France just continues to put out great movies. They’ve had multiple films near or in my end of year Top 10’s for years now, and boast an intimidating slate of great directors more people should know about, all female: Celine Sciamma, Audrey Diwan, and Julia Ducournau. Justine Triet is the latest amazing director to come out of La France, and with a force! Anatomy of the Fall won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and is a lock for my Top 10 of the year. The lesson as always: newer voices keeps movies interesting. That, or American Pop Music is America’s greatest export.
Because her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) was listening to a 50 Cent P.I.M.P. remix on blast, Sandra (Sandra Huller) sadly has to cut a meetup with an interviewer short in her remote Grenoble home. Their partially blind son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) takes the dog Snoop out for a walk to escape the noise after the interview too. Daniel returns horrified: Samuel is dead, bleeding from the head on the ground outside the house. Because no one else was home, Sandra is the prime suspect in Samuel’s death, and has to call old friend Vincent (Swann Arlaud) to represent her and prove her innocence over a tense, lengthy trial.
Yikes! I haven’t been through a movie trial like that in a long time. Triet’s screenplay takes its time setting up Sandra’s defense. She lulls us into a false sense of security with some darkly amusing recreations of Samuel’s fall from the third floor, and sets us up for the defense: proving Sandra is innocent because Samuel committed suicide. But when the trial begins a year later, all hope is blown out of the window like Samuel. Yikes, that was harsh from me, my bad. By immersing us in Sandra’s defense, we, like her, are unprepared for the revelations the prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz) has in his back pocket. Some of these revelations are on the short list for scenes of the year: an audio recording of Sandra and Samuel arguing, or Sandra defending herself against a slew of accusations about her relationship with her deceased husband. And Poor Daniel is trapped in the middle, with the camera swinging from left to right as he has to hear points and counterpoints, painting equally plausible realities he has no idea which to believe is the true one.
And that’s where Justine Triet pulls off her greatest feat. Anatomy of a Fall highlights the incentives of the legal system, and how it warps everyone’s minds. For both Vincent and the Prosecutor, the goal is to tell a story to convince the jury of their point of view. In those stories, assumptions are baked in, which the other side has to try to poke holes in to make their story look more convincing. In this case, things like Sandra and Samuel speaking English at home can be fuel to the fire for both tales: for the prosecutor, that’s a sign that Sandra wanted to make Samuel live the life she wanted (she’s German, he’s French), but for Sandra/Vincent, that’s a compromise, where neither speaks their native tongue so no one has the upper hand. Both possible right? Since the system is designed to choose only one story or another, any grey area has to be massaged to fit into a black and white box by the legal defenses, essentially removing the truth from a trial where the truth is the goal. Triet also touches on other issues the legal system is ill equipped for like language barriers, day to day long term relationships, and we’ll say feelings in general. Anatomy of a Fall shows how the legal process sucks out all of its humanity to the point that the goal for invested bystanders like Daniel is not a truth but a story you can choose to believe. That’s dark and callous, but strikes me as maybe the only honest thing that comes out of a legal proceeding.
With the US movie studios completely building their films around profit incentive, it’s nice to know other countries care at least a little more about art, like France. It’s gotten to the point that even during the Oscar race, the category I gravitate to more and more each year is the International Feature, replete with incredible stories American movie studios wouldn’t dare attempt to tell because the Box Office Gross looks bleak. Anatomy of a Fall should be an opportunity movie studios: let’s really resurrect the legal thriller, with something as juicy and potent as this gem, one of the best of 2023.