We have seen for you Anatomy of a falla film by Justine Triet awarded the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival (and at the 2024 Oscars for best original screenplay, written by the director with Arthur Harari).
Before telling you about the film, we cannot fail to mention MUBI, the arthouse film platform which from Friday 22 March will exclusively host the film in its catalogue. If we increasingly agree with Nanni Moretti, who insists on saying that films should be seen at the cinema, it is also true that the MUBI platform, between recoveries from the past and new releases, offers its subscribers an enviable choice of titles of great quality. So yes, we fill the cinemas. And when we can’t, we know where to fall back.
Anatomy of a fall: director and actors
Anatomy of a fall is Justine Triet’s fourth feature film, released in 2023 and, as mentioned, awarded at Cannes and with the Oscars. But also as best foreign film at the Golden Globes, and as best film at the European Film Awards.
They are also available on MUBI, by the same director The Battle of Solferinohis 2013 debut, and Sybilfrom 2019.
Curious to point out how The Battle of Solferinowhich we have seen, although it is a somewhat ramshackle and unresolved film, contains some elements that Triet will then be able to develop with more balance and maturity precisely in Anatomy of a fall. The difficulty of combining private needs with those of a couple, for example, and the desire to present female characters who are finally emancipated and autonomous, who do not even disdain selfish attitudes or those marked by a certain cynicism.
Personifies these characteristics, in Anatomy of a fall, a powerful (and measured) Sandra Hüller, not surprisingly among the candidates for the Oscars as best leading actress. Also standing out in the cast are Swann Arlaud, the very humane defense lawyer Vincent Renzi, and Antoine Reinartz in the role of the ruthless Public Prosecutor.
The plot
Sandra is a German writer who lives in a chalet in the French Alps with her husband Samuel and her eleven-year-old son Daniel, who is visually impaired.
In the opening scenes, Sandra has to give up giving an interview to a university student because her husband – who is working to insulate the attic – turns on the stereo at full volume, purposely preventing dialogue between the two women.
A few hours later Daniel, returning from a walk with his dog Snoop, finds his father dead in the snow, just outside the chalet. Did he fall from the attic or did someone drop him? The deep wound to the temple does not clarify the doubt.
Thus begins a long and exhausting process (also exhausting for Daniel, who attends every trial: but are we sure that the law allows it?), in which the Public Prosecutor, and with him the public opinion, at least initially has no doubts in finding Sandra guilty of murder .
So how did Samuel die? Killed by his wife and committed suicide?
The trial as an expedient
Of course we refrain from telling you. Also because in Anatomy of a fall the dense interventions of the prosecution, the defense and the witnesses are a pretext to dig into the the couple’s tormented relationship, which turns out to be governed by an increasingly cumbersome lack of communication.
Samuel’s “sonic spite”, which we mentioned, is just one of the possible examples. Another is given by the fact that Sandra, a German, speaks English at home (a sort of lingua franca chosen together with Samuel), but at the trial she is required to express herself in French, even though she does not handle it with ease.
Individual, couple, family
Anatomy of a fallwe were saying, shows us an autonomous and almost affective woman, who with great difficulty has tried to combine her personal needs with those of a couple and family.
The feeling, however, is that the chemistry between Sandra and Samuel never blossomed. In court, even violent arguments will be revealed, and Sandra will end up plundering a narrative idea from her husband (also an aspiring writer), which then merged into a book published by the woman.
Strengths and limitations of the film
The robust script and the excellent performances of the actors, together with the public’s curiosity towards a trial with an unpredictable outcome right up to the end, make the 150 minutes of the film pass without yawning. And that’s no small thing.
Yet, under this wonderful architecture, we are not sure that much remains. There has been talk of a feminist film, but why? Perhaps because a witness (the university student from the failed interview) asks not to be called Miss why doesn’t he want to be identified with his marital status? Or because Sandra’s character courageously shows her rough personality and her inability to entrust her self-realization to life as a couple?
Nor does the way in which a family in crisis is shown to the spectator seem too original: Mike Leigh had succeeded in this in a more incisive and cordial way in 1996, with that extraordinary film which is Secrets and lies.
Finally, the parallelism between us is all too clear – spectators unaware of Sandra’s guilt or otherwise visually impaired – and Daniel, the unwilling protagonist of the trial process.
Ecco: Anatomy of a fall it seemed to us to be a very conscious film, full of intellectual stimulation, but a little too empty of life. A film, to disturb a hackneyed formula, certainly shot with a lot of intelligence but with little heart.
Stay updated by following us on Google News!