A writer goes on trial for the murder of her husband in Anatomy of a Fall, which played this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival after taking home the top prize Palme d’Or at Cannes. This multi-layered drama from director Justine Triet is both a riveting courtroom drama and a deep meditation on the nature of truth, and a sure bet to end up on best-of-2023 lists by the end of the year.
Anatomy of a Fall is dominated by a fascinating central performance by Sandra Hüller, who headlined two of the best-reviewed films from this year’s Cannes festival in this and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest. Here, she stars as German writer Sandra Voyter, who lives with her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) and young son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner) in the French Alps.
The relationship between Sandra and Samuel is clearly strained; while not seen in the film’s opening sequence, the husband blasts music from a stereo (an instrumental version of 50 Cent’s P.I.M.P. that becomes Anatomy of a Fall‘s central motif), rendering her interview with a journalist (Camille Rutherford) impossible to conduct.
But Anatomy of a Fall doesn’t waste any time establishing its core premise: as visually-impaired Daniel returns home from walking his dog, he finds dad dead of an apparent fall at the base of the family home. It was clearly a fall… but what, exactly, was the cause?
A police investigation ensues, and as it becomes clear that Sandra may be suspected of her husband’s murder, she hires friend and attorney Vincent (Swann Arlaud) to defend her. By this time, she has already misled police about the marital . As the case transitions to the courtroom, her moral character becomes the prime target of the prosecution.
Anatomy of a Fall isn’t exactly satisfying on the level of most legal thrillers: the movie rides the line of ambiguity throughout, and never takes clear perspective itself regarding Sandra’s innocence or guilt, instead allowing the characters in the film to argue their own cases. And both the prosecution and defense have huge holes in their case that the film brushes off with a single line of dialogue.
The prosecution has no evidence of a weapon, despite claiming one was used; the lead prosecutor (a particularly vicious Antoine Reinartz) says something like “weapons are so easy to dispose of,” except in this particular case, that really shouldn’t be true.
And for the defense, Vincent decides that Sandra’s best defense will be to claim that Samuel took his own life when he sees that an accidental fall might have been unlikely. “I didn’t realize the house was so big,” he mentions in passing. But even a suicidal Samuel would have to have doubts that a fall from a third-story window would be fatal.
But instead of the particular legal details of the case, which are otherwise wholly convincing, writer-director Triet is more interested is the moral quandaries faced by her characters. And if you, too, can overlook some of the specifics that would be picked apart by a true crime podcast, there’s some fascinating layers to Anatomy of a Fall.
Sandra, for example, is faced with the difficult decision to argue what Vincent claims is her best defense – even if it will force her son to come to terms with his father’s suicide. She slowly realizes that the trial isn’t really about discovering the ultimate truth behind what happened to her husband, but rather creating a believable narrative for the media.
And Daniel, too, unsure of his mother’s guilt or innocence but perhaps able to sway the court one way or the other, is faced with a dilemma. To paraphrase advice from his court-appointed caretaker Marge (Jehnny Beth), he can choose to live in a world where his mother is innocent, or one where she is not.
Anatomy of a Fall is never less than gripping throughout, and packs some fascinating real-world ambiguity into its cinematic trial. While the lack of clear answers may frustrate some viewers, this is both a first-rate legal thriller and a deeper meditation on the nature of personal truth for the outside world.
