Anatomy of a Fall

 Anatomy of a Fall is an intense courtroom drama.  The 2023 film, directed by Justine Triet, is entirely straightforward narrative, in effect, the dramatization of a trial transcript.  The movie is single-minded and wholly self-confident -- there is no reaching for significance, no symbolism and not much in the way of ambiguity. The viewer, used to conventional films, expects the motion picture to expand outward at some point to embrace broader themes or perspectives.  But this never happens.  The movie remains doggedly focused on the crime, the procedural aspects of the investigation, and, for most of its two-hour plus length, the trial itself.  When the trial concludes and the verdict is rendered, the movie has nowhere to go -- its raison d'etre is gone and the film just comes to an end without extracting (or abstracting) any meanings from the proceedings that we have seen.  The protagonist says it better than I can:  at the end of the movie, she says that she expected some sort of release or exhilaration  from the outcome of the proceedings; "instead," she says, "it's just over" and that all there is.  There's no sense of uplift or meaning. As a result the film seems rather futile and unresolved.  But this is intended by the filmmakers.  The facts are all that matters in this rather chilly, alienating film -- most documentaries labor far more strenuously to mine significance from the events shown.  But this isn't the nature of Anatomy of a Fall and it's unfair to criticize the movie for not being something other than what it is intended to to be.  (A friend who watched this movie noted that it seems influenced by Otto Preminger's similarly dispassionate Anatomy of a Murder -- however, in that film, which, indeed, is obviously a precursor, the ending of the picture is ambiguous; we are left in doubt as to whether the criminal law has delivered justice or the truth and issues of guilt or innocence seem unresolved.  The French film doesn't indulge in these ambiguities; the outcome of the trial is shown to be just and reasonable and, indeed, the legal and factual questions posed by Anatomy of a Fall are never really in doubt.)  The movie has a Gallic aspect -- there is faith that if reason is applied, even to the unreasonable, a fair outcome will be achieved.  

Anatomy of a Fall begins in an unsettling way.  At a mountain villa in the French Alps, a famous writer is being interviewed by a young woman, apparently a graduate student at an university in Grenoble.  The two women are drinking wine and there is something mildly flirtatious in the encounter.  Suddenly, music booms overhead, a loud heavily bass and percussion inflected version of Fifty Cent's P.I.M.P performed in an instrumental adaptation.  Then, we hear power tools and pounding.  Conversation between the women is impossible although they are both too polite to allude directly to the loud music interrupting the interview.  The older woman, the author whose name is Sandra, suggests a meeting that seems to be a "date" for later in the week in Grenoble.  Sandra's son, Daniel, is giving the family dog a bath.  With the dog, Snoop, Daniel goes for a walk in the snowy mountain landscape, an impressive frieze of peaks across the deep gorge and hilltop where the house stands.  When Daniel and Snoop return, a man is lying next to the house, his head smashed open.  This is Daniel's father and Sandra's husband.  He seems to have fallen from the attic level of the house where he was using power-tools and hammers to renovate the structure.  The man is dead and, immediately, suspicion focuses on Sandra -- it seems possible that she may have killed him by hitting the man on the side of his head and, then, flinging him from the attic window about forty feet above the ground.  In the aftermath of the incident, the camera angle is low, tracking through the chaos at the scene behind Snoop, the dog. This seems an odd way to portray the scene, but, in fact, is significant -- as it will happen, the dog represents the film's solution.  The two least important figures at the confusing and tragic scene, Daniel and his dog (the animal we later learn is a "seeing-eye dog" since the boy is partially blind) will turn out to be integral to resolving issues at the criminal trial that ensues.  

The authorities suspect that Sandra has murdered her husband.  Sandra engages a lawyer who was formerly her lover.  This was before she was married to Samuel, the husband.  The lawyer is an ethereal, angelic-looking man who seems high-strung and nervous.  In his discussions with Sandra, whom he has not seen for years, the attorney, Vincent, learns that the couple were unhappily married and that, in fact, had a violent quarrel just the day before Samuel fell out of the attic window.  Samuel is also a writer, but an unsuccessful one and he had a penchant for recording conversations, including the horrible quarrel the day before he died -- he uses these recordings as sources for his writing.  This quarrel, which at first Sandra denied, becomes central to the trial that occupies two-thirds or more of the trial.  The question posed by Samuel's death is whether it was murder or suicide -- there are no other alternatives.  In the course of the proceedings, many conflicts in Samuel and Sandra's marriage come to light.  When Daniel was four, he was injured when a motorcycle struck him.  This accident resulted in injury to Daniel's optic nerve and his partial blindness, a condition for which Sandra blamed her husband.  In the aftermath of the accident, Sandra became somewhat unhinged and had several affairs, including a brief sexual liaison with a woman.  The prosecution alleges that Sandra and Samuel quarreled over her ostensible interest in the young woman who had come to interview the author -- this was the fight that resulted in Samuel's death, according to the prosecuting attorneys.  Further, there is evidence that Sandra used material from a failed novel written by Samuel, but unpublished -- she is said to have "plundered" his work for her successful book, at least, this is what Samuel says in the quarrel which, ultimately, degenerates into violence (plates are thrown, Sandra slaps and hits Samuel).  There is also evidence, although it's unclear, that Samuel has previously attempted suicide and a deadly plunge from the third story window is not outside the range of possibility.  Indeed, the film is skewed in favor of the theory that Samuel killed himself, Sandra's defense to the indictment lodged against her; although Sandra is glacially cold, cruel to Samuel, and indifferent to his pain, murder doesn't seem to be within her repertoire.

The film shows the pre-trial investigation and, then, the trial, itself, in lavish detail.  Experts are retained to provide theories and counter-theories of Samuel's fatal fall -- there is forensic evidence involving dummies pitched out of the window of the villa and blood spatter testimony.  A psychologist who was treating Samuel is called to testify and he implicitly blames Sandra for the death.  Caught in the middle of these alarming proceedings is the teenage son, Daniel -- he wants to remain neutral, since, of course, both of his beloved parents, are involved in this matter.  We see him furiously practicing on the piano and his ultimate testimony is based upon a recollection of Snoop's claws clicking on the hardwood floor of the house as he is practicing Chopin.  (The use of sound cues as a trigger to Daniel's understanding of the event is significant -- he is partly blind and has spooky, somewhat cloudy, blue eyes and, so, it makes sense that he would discover the meaning of events on the basis of something that he hears but doesn't see.)  

I don't exactly understand French criminal procedure and so the trial has aspects that are unclear or confusing to someone versed in Anglo-American law.  The proceedings take place in a enormous room in Grenoble in front of an elaborate mural.  The courtroom is filled with spectators because the case is celebrated and reported extensively in the media.  There is no privilege against self-incrimination.  The accused participates directly in the investigation and is called upon to explain factual points, a process that is repeated at trial.  The case is tried to a tribunal of a dozen or so factfinders who sit on a bench above the courtroom and a woman lawyer is the presiding officer.  Although the process is clearly adversary, with battling lawyers, there don't seem to be exclusionary rules of evidence -- all sorts of highly speculative testimony is admitted and there are few limitations as to relevancy.  (Some of these features may be exaggerations for dramatic purpose, but the viewer has the sense that the basic elements of French criminal procedure are accurately reflected.)  In the courtroom, the lawyers ask long, argumentative questions and seem to argue the case as it proceeds.  Although there are apparently closing arguments, it seems that the lawyers continually interject their arguments into the presentation of evidence and the proceedings have a discursive aspect in which there is really no distinction between fact and opinion or between factual proof and argument.  Notwithstanding the unfamiliarity of the process, an American viewer can understand what is happening with sufficient clarity to be involved emotionally in the trial and its outcome.  

The film's dialogue is largely English.  One of the points of contention between Sandra and her husband, Samuel is language.  Sandra is German and Samuel French.  As a compromise, they use English, described as a "neutral ground", in the home.  (There is no German spoken in the movie.)  The trial is conducted in French, but Sandra's command of the language is not sufficient for some of the questioning and exposition required in the hearing -- therefore, she asks leave of the Court to speak in English and permission is granted for that discourse.  Sandra generally speaks English to her French lawyer.  (This film demonstrates the extent to which English is necessary as a lingua franca in Europe; French and German people, including husband and wife, communicate in English as a sort of middle-ground between their respective languages.  The situation is similar in Indian films in which Hindi or Bengali or Tegulu-speaking characters often use English in order to communicate with one another.)  The part of Sandra is performed by the great actor, Sandra Hueller, a German-speaking movie star who is never less than brilliant in her films.  She played the title role in Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann (2016), her first film widely known in this country, demonstrating great talent for deadpan comedy.  She has acted in many important German films and, in the year that she performed in Anatomy of a Fall, she also famously acted the part of Rudolf Hess' wife in the concentration camp film Zone of Interest.  Although neither beautiful nor glamorous, she is an astonishing actress, completely natural in every role in which I have seen her.  She is also a fixture of the German stage and has played, for instance, the role of Penthesilia in Heinrich von Kleist's lurid tragedy.