionally elusive. Complemented by Sandra Hüller’s finely judged performance, she’s one of cinema’s most intriguing and compelling females, not only because of the ambiguity of her guilt or innocence, but who she is.

Anatomy of a Fall is as infuriating as a Lynchian puzzle because it refuses to give its audience any clarity. The point of the film, however, is not to answer that burgeoning question of whether Sandra is innocent or guilty of her husband’s suspicious death. Instead, Triet and Harari want to force the audience to confront this uncertainty and decide, sharing in the young son’s anxiety. This is where Anatomy of a Fall transcends its narrative to be about something more than a question of a woman’s guilt, challenging its audience to overpower their own obsession for clarity. Here, it plays on the first words spoken, when Sandra asks the student interviewing her about her work, “What do you want to know?”

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This is the second one in the series of Paul’s 27 Dirtiest Movies of All Time (one for each letter of the alphabet, plus a numeric film)

Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une Chute)

Posted on by victorfraga

It is not often that a courtroom drama keeps audiences hooked for 150 minutes. Anatomy of a Fall deep dives into the psychology of Sandra (Sandra Hüller), a 40-something-year-old writer fighting to prove her innocence after her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) dies by faling from from the top level of the couple’s sumptuous residence on the Alps, near town of Grenoble. Sandra is a German writer who met her French writer husband in London, and hesitantly agreed to move to France. They have a visually impaired child around eight years of age called Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). The boy is the first person to come across his father’s lifeless body outside their house, lying on a pool of blood.

The title refers to the fall that claimed Samuel’s life, and also to the collapse of Sandra’s existence following her indictment. During the court proceedings, she describes yet another fall: her husband was experiencing a mental breakdown and had previously attempted suicide. Despite mounting evidence suggesting that Sandra may have indeed killed her husband, a clear motif is absent, and Hüller’s quietly moving, heartfelt performance ensures that our allegiance remains with her character throughout the movie. Why would such a calm, intelligent and loving wife and mother take the life of the person whom she married years earlier, and claims to have loved until the end of his life?

This isn’t the first tragedy to afflict the family. Years earlier, Daniel was involved in a car accident while under the care of his father. His optical never was damaged and he was left virtually blind for the rest of his life. The event has enormous repercussions for the couple, as they became consumed with guilt and grief. This is when their relationship began to collapse (yet another “fall” to be anatomically examined). Their sex life drew to an abrupt. Arguments became a regular occurrence. Finger pointing and competition prevailed. Sandra initially blamed Samuel for the accident, and he lapsed into clinical depression. His therapist attends court, painting yet a very dark image of Sandra.

The films offers a vigorous debate into the symbiotic relationship between fiction and reality. Sandra is a successful writer, and her books often mirror her own predicament. She briefly describes mariticide in one of her latest pieces. Does literature emulate reality, or is it the other way around? Or should the two never mix? This is a question repeatedly raised in court as the prosecutor (in an electrifying performance by Antoine Reinartz) attempts to draw a parallel between the defendant and the characters that she concocted. Samuel accuses his wife of “plundering” his work because she transformed a passage he wrote into a best-selling novel, we learn from an audio recording played in court (which Samuel captured without her knowledge during a heated argument). He was increasingly frustrated at his inability to write, and jealous of his wife is more ways than one (creatively, professionally and romantically).

Sandra’s hesitation to speak French at home combined with her inability to do so in court, despite having lived in the country for many years and possessing reasonable command of Voltaire’s language, adds a touch of ambiguity to character. Is she a vulnerable woman forced to live in a country against her will, or is she a manipulative crook unwilling to conform and play by the rules? Language skills become a gauge for honesty and vulnerability.

The multi-threaded, carefully elaborate script has no loose ends whatsoever. Every line fulfils a purpose. Every twist has a cognitive function. None of the characters is flat, but instead erring human in search of coherence and absolution. This is combined with an efficiently frugal cinematography to deliver a credible piece of fiction. At times, it feels like the film based on a real story? Other times, it feels like the figment of the imagination of a scriptwriter. Once again, the line between fiction and reality becomes blurry.

Hüller delivers a once-in-a-lifetime performance. The 45-year-old German actress has the hypnotic charms of a young Charlotte Rampling, combined with the confidence of Isabelle Huppert. She portrays a strong woman forced to confront her demons, and to expose the most intimate details of her life (such as the fact that she’s bisexual, and has had several extramarital in the past few years) not just to court but to the entire nation (news from the trial are routinely broadcast on television, with commentators sharing their own judgments). The small Daniel listens as the love affairs and NSFW misadventures of his mother are laid bare.

Anatomy of a Fall premiered in the Official Competition of the 76th Cannes Film Festival. Sandra Hüller is also in the lead of Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (in an equally impressive performance, if a little more self-contained), when this piece was originally written. It won th Palme d’Or. It also shows in San Sebastian and at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. In UK cinemas on Friday, November 10th. On various streaming platforms on Tuesday, January 3rd.