Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours, 31 minutes
Writers: Justine Triet, Arthur Harari
Director: Justine Triet
Quick Impressions:
Why when I get a teeny bit behind on awards season fare are there suddenly two potential Oscar nominated films starring German actress Sandra Hüller?
“Let’s see,” I said to my husband, looking for something Oscary we could watch at home. “There’s Anatomy of a Fall, starring Sandra Hüller. She’s nominated for Best Actress at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards. Then there’s The Zone of Interest. A lot of people think that will be nominated for Best Picture. It’s about the commandant of Auschwitz and his wife trying to make a cozy home next to the camp, and it stars—Sandra Hüller?!?”
I know that’s just two movies, but still! I had never heard of Sandra Hüller before, never seen her in anything! Suddenly she’s everywhere!
I guess it’s not that suddenly. Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. I didn’t make it to Cannes this year. (I’m going to start referring to every huge event I don’t attend that way. “I didn’t make it out to the Met Gala this year.” “I didn’t make it to the inaugural ball this year.”)
You’ll be shocked to hear I never make it to Cannes. I’ve never attended any major film festival, which is shocking and disappointing since I live about fifteen minutes outside Austin. Why haven’t I ever attended SXSW? (I keep meaning to go.)
Now that we’ve established I’m a thorough stick-in-the-mud hayseed, I’ll go on to say I did enjoy Sandra Hüeller’s performance. (I’m not convinced her character can’t speak passable French since she spends half the movie speaking immaculate French. Then again, the character does reveal at an emotionally raw moment that she speaks English as a compromise. She feels it would be equally unfair for her husband to ask her to speak French as it would be for her to ask him to speak her native German.) (The actress must have an excellent command of several languages.)
My daughter was the one who chose Anatomy of a Fall from our shortlist of unseen options. Runner-up was May December, so look out for a review of that in days to come (probably not in December but hopefully before May).
I’m a bit off this December. Writing reviews is taking me forever. I normally jot down my thoughts the same evening I watch the movie, but what usually takes me five hours is taking more like five days. I guess that’s okay because it takes like five days for this movie to end after the trial is over. (That’s a joke, not a criticism. The torturously protracted ending of this film is brilliant. It reminds me a bit of The Hunt, probably my favorite Mads Mikkelsen movie. We just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. We wait forever.)
The night after watching Anatomy of a Fall, we re-watched Oppenheimer, to show it to my daughter. That movie kicks into high gear after the bomb test. And the twisty machinations surrounding Robert Downey Jr.’s character are some of the most intense (and most fun) scenes of the movie. Anatomy of a Fall is like that, too. We don’t exactly get a twist ending, but we do get a twist testimony. It’s not what we expect, but it’s exactly what we need to hear. It comes very late. And it sheds surprising light on the case. It’s probably the best part of the film.
Honestly, what makes it so good is that it’s the first thing that truly convinces us of one piece of conjecture mentioned again and again throughout the film. It corroborates the story more perfectly than anything else could. I kept saying so at the time.
Now, a couple of days later, as I continue to write through this review, I suddenly ask myself, “Is it true? Is the ‘memory’ real or manufactured?” I think of some advice from one character, and I realize, “This is the exact thing we need to hear, the exact thing the court needs to hear to make up our minds.” Hmm. I think I might have been terribly stupid the first time I watched this movie—or else I’m too suspicious now.
It’s ironic that this thought has only occurred to me later, that I’ve only seen the significance of a bit of dialogue later–because that’s how this testimony works, too, in the film. The significance of a particular series of events only occurs to a witness later. Yes, but…surely, it’s also occurred to this witness that’s what everyone needs to hear. This witness is smart, gifted even, and blatantly not free of prejudice about this matter.
It’s strange. I do believe the main thrust of what the protagonist says. I do believe that Sandra Voyter is telling us what she believes to be, essentially, the truth from her own point of view. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she immediately suggest her husband deliberately jumped out the window? She doesn’t seem guilty. She seems puzzled and sad. (Granted, as I watched, I was not completely sure of Sandra’s innocence, but she’s pretty convincing. She seems to believe she’s telling us the truth as she understands it.) This other witness, though—is this other witness being honest or acting in their own self-interest?
Honestly, I can’t tell if this is insight or another manifestation of the paranoia I’m currently struggling through. (Seriously. I’m being treated for it now. So this brilliant new reading that’s suddenly occurred to me might be less a flash of insight than a feature of recovering from a manic episode.) Regardless, I’ve now planted a kernel of doubt in your head, so when you watch the film, you’ll think, “Hmmm…should I be suspicious here, or is Sarah just paranoid?” We’ll never know for sure. (Well, you might. Now that I’ve thought of this new interpretation, I’ll never be able to shake it.)
In any event, the ending (from the strange event just before this late testimony onward) is the most brilliant and unexpected part of the film.
The Good:
The film opens with a brilliant scene of a dog’s ball conspicuously thudding down the stairs into the living room. If I recognized a “best scene aurally,” surely this would hold that distinction. I like the visual, too, the pointed foreshadowing.
I thought this was a pitch-perfect opening, an echo of the human fall to come. (It also made me suspicious of the dog throughout the entire movie. “How tall is that dog? How high is that window? Something’s going on with this dog! I know it! This dog is for sure going to be involved when we find the real answer!” So that was probably annoying for everyone watching with me, but, nevertheless, the opening business with the ball is well done.)
The film’s plot is compelling. The husband dies right away. Like ten minutes into the movie, this suspicious death has already happened. It’s a brilliant, stark image—the body lying in the pure, white snow surrounded by dark blood. We spend the rest of the film trying to figure out exactly what did happen. Did Sandra Voyter push her husband out the attic window of their chalet, or did he, perhaps, jump?
There’s some terrible advice that comes late in the film that I’ve decided to take to heart. (The instant it’s offered, my husband exclaimed in horror, “That’s terrible advice! Quit giving advice.” But now I’m thinking, “Hmm. This should be my new mantra.”) From now on, I’m going to decide what I believe about everything. I’m not going to waste any more mental energy trying to figure anything out. I’m just going to come to a decision and stick with it. What could possibly go wrong?
After that dramatic opening, followed by a few fumbling, uneasy discussions and interrogations, we quickly jump ahead a year to the murder trial. If you’re like me, you’ll watch and believe Hüller’s character Sandra (the French victim’s German born wife who prefers to speak English) when she says she did not kill her husband. But, of course, you will never be completely sure. This is set up a bit like one of those old sitcom episodes where you get Version #1, Version #2, and then The Truth, except The Truth never comes. We simply must follow along and make sense of the evidence presented to us, drawing our own conclusions. I believed Sandra. (Quickly surveying the room now, I get replies of, “I didn’t think she did it,” from my husband. And, “I don’t think it’s my business,” from my daughter. Sensibly, she adds, “I didn’t think she did it, but I don’t think that’s what the movie cares about. The movie is more about the actual trial, and it dehumanizes all of the family with the evidence they use. I think it’s more about the actual process than the truth.”) That said, all three of us found Sandra’s assertions of innocence fairly convincing and believed her.
The French court trying her seems much less sympathetic. They seem ninety-five percent convinced she’s guilty right from the jump. Maybe she’s not guilty of pushing her husband (maybe), but she’s certainly guilty of something. They’re sure of it. She’s a terrible wife. If her husband committed suicide, that’s her fault, too. She was unfaithful. She plundered his intellectual property. She diminished him as a man and an artist. She blamed him for their son’s accident. She dared to be bisexual. Their life together wasn’t pure bliss.
If you’ve ever regarded the U.S. judicial system with scrutiny and thought in despair, “These trials are all rigged,” your faith in American justice will be restored when you watch what passes for order in this French court. My husband was practically tearing his hair out in frustration at the antics of the prosecutor (compellingly played by Antoine Reinartz), the character we all loved to hate. His methods would never fly in a courtroom in the United States. (At least I hope not.) I used to watch a lot of Perry Mason with my mom. It seems like he’s constantly leading the witness or just wildly speculating. My husband kept objecting to his tactics. (He’s just so unabashedly adversarial. I could easily imagine him playing the devil in a morality play.)
In terms of how the film works, of course, it’s terribly convenient for Hüeller that her character is given such an aggressively antagonistic adversary. This gives her the unusual opportunity to defend herself and reveal her character by making thoughtful, impassioned speeches. Every time he paints her with a broad stroke, she has the opportunity to get out a million tiny brushes and add detail and nuance. So even though the character appears to be getting railroaded, the actress gets amazing material. She comes across so sympathetically, in part because she always meets his tone-deaf, persecutory badgering with thoughtful, well-acted replies. She’s able to reveal the character to us as gradually and intimately as if we’re reading the woman’s diary.
Her interactions with her own lawyer and friend (Swann Arlaud) are always good, but honestly, Hüller is at her best when she’s speaking to the court because she might as well be speaking directly to the audience. We’re more sympathetic to her than the court.
My daughter’s favorite performance belonged to Sandra’s young son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), a gifted pianist, blind after an accident when he was four. Graner is a talented young actor. The dog is also quite good (and, to my amusement, the first one mentioned in the end credits. “Avec: Le Chien…”)
I think my daughter is right about Graner’s performance and also about the point of the movie. This trial is destroying their lives. If, in fact, Sandra is innocent of murder (as she appears), it hardly matters because she’s so guilty of other things. Everybody’s guilty of something. No one’s life can hold up to that kind of cross-examination. And, as Sandra asserts repeatedly, no one, single moment (or single argument) defines a marriage, a relationship, or a life.
Best Scene Visually:
Visually, the movie is often gorgeous early on. It’s too bad Sandra hates living in that chalet. I think I would love it. The views from their property are stunning.
The dog’s ball falling down the stairs, and the dummy body tumbling from the window leave an indelible mark, too.
Best Scene:
The recorded argument between Sandra and her husband is almost all we ever see of Samuel (Samuel Theis). For me the revelations in this slice-of-relationship and the testimony shared and refuted by the psychiatrist create a firm, adhesive center for the movie.
Best Action Sequence:
Best is Daniel’s unexpected experiment, largely because it’s unclear initially exactly what he’s doing and why. It’s the first time something truly unexpected has happened, and at first, his motives are difficult to read.
The Negatives:
This isn’t the kind of courtroom drama where there’s a new twist at every turn. In the end, don’t expect a one-armed man or a pharmaceuticals scheme to appear. Even though Sandra Voyter consistently maintains that she did not kill her husband, this isn’t that kind of a mystery. The prosecution is trying to prove that she pushed her husband out the window. The defense intends to convince the court that he might have jumped. What unfolds in the courtroom is more psychological drama than murder mystery. So if you’re expecting a heavily plotted crime thriller, you might leave disappointed.
My daughter is right. The film mainly shows how the spectacle and methods of the trial tear into someone’s privacy and damage her life whether she’s guilty or innocent (of murder). The prosecution seems to want to depict her as broadly guilty, not innocent in general. Of course, her contention is that such a description would fit anyone when examined in scrutiny, and that when it comes to complex human relationships, there is no one, objective, “truth.” This movie has a philosophical bent. It’s also mainly a showcase for the lead actress (with excellent moments given to the child-actor playing her son). It isn’t going to be for everyone.
The protagonist’s grating ability to speak perfectly lovely French with seeming fluency also bothered me as I watched. Before the trial, Sandra pointedly apologizes to her friend/lawyer for never having achieved fluency in French and requests to speak in English because of her inadequate French. She also speaks English at home to her son, even though he answers her in French. This is fine. We learn the family previously lived in London. By birth, Sandra is German. Plenty of people don’t speak great French. (I’m one of them!)
In fact—full disclosure—my own French is terrible. It shouldn’t be. In college, I took French, loved the language and the culture, made As, was in French club, learned to make bûche de noel. But my problem with French is the same as my problem with Spanish. I comprehend well enough. I understand slow dialogue and read decently. But I can’t think of anything to say. Put me on the stand and ask me to answer in French, and you’d get, “Euhhh.”
That’s not at all what happens with Sandra. As the prepare for trial, her lawyer advises something like, “It’s really important that you say this in French.”
So she does. Despite all her posturing, she speaks French so proficiently, you’d think they were trying Joan of Arc. The one time she breaks off and can’t express something in French, she also has difficulty expressing the thought in English. What she’s trying to say then about her husband’s mental state and their marriage is simply difficult to verbalize in any language.
I kept telling myself, “Sarah, you’re just not noticing her mistakes because your command of French is so poor.” It bothered me the entire movie, but (because I’m insecure about my own French), I wouldn’t have dared mention it except that while writing this review, I discovered it noted as a goof on the movie’s imdb page. That gave me courage.
Still, I’m not sure it’s quite a problem. It’s more a curiosity. Late in the movie, we get a revelation about why Sandra pointedly chooses to speak English over French. It’s not actually because she’s bad at speaking French. It’s because she’s German, and her husband is French, so she chooses English as a “compromise.” (That’s what she tells her husband during their argument, but not what she tells her lawyer later. She’s an interesting woman.)
Overall:
Anatomy of a Fall contains an Oscar-worthy lead performance by Sandra Hüller and a captivating turn by child-actor Milo Machado Graner that was my daughter’s favorite of the film. The dog is cute, too.