There were endless points where I felt silly watching Anatomy of a Fall (2023). As someone raised on the American courtroom dramas that populate every facet of media, there is always a sense that a story needs consistent surprises. Your muscles are supposed to be tensed up, finding hidden details in how someone delivers a line or how the answer was hiding in the background the entire time. Alas, I think that Justine Triet is not interested in delivering that type of nail-biting cinema that works as its own thrill ride. Instead, there is something to be said for unexpecting the expected. Break down your media literacy skills into the field of realism and start to understand that this isn’t about how courtrooms are a perfect ground for mystery, but instead an excellent way to deconstruct the family unit.
As the conclusion rolled out over the final 10 minutes, there was an initial sense of disappointment. I think it speaks to how viewers engage with murder mysteries that you’re waiting for someone to storm through the backdoors with a surprise witness, or maybe the cool-headed party finally breaks down. Nothing like that happens. Instead, it’s a minimalist drama with some morbid hypotheticals thrown in. The trio at the center of the story are the only ones who could ultimately damn each other in a court of law, and I think the most interesting piece of the puzzle isn’t how the titular fall happened, but how it reflects something more mundane in a beautifully perverse way.
Everyone coming into this film will not have known the Voyter family for more than these 2.5 hours, and yet we’re called upon to judge their entire lives. As Triet lays out every new detail, there’s not a whole lot to go off of. The opening credits may hold the biggest answers, especially as the happy married couple are seen at a bar, drinking merrily and reflecting on youth. Without any answers, it’s easy to see these images as ominous, as if they’re hiding some sinister truths. And yet, the pictures could be innocent. No details that fall within the framework of the story reveal years of heartache. Any quarrel that happened could be a contemporary issue, and yet the viewer has been taught to ask, “How did this happen?” The fall needs to have a real answer, and yet the film never provides one. For as much as there can be a perceived “ending,” Triet’s greatest gift is providing ambiguity.
As a literary tool, ambiguity is something that should be used sparingly. If used improperly, it frustrates the audience with a lack of information that could enhance their appreciation of the story. However, Anatomy of a Fall needs them in order to thrive. For as much as this is about a murder, I firmly believe that you can read this dozens of ways depending on whom you trust. Did wife Sandra (Sandra Huller) get away with murder? Maybe it was an act of suicide, or he clumsily fell out the third-story window. Even then, the motives can never be fully understood. Instead, it’s a whole lot of finger-pointing and nobody can know for sure for many reasons, let alone because it happened in an isolated part of France. The best you can do is judge these strangers on their moral integrity and determine how much truth is being given and whether a traumatic memory can truly be retrieved.
Based on the framework, Anatomy of a Fall struck me as less of a courtroom drama and more of a domestic dispute. I think of how Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s private affairs became fodder for news outlets. In their most vulnerable and intimate moments, the public was commenting and making their own decisions on facts that they could never know. There were only hints of things. The same could be said for Sandra, who is accused of committing the act for a variety of things. Was she too manipulative and took advantage of her husband’s generosity, or was she a full-blown narcissist who drew her struggling spouse to depression through an affair? As it stands, I’m not above thinking that Sandra was having a fling with the lawyer who is always out for drinks with her, laughing even amid a morose context.
Another thing is that because one party is dead, things become even more unreliable. Given that each character has a moment of faulty memory, there’s immediate doubt that anyone knows what’s going on. Could it be that the husband was more annoying than even reports let on? Maybe he was the real victim and desperately needed mental health care. Given that their son had an accident that blinded him years prior, there’s the recognition of how the perfect family is unattainable. Something will go wrong. Given that the couple are both writers, it’s easy to understand how their insecurities would inform their work, but is it autobiographical enough to use as evidence? In this humble writer’s opinion… no. A clever writer would at least alter the facts so that it’s not grounds for a potential hit job. Like the Depp & Heard incident, I think it’s way too easy to read into other media for motives that aren’t there.
To shift from the gossip portion of this review to more of a personal hypothesis, I think that Triet’s strengths come in how she depicts Sandra. The initial instinct is to think that her husband playing a cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” loudly during an interview is a way of censoring her. It’s the type of petty behavior that an angry couple would do, though maybe it was more innocent than that. If read as suicide, it was covering up a personal shame that he couldn’t share with his wife. However, it could be that Sandra was using the interview as a chance to flirt and the music symbolizes how unaware he is. They’re somewhere in the noise, unintelligible to the outside world, and thus explains why she feels comfortable laughing.
The reason that Huller’s performance is considered as brilliant as it is comes from the fact that I think it’s morally ambiguous. If you think she’s innocent, you’re watching a woman be raked across the coals for crimes that weren’t her own. The most private of disputes are made public and suddenly the bad moments come to symbolize the entire picture. For me, I do believe that Sandra loved her husband and this was a bad spell. As someone who experiences increased melancholy during the winter months, I can believe that it’s worse in heavy winter weather. Even the presence of a character named “Judge Janvier” (or January) suggests something cold and desolate. It could all be coincidental, especially when you’re stuck in that level of isolation.
And yet, I can’t help but feel that Sandra isn’t innocent. Maybe she didn’t “push” necessarily in the literal sense. However, there is a scene towards the third act where a personal argument is shared. Having familiarity with narcissists, I noticed how she used language. She was rarely accusatory of herself, or at least not without being the victim of a larger scenario. SHE had to move to HIS country. SHE had to give up everything meaningful to her life because of HIM. Next time you watch, notice the abundance of “YOU” that scene has. It’s very accusatory and works as a self-defense, but also the perfect trigger for someone’s depression. If someone accuses you of enough harmful ideas, it’ll become the new truth. With nobody else left to validate, all that one can do is internalize and try to have it not kill them.
So, to me, Sandra was playing a bigger con. The idea of trying to convince her son that one moment is not indicative of the whole story is as useful for the audience to read the film as it is misdirection. She’s sitting in court trying to follow the chess game while not conveying too many facts that could destroy her credibility. Do I believe she did it? Not physically. However, this is why it’s a brilliant domestic drama. The fall isn’t the byproduct of seconds. It’s one that accumulated over years, showing the discomfort of years finally reaching an apex. As one comes to face with its bloody corpse, they have to accept their involvement in the tragedy, and I’d argue for some it’ll take years to fully be distant enough to be seen for what it was.
The domestic drama element goes so far as to include Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Like a lot of elements in this drama, the audience instinctively wants to believe that him being blind will add to the ambiguity. It feels more like a punchline than a linchpin. However, he is just as essential of a character to understanding this family in part because he still sees his parents in pure terms. Given that parents often feel obligated to present their best selves to their child, this read makes plenty of sense. However, I still wonder, based on my feelings for Sandra if she wasn’t doing more subdued manipulation with him over the years. Even if she technically didn’t have an outcome on his testimony, I’m not above thinking Daniel said what he said less for truth and more to keep the family together. Given that it’s been revealed how impressionable he can be by his surroundings, actions could’ve unfolded in a way that allowed him to concoct the most brilliant lie possible.
Much like the “truths” we’re told, the reason that I think that Triet deserved that Oscar nomination for Best Director comes from the invisible cues that may say nothing or everything. The opening scene alone is brilliant with the pet dog, Snoop, running down the stairs with a red ball. It feels like a perfect distillation of what’s to come, especially if one reads into the metaphysical layers of how the child copes with his father’s death. The descension is perfectly matched by the aforementioned “P.I.M.P.” cover, which has a mix of ascending notes that conclude with abrupt descending patterns that create a musical motif of something falling.
To take things further, I’d argue the piano pieces that Daniel plays throughout, notably the Chopin piece, share a similar discordant sound that recreates a sense of falling. On the one hand, this could lead the more abstract-minded viewer to think the son did it. After all, the motifs mirror reality in a way that could be almost spoken directly to the audience. For me, I think it was just a way of coping with his father’s loss. He was processing a thought that wasn’t fully formed, and the music allowed him to connect to an unformed memory. Triet’s ability to capture this inexplicable moment of trauma is profound and another reason that this film understands how complicated and messy a relationship can be. So many lives are impacted, and only so many ways of how are seen.
If judged solely for the “twist” ending, it’s a disappointing movie. American cinema has plagued the mind to assume that a judge will emerge with the piece of evidence that changes everything. Certain actors draw your attention to them, making you think that Sandra will finally be “caught,” whether fairly or not. Instead, the answer is something much simpler in a legal sense. I don’t wish to get into specifics, but the trial is not the end of the story. There’s a little more that can seed doubt or just present something more human. At the end of the day, it was never about using the court for retribution. It was about the revelation of what just happened. The answer is finally broken free of its trivial true crime circus eventfulness and all that’s left are two people who are regretful of what just happened.
Anatomy of a Fall wasn’t a film that I expected to love. Even with the countless positive reviews, I had to believe that there was something more to the narrative than somebody falling out a window. Thankfully, it transcended the murder mystery field that I’m often bored by and turned into a domestic drama that had so much to say about how we engage with people in our own lives. We are fueled by gossip and shape our opinions of others less because of evidence and more hearsay. A lot of what’s said in this film can’t be read as more than hearsay, and yet it all helps to determine something about how you see the larger text. Who is a good person? Is anyone actually evil? I think that everyone in this film is flawed, as we all are, but that doesn’t mean they’re terrible people. When you’re stuck with someone you love, there will be good and bad days. The trick is remembering, while you can, why you love the ones you do.
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