The Anatomy of "Anatomy of a Fall"
The Oscar-nominated film would be a solid choice for Best Picture at the Oscars
With the 2024 Oscar nominations out, everybody interested, including me, has discussed the winners and the snubs.
While I haven’t seen three of the ten Best-Picture nominees, I’m betting that overall I’d be satisfied if Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” won, or if this movie won.
Ah, but not many people I personally know are aware of this film. Would you like it?
That depends. When you're dealing with a slow-burn Palme d'Or winner — this movie earned that award in 2023 — you either find a key curious question within it, one of ultimate curiosity, or you will find yourself really bored.
I imagine some of you, wanting pure and easy entertainment, will be in the latter camp through this 150-minute courtroom film from France. For anything like this, slow and steady as she goes, I myself need a simple problem or framework to grasp ahold of. Otherwise, I get bored, too.
“Anatomy of a Fall” gave me two of them. One is its heavy use of Otto Preminger's 1959 classic "Anatomy of a Murder," starring Jimmy Stewart, a strong-recommend for anyone reading this. You can even see the resemblance in the titles. What, I asked, is it saying about this movie?
Second, “Fall” offers a simple question of its main character, the intelligent German novelist Sandra Voyter: could she really have murdered her husband? Really?!?
You could ask that because she’s an upper-crust Euro, a seemingly decent mother and author, socially aware, emotionally complex, and — this is the key for the movie — not obviously the type who might do such a thing.
You stare into the face of the accused character in this film, and you wonder: did she do it? So much of the time, the answer seems to be: “no way.”
Sandra Hüller, who plays Ms. Voyter and deserves all accolades for her performance, achieves an ultra-rare quality in this film. It feels as if she walked onto the set and played herself, the character we see. This performance goes beyond great-actor charisma, which Stewart and George C. Scott achieve in Preminger’s film. It is the rare great acting performance we almost never see, because it's seemingly impossible to achieve.
In other words, she strongly deserves to win Best Actress.
Hüller's character finds herself accused of killing her husband. He's fallen out of the attic window of their home in France. It's snowy and remote there. There were no witnesses. He's found by his young son and his dog. The police are called.
It seems all too easy. There are really few things to discuss. It was maybe a suicide, or maybe an accident.
But when the police say that the blood splatters on the shed, which he hit with his head, are inconsistent with an accidental fall, there's only one possibility for them -- she murdered him.
Really? No way!?
I kept asking myself that over more than two hours, and the film keeps asking us that, using the camera so deftly -- director Justine Triet is proving herself a master director here -- that we are sure until we aren't. There's seeming objectivity everywhere in the film, until we reflect that all the witnesses are subjective, including the highly contextually-based trial court in France.
But then again, the case seems straightforward: he fell, and it couldn't have just been an innocent act.
Voyter seems innocent. She's cool and smart, but in a compassionately innocent way. Still, if I realize that this movie is quoting Preminger's classic heavily, I know that something must be up, don't I? Out of the question, "is she a murderer?", stems a thousand questions about what we believe people are capable of. That includes people we think have a good heart or a lame motive.
At the trial, a hundred of these questions come up explicitly. Some are spurred on by the prosecutor. I tip my head to this actor, Antonio Reinartz, who plays the impossible part that George C. Scott did. Trying to follow Scott is not for the weak-willed. Yet Reinartz pulls off that charisma, I don't know how he does it, though he's not as eagle-eyed bombastic as Scott was. Instead, he's relentless in pursuing the truth of his position. I would hate to have him, above all people, incriminate me. He’s one major reason this movie is worth watching; he generates, as Hüller does, movie magic.
The questions about the case pile up. What was Voyter’s marriage like to her husband? She seems to have had bisexual affairs, or maybe just one. When their son was in an accident, and his optic nerve was damaged years ago, their relationship was irrevocably broken. Was she violent towards her husband, or was he self-abusive and suicidal? Why did the husband start recording their conversations, many of which devolved into fights, one of which, played in court, has her claiming that "I am violent!"?
There’s a strong difference, this movie brings up the point, between seeing that and hearing it. The court hears it; we the movie audience see it. You might decide differently on this case, depending on the nature of how you experienced that conversation and that fight.
As in this case, the movie quickly establishes multiple viewpoints and develops them. There's first the dog. Yes, the dog, the first eyewitness to the dead body. His point-of-view is strangely important.
Then there's Voyter’s son. He’s not an eyewitness because of his sight. He's a hearer far more than a seer. As I said, that becomes key to all perception of this movie. In the trial, whether audio or visual is to be preferred is up for debate. We viewers often see the flashbacks that the court only hears. That must be like what the son goes through, hearing his parents fight instead of seeing it.
This movie wrings so much out of so little that I cannot believe it pulled this simple premise off, since the case is the most basic imaginable for a complex plot like this. For example, before the death, the husband plays a cover reggae version of a 50 Cent song called "P.I.M.P." That's the first song you hear. You'll think nothing of it, until every single note of it seems to matter once the case gets going. Certainly, there's a hidden music battle in the film: the son playing piano classically, while the P.I.M.P song is the soundscape for the incident and the trial. These are contrasted. Therefore, does the song “P.I.M.P” prove the husband’s volatility and Voyter’s gentility?
Another issue comes up for French-trial cases, which could be extended to any country’s legal system: foreign languages. Voyter is German, yet she's imposed English on the her family’s household. She says that using English is neutral ground between her mother tongue and her husband's. He, during an argument, claims her use of English is a powertrip, a forced use of a foreign language, since they are living in France.
When we get to the trial, in the middle of it she insists on switching to English, because her French is too poor. That inevitably, and most of this is subtle, leads to translation issues.
But maybe this is a clever move on her part, allowing her to hide something? As we know, languages are slippery. Perhaps she needs to use English, or perhaps she's using it to alter perceptions. She is, after all, a novelist who comprehends narrative points-of-view better than anyone in the courtroom, even the prosecutor, though because this point is so subtle, you will probably never realize that until I point it out to you just now.
In the exact middle of the movie, she says something quite interesting. A relationship, she tells her lawyer, "is a kind of chaos. Sometimes a couple fights together, and sometimes they fight alone."
That obviously is a metaphor or comment on any two-person relationship in the film -- the primary ones being she and her husband, she and her son, and she and her lawyer.
That also works for the most key relationship of all: the one between the film and the viewer.
The film fights us. It strives to create a kind of chaos for us.
In Preminger’s movie, one strong idea is that nice Midwestern lawyers use suspect tactics to defend their clients — Machiavellian ethics — because that is promoted by the legal system, including nice-guy Jimmy Stewart. Here in Triet’s movie, those ethical questions are more subtle, buried in the French court’s systematic proceedings, yet as strong as any. How can a court ever decide guilt or innocence with the kind of mess that it has to sort through, even though the case seems simple?
I admit that for many, “Anatomy of a Fall” might bore them. It also might be too shifty, hiding too much. If you’re like me, you might try to fight against it, in order to wrangle the truth out of it like the strong French prosecutor.
That viewing method probably won't work too well. You'll have to work with it, because your relationship with it, as with any good film, is a kind of chaos, the two becoming a sort of harmony, “one flesh,” the film becoming part of you. This sounds mystical. Director Triet might argue that a film, better than a courtroom, can help us perceive the most complex of truths, any of them.
More than most movies, this film knows that. This is one of last year's best movies. In retrospect, twenty years from now, it may be seen as a solid choice for any Best-Picture award.