Anatomy of A Fall Review

5 stars out of 5

“What do you want to know?” The opening lines spoken by Sandra Voyter (Sandra Huller) are to a young female writer interviewing her. The young writer wants to know about how truth and fiction blend in Sandra’s novels. How they inform each other. What is the line between the two? The interview is starting easy enough. Sandra has some wine, is inquisitive about the young writer maybe out of politeness, or perhaps, as Sandra states, she doesn’t see very many people here in her husband’s hometown in France (herself being a German immigrant). Unfortunately, before the interview can really get going, Sandra’s husband Samuel starts blasting an instrumental of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” so loud one can only assume he is purposely sabotaging the interview (or else doing a concert for the public on the roof of their chalet). The interviewer leaves. She can see Sandra’s blind son Daniel outside about to go for a walk with his dog. She sees Sandra leaning over the balcony. Is Sandra tired? Angry? Forlorn? We then follow Daniel on his walk, and when he returns, the music still blaring, he finds his father’s dead body on the ground with a bloody gash to the head. 

We soon discover that Samuel is not a rock artist or involved in music at all. He is a writer like Sandra, but today he was renovating the attic. He somehow has fallen from the attic window. Something that defies common sense, given the high window sill. Sandra soon calls up an old friend who is an attorney, and maybe a former lover. He finds it impossible that Samuel could have accidentally fallen. Improbable that someone broke in and killed him while Sandra took a nap (with the music blaring). Sandra, a day later, remembers an incident that she believed was a suicide attempt by Samuel. He had vomited, and in the vomit, Sandra could see several white things. She thinks they were pills. She now thinks that Samuel must have jumped. Is this true? 

The State indeed charges Sandra with homicide because they have found an audio recording of a fight between Samuel and Sandra. A fight that took place the day before and that Sandra never divulged. When the fight is played in court, we are given the visuals of the whole encounter until the fight becomes what sounds physical, and from that point we have to listen with the jurors and try to distinguish whom to believe during that intense final moment. Does this moment, though, really inform anything that happens a day later? What can be gleaned from it when both sides think that Samuel was trying to instigate a fight? When both agree that he was making these recordings for a fictional book project he was working on.

How does truth inform fiction? Or if you are an attorney for either side, how does fiction inform truth? At one point, the prosecuting attorney pulls out one of Sandra’s books (not her most recent) and reads a couple of excerpts of how one character is thinking about murdering her husband. Sandra’s attorneys argue it is out of context, and they give the context of a character going insane who also doesn’t go through with the impulse thoughts. But we seem to know that Sandra was unhappy with Samuel, or at least her life at the moment. She did blame him, at least at the time, for Daniel’s accident that caused him to go blind. Sandra’s real life truth seems to make her fictional novels ring with reality. But can a lie give more truth to reality? What if Sandra is lying about Samuel’s suicide attempt? If Samuel was in fact suicidal, is her lie revealing truth about what happened? Though there is no way we can ever fully know what is in someone else’s mind, other facts about Samuel’s circumstances and mental state point to his deep depression. Sandra’s story lends credibility to something we may tend to believe anyway. 

The true brilliance of the film is how it captures the actual court proceedings. Everything becomes so magnified, you can no longer see the forest for the trees. Specific moments become so important to the proceedings, yet may actually have no importance at all to the relationship between the two individuals. Think of any fight you might have had with your significant other, and then picture the importance given to it if one of you would have died the next day. Would that fight have been a true indicator of your feelings or life with each other? Maybe. Though maybe the final moments are always given too much importance. It is common to hear one doubt if their loved one that recently passed knew if they loved them because they didn’t say “I love you” recently. As someone who went through a nasty divorce (is there ever a good one?) the truthfulness of the court sequences was not only incredible, but cathartic. I can see how the fiction of this film was actually more truthful than the “reality” that any real life attorney will tell you. The way David Cronenberg’s film The Brood continues to be the most accurate portrayal of the emotional realities of a divorce. Daniel seems to understand court better than any other character. I think it is because the character is blind, and like Lady Justice, he is able to hear the real facts of the case without being distracted with fluff and theatrics. He arguably schools the judge when she tries to deny him entry for a day, and maybe Daniel even manipulates the system to a desired outcome. 

The film I was reminded of constantly while watching Anatomy of a Fall is the French documentary The Staircase. I think that is one of the highest compliments I can give the film. There is a similar subject matter and it might have been inspiration, but the film is so bold to actually let us be in the court testimony for long periods of time. It really wants to capture the atmosphere of the process. There is even a Rashomon sense of trying to figure out what truth is through personal accounts.  

The film is the best sort of film. It thinks its audience is smart enough. It never talks down to its audience or holds our hand. Better yet, I don’t think the film is intentionally ambiguous. It has a point. I think there is even a known truth in the film of what actually occurred to Samuel. I think Sandra Huller knows the truth of her character in those moments. Never once is she playing ambiguous or “blank.” She is playing the weight of what occurred. The weight it has on her future, on her son, her life. I’m not sure if the weight of parenthood (with the burden of simply having a child), and as a wife who was in a “real” marriage with problems, has ever been so realistically played or written without any histrionics. I believe Sandra Huller has given the best performance of the year, and Milo Machado Graner who plays her son should arguably be a winner in any Best Supporting Actor talks. I think this film captures that thing every artist hopes to capture. Reality.