This year’s Academy Awards ceremony will be held on March 11, 2024. Prior to this, the nominated works have been released one after another starting this month. Here we would like to introduce the clever production of “Anatomy of a Fall,” which won the top competition award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and two Golden Globe Awards, and is expected to win an Oscar.
Not “invisible” but “hard to see”
Anatomy of a Fall, which won the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival and was nominated in 5 categories including Best Picture at the 96th Academy Awards, will be released on Friday, February 23rd. It’s inside.
Samuel (Samuel Theis), the husband of famous German writer Sandra (Sandra Hüller), falls to his death in a snowy mountain lodge in the middle of nowhere. The body was discovered by his visually impaired 11-year-old son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Was this an accident, suicide, or murder? When Sandra is indicted, she asks her old friend Vincent (Swan Arlo) to defend her. She claims her innocence at trial, but her hidden secrets are gradually revealed…
This is the fourth full-length film directed by Justine Triet. He attracted attention with his first feature film, The Battle of Solferino (2013), which was ranked 10th in the Cahiers du Cinema, and has continued with films such as Victoria (2016) and Therapy of Lust (2019). Announced a popular work. He is also a member of the gender equality promotion group Collectif 50/50, and is known for his active political and social commentary. When he won the Palme d’Or, he made headlines for criticizing President Macron’s pension reform and cultural policies. This criticism is said to be the reason why this film was not selected to represent France in the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
This is his second collaboration with leading actress Sandra Hüller, following “Therapy of Lust”. Torrier, who co-wrote the script with her real-life partner Arthur Allari, said he had her in mind from the beginning. Hüller, who has been active in her native Germany, including “Thank You, Toni Erdmann” (2016), was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in this film. She also appears in Jonathan Glazer’s “Area of Interest” (2023), which will be released in Japan on May 24th, which also received five Academy nominations, making this year a year of international breakthrough. It looks like it’s going to be.
Anatomy of a Fall was a very important work for Justine Triet and for Sandra Hüller. However, it is very difficult to describe this movie in one word. If you follow the plot alone, it seems like it could be classified as a mystery, but it’s definitely not an Agatha Christie type of mystery. Who is the culprit? A whodunnit, how did the incident happen? The main focus is not on that howdunnit.
Rather, this film attempts to distance the audience from the truth. A court is not a place to investigate the truth, but a place to prove probability. We can only infer what actually happened based on physical and circumstantial evidence. Using a skillful storytelling technique that purposefully suppresses flashbacks (some flashbacks are used, but when it comes to important scenes, only the audio from the recorder is used), Justine Triet invites the audience into a labyrinth of truth. Whether Sandra is innocent or guilty remains a secret.
Justine Triet succeeds in making the truth of the story vague by making Daniel, the first person who discovers the corpse, visually impaired. He has poor eyesight, but is not blind. In other words, the truth is not something that is “invisible” but something that is “hard to see.” Therefore, we accept the visions we see beyond the darkness as unmistakable truth. Even though I knew it was too uncertain.
Perhaps the only person in the movie who knows the truth is Snoop, Daniel’s guide dog.
Next page → Playing the role of husband and wife