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Anatomy of a Fall: Truth and Morality

3.5_stars

This depressing, thought-provoking court crime/drama piece by Justine Triet caught most international eyes in 2023, which was well deserved. “Anatomy of a Fall” asks the questions of morality, childish innocence, and justice with an interesting twist: the only witness being a near-blind child. We follow how Sandra Voyter, portrayed by the talented Sandra Hüller, tries to defend herself for the murder of her husband while having her own son on the stands as a witness. However, was the court case thrilling enough to keep us on the edge of our seats? Did the movie itself feel real enough and bring us the right elements of the case and the characters so that we can feel what they are feeling? In this review, we’ll briefly discuss the story, while taking a look at the production and what Justine Triet could have meant with her “Anatomie d’une Chute” or “Anatomy of a Fall”.

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We meet Sandra Voyter, a German novelist in her chalet near Grenoble, talking to an interviewer, a young student that apparently knows Sandra through reading about herself in a book that Sandra has written. While deflecting questions about the book, Sandra seems to be more interested in the student and her personal life, getting to know her better as if to flirt. In the meanwhile, Sandra’s husband, Samuel Maleski, portrayed by Samuel Theis, is working in the attic, playing his music louder and louder by the minute, sort of interrupting the interview. At the same time, we see Samuel & Sandra’s son Daniel, portrayed by Milo Machado Graner, clean their dog so they can go for a walk.

After a while, the interview stops because of the music getting too loud and being played basically on a loop, so the young student leaves. As she’s driving away, she sees Sandra standing on the first floor of her building, smoking and waving. Meanwhile, we see Daniel leave with his guide dog Snoop, portrayed by Messi (deservedly winner of the Palm Dog Award 2023). While we follow them on their many adventures through the snow, walking, and playing fetch, they return to a horror scene. Daniel’s father Samuel lying in a pool of blood on the ground.

As Daniel realizes this and fears the worst, he shouts for his mother. Sadly, Samuel died, and all help came too late. Sandra and Daniel begin a long grieving process after being questioned by authorities. However, due to the autopsy and situation causing this to be a suspicious death, an investigation against Sandra has started to rule out the possibility that she might have killed Samuel. This devastates the family, while Sandra desperately tries to prepare for what’s to come. She contacts an old “friend” (they clearly were more than friends) named Vincent Renzi, portrayed by Swann Arlaud, who is now a lawyer.

Vincent and Sandra train for what the police might ask and what kind of things that may be uncovered, what she must say, what she may say, and most importantly, what she can’t say. As the investigators find more and more damning material, the evidence seems to work against her, and it may seem that she might be in more of a predicament than thought originally. A full year later, the trial begins.

 

I can’t remember a thing.

“Anatomy of a Fall” is an amazingly made, intricate story. I must commend Justine Triet, who directed masterfully and let her own creativity carry the investigation part of the movie. I need to say, every time we moved towards the cabin, every scene was a masterpiece. Sadly, I can’t say the same about the scenes in the courtroom, explaining why I could not give a higher score. Although often very interesting and thrilling when push comes to shove, the conversations and directing most of the time missed the mark in carrying us into the story of the crime, causing it after a while to become quite dull. I can’t quite pin this on a specific cause, and I’m, therefore, willing to take the blame for this opinion. I am not very used to courtroom dramas and, therefore, may not have the best perspective in this regard, if you don’t count movies like “A Few Good Men”, “The Social Network” and “12 Angry Men” as courtroom dramas.

Let’s put that aside for now and focus on the things I do know a little about, the movie itself. The production of the movie is great; it didn’t have a need for grand set designs or special costumes. But when it comes to cinematography, editing, and the performances, they did an amazing job. I liked the small things they did that gave a lot of impact. One such scene that I remember vividly is when the defence attorney and the prosecutor are both questioning Daniel: we only see Daniel’s face, and when he looks from one to the other, the camera follows his face closely, like we travel towards the sound of the voice together with him. This gave us a little insight into how important the other senses are for Daniel and how he uses them. There’s a lot of thought put into the camera throughout the movie, like shots from far away, quick (or slow) zooms, following the characters in a unique way through long shots and blurring certain shots or parts of shots. Most of the time, this is used with Daniel, less so with his mother, perhaps to show childish creativity or to show how life feels when your eyesight is as bad as his is.

The performances are absolutely through the roof, and I’m starting to think that the reason some of the courtroom scenes felt kind of dull was because of a lack of interaction with the greatest performers in the movie, Sandra Hüller and Milo Machado Graner. Their portrayal of the broken mother and son is beyond words, every little detail in their acting shining brightly against the canvas that Triet gave them. Hüller perfectly balances the grieving, heartbroken widow while always feeling a little bit off. There’s always something that seems to want to slip out, but she always either gets away with it or she pulls it back inside just at the right moment.

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This comes to fruition (if that’s the word I can use) for her son Daniel, where Graner plays out the confusion in morality perfectly, like a real child would, but portrayed with amazing maturity. To add to the difficulty of the role, Graner plays a near-blind person, leading him to change the way he looks and behaves. There’s always a hand stretched out, a footstep measured twice, and with his eyes wide open, he probably plays one of the most convincing blind people in cinema at such a young age.

Last but not least, I was not kidding in the first section of this review: his guide dog Snoop won the Palm Dog Award in 2023, which are awards for dogs in movies, the name being a play on the Palm D’or, both being awarded at the Cannes Festival. This is something I again, don’t know that much of (soon you’ll all think I’m completely incompetent), but in some scenes Messi, who plays Snoop, is truthfully performing really well. His trainers should be very proud!

To come back to the story and writing itself, I really must say the writing is beautifully done. In the investigation, there are so many small details that we’re given that tell us a lot, but we never know if it carries any weight in the stakes portrayed, causing us to be wary of what to believe or what to pay extra attention to. There are a lot of story elements that are a returning factor throughout the movie, just to name a few: Daniel playing the piano and him changing from fast-paced, “loud”, classical music to more slow, melancholic and emotional music depending on if his morality is more on his father’s side or on his mother’s side. The word truth comes back in different meanings until realizing that truth CAN be whatever you make of it. The small little slips in Sandra’s story also are very interesting to me; for example, when she speaks to Daniel about his father before the trial, you can notice little nuances in the words she uses, like “I LOVED him”, “your father WAS my soulmate”, making us unsure of her innocence. It’s really clever writing, and it makes the first half of the movie very enjoyable to follow.

The last thing that I wanted to mention is that the use of language is very strong. Not in the way of vulgarity, but the actual use of different languages. The movie is technically French, but there is a lot of English also spoken and some sources see German as a language in the movie as well. While the only connection to German is the fact that Sandra is originally German, it is used as an important plot point, both in a scene that contains spoilers, so which I will not share, but also in the general performance of Sandra Voyter in the courtroom. The court requires the procedures to happen in French, since it is a crime that happened on French soil, but French is not the first or even the second language of Sandra. Having lived a long time in London, she speaks English much better than French. It is seen as an extra challenge that Sandra needs to overcome, in which switching to English in the middle of the trial is seen as a sign of weakness towards the judges and the prosecutor. It is yet another challenge that her husband has given her post-mortem.

I'm not that monster.

The theme is definitely “truth” in this movie, what is truth and how can we interpret it. And above all, is the truth always right? There is a lot of play with the word truth and the concept thereof, further reinforced by showing us these struggles through the eyes of a child. The story certainly lends itself to you, as if a real-life murder trial that you can read about, as the best stories and also the most realistic ones, we’re never sure if the verdict that has been reached was the correct one.

A word that goes hand in hand with truth is morality; what is right must be true, and what is true must be right, right? But is it so bad to sometimes see things how they are presented to us and to follow the gut feeling we get when seeing the situation at hand? Daniel very often spoke of his mother in the terms that she couldn’t have done that, but that is just the morality and perspective of Daniel’s character towards his mother. In his eyes, both of his parents are indestructible and pose no threat to each other or to him; he’s been raised right in a loving home, so he never paid attention to their struggles because these struggles have never been laid on him. He’s a true neutral character who must face facts and weigh these in with his own morality, memories, and opinions.

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I really like how he, as the only person that is close to the case and so as a witness, has so much to say about what happens to his own mother. The link between a blind child and the goddess Justicia is also apparent, being both blind and in control of the justice that befalls the suspect. I like to think that every time Sandra saw her son, she saw him holding the scales of her act and consequences of the act to achieve equilibrium and, therefore, justice, in one hand; while in the other hand, he held the sword that waits to deal out her judgment. His blind eyes look upon her with impartiality, while she looks back, powerless.

"Anatomy of a Fall" is now available to rent or buy.

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