Review - Anatomy of a Fall
I just want you know one thing…I’m not a monster.
Directed by: Justine Triet
Written by: Justine Triet, Arthur Harari
Starring: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Mechado-Graner
Running Time: 150 minutes
Rating: 4/5
You have to tell it exactly like you remember it.
Every single moment in a relationship built over years of love, pain, yearning and even tragedy are now placed under a microscope for an audience of hundreds and thousands. Your character, your reputation and arguably, your entire identity is now questioned. Is this who you really are? Is this who you have always been? Every thread of what you once believed was truth will now bleed into fiction as every memory is shattered into fabled echoes.
Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall is not only a court-room deconstruction of a murder - it is a precise and meticulous cross-examination of a marriage; a relationship at war with each other. In the opening moments of Triet’s film, we are introduced to the family in question - Sandra (the impeccable and absolutely stunning Sandra Hüller), Samuel and their visually impaired son, Daniel, who live a quiet life on the slopes of the snow-covered french countryside with their husky, Snoop. Their life is thrust into the limelight when Daniel stumbles upon his father’s lifeless body in the snow in front of their home. Sandra rushes outside and clutches her son tightly, her husband sprawled in front of them, no witnesses due to circumstance or happenstance. He fell out of a window.
The evidence is bare. The alibi is weak. Their witness - their son, unreliable. Their prime suspect, Sandra? Absolutely questionable.
What starts off as a whodunit? slowly evolves into a clear apprehensive exploration of the human soul and the condition and fragility of the heart and mind. The investigation moves swiftly from what may have been a tragic freak-accident to an unfortunate suicide to a dark and twisted accusation of cold-blooded murder. In its painful examination of gender roles and cultural sexist appropriation; Sandra’s character and role as mother is subject of intense scrutiny and commentary. All eyes on Sandra. Every word and every move is calculated and explicit. The world wants justice. For Samuel? or for their marriage?
Sandra Hüller is a wildfire of intoxicating ferocity; a powder keg bottled with grief, longing and hurt.
While Triet’s film is undoubtedly a legal court-room procedural; there is a level of intimacy that brews in its quiet intensity. The film features extended sequences within a small courtroom, the camera only framing a handful of characters in conflict. The courtroom becomes a both a battleground and stage for Sandra to defend herself unravel the deepest and most painful secrets of her relationship. It almost feels too reprehensible for the world to hear and bear witness to - a rapturous examination that is nuanced, detailed and explicitly choreographed. It becomes clear that for the prosecution, Samuel’s death is only the beginning of a precise dissection of character and stature.
Triet’s and Harari’s screenplay boasts extraordinary sequences of pure wit and clever provocation that thematically lifts a long done procedural genre into the heights of masterfully crafted crescendos of compassion and even apathy. The revelations of all three members of the family - Sandra, Samuel and even Daniel tip toe between the intersecting lines of fact and fiction, weaving in and out of morally questionable decisions, nuances and perspectives. This marriage is flawed, imbalanced and doomed from the start. Triet challenges the perceived notions of the human relationship - the democracy, the agency and the soulful bond between two people bound by (what was once) love and hope. One moment you think you have it all figured out - side with one character, and then it shifts drastically with another perspective that erases any confidence you may have had before. What you may have thought of one character as just, morally upright and even honourable - will easily shift to despicable and terrible in a matter of moments. For the sake of the film - this absolutely works. The way the film builds upon a web of lies and truth with every single argument and counter feels both exhausting and necessary. At times, I feel like I didn’t even care if Sandra did it or not - I was so transfixed in who she was, who she is and what she will be, that whatever had happened at the start of the film, was again, just a fleeting memory.
At the very least, to its core, Anatomy of a Fall will be remembered as a mesmerizing showcase of the sheer magnitude of Sandra Hüller. She is a wildfire of intoxicating ferocity; a powder keg bottled with grief, hurt and amicable resistance, Sandra is nuanced, complex and absolute in her volition. Switching effortly between three languages (English, French and German), Hüller brews with a powerful ecstasy that is hard to shake off. Her doe blue eyes shelter her unfathomable rage that builds inside of her, she sits in the courtroom with a restraint so admirable that it is painful to watch. The centrepiece of the film, the single flashback sequence is explosive, earth-shattering and magnetic - it will shine as the film’s absolute powerhouse and defining moment and will but likely by Hüller’s oscar scene come the 2024 award season.
I will admit, Anatomy of a Fall does not revolutionize the legal courtroom drama. An expansive interrogation that feels quite lengthy but compelling in its masterful screenplay and wonderous performance by Sandra Hüller. Anatomy of a Fall is hypnotic, meticulous and explicit in its purpose, journey and nuance.
It is the anatomy of a marriage. All the good and all the bad. For all to see.
