Anatomy of a Fall (2023) | REVIEW

Directed by Justine Triet — Screenplay by Justine Triet and Arthur Harari.

When the nominations for the upcoming 96th Academy Awards were announced a lot of noise was made about the Best Director category seeing as Barbie’s Greta Gerwig was left out (though she was still nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay). As someone who was concerned that the director’s branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would nominate an all-male lineup for Best Director, I wasn’t as annoyed about Gerwig not getting in because I was busy being filled with relief over the fact that a female director did get in — it wasn’t another disappointing all-male line-up. That female nominee was Justine Triet, the French filmmaker behind 2023’s Palme d’Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall (original title: Anatomie d’une chute). Anatomy of a Fall got a total of five Oscar nominations and deservedly so. Here is a fascinating and gripping courtroom film with shockingly good acting from child actors, adult actors, and even a dog, who ended up winning the Palm Dog Award for best performance by a canine (yes, that’s a real thing — and this dog definitely deserves it).

Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall is a French legal drama about the mysterious death of Samuel Maleski (played by Samuel Theis), who somehow landed on the cold, hard ground beneath his attic window and bled out amongst the cold mountains of the French alps. His body was found by his visually impaired son Daniel (played by Milo Machado Grenier), who had been walking his guide dog Snoop. The only other person who was in the family home when Samuel died was his wife Sandra Voyter (played by Sandra Hüller), a German novelist, who had just been taking part in an interview while Samuel appeared to try to prevent it from taking place by playing 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” at an extremely loud volume. Sandra insists that her husband must’ve fallen to his death by accident, but several things aren’t adding up. For one, Daniel provides conflicting accounts of what he remembers on that day, the autopsy reveals curious things about the order of events and an audio recording surfaces which is so damning that Sandra must go to court to defend herself against an aggressive prosecutor (played by Antoine Reinartz) who is arguing that she is guilty of murdering her husband.

Justine Triet’s Cannes-winner is full of ambiguity and it’s all by design. Anatomy of a Fall has an ending with a definitive result in the trial, but whether or not you are to believe the verdict is up to your own interpretation. While I actually feel pretty firmly about whether or not Samuel’s death was an accident, I have encountered several readings of the event that disagree with me completely. And even though I feel pretty set in my interpretation, I can also understand where complexities have led others to veer in another direction. 

Really, it is the kind of film where your eyes dart from facial feature to facial feature to investigate whether the person on trial — or on the witness stand — is being truthful, and Sandra Hüller delivers an exemplary note-perfect performance through which this aspect of the film becomes super captivating. Triet mines the absolute most out of her legal drama which is obviously built on, and structured around, French court procedures about which I know basically nothing. And not knowing anything about how court proceedings work in France makes the film even more engaging. It is a fluid and messy process that made my jaw drop once or twice through the ways that the defendant can interact with antagonizing witnesses and prosecutors.

As I suggested in the introduction, this is an acting showcase of the highest order. Sandra Hüller is thrilling to watch as new layers to her character keep on getting added to varying effects. She is mighty in an explosive scene between her and Samuel Theis. Antoine Reinartz’s forceful prosecutor hits all the right beats and inspires all the right emotions in you. Milo Machado Grenier delivers one of the absolute best performances by child actors this century, as his reading of proceedings is also up to interpretation. Grenier is never outmatched by Hüller. In fact, the source of the film’s ambiguity is often his very character. Triet’s storytelling references Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon by inserting two contrasting scenes — one in which it was clearly an accidental fall and another in which we see Hüller fight her character’s husband — that are meant to represent how Grenier’s character imagines it might have happened. Furthermore, the extremely important theme of ‘memory’ is best illustrated through his character, who is obviously emotionally compromised by having his parents’ marriage on trial. Finally — and, to reiterate, this is not a joke — the dog named ‘Messi’ is jaw-droppingly convincing as ‘Snoop’ the guide dog. It is downright emotionally distressing to experience its acting in one scene in particular, which I won’t spoil. The dog is a real character and a real performer. You have to see it to believe it.

I will say that I’m not all over the moon about every aspect of the film, though, as some of the camerawork is quite distracting. Though it is very clear that it is a deliberate style choice, the use of audience perspective and handheld did not work for me upon first viewing. At least that’s how I read it; Triet is trying to give the feeling of audience enthralment with the way the camera moves wildly during the trial at times. I seem to recall a relatively clumsy use of handheld, which I’m sure was intentional, but which only worked to take me out of the otherwise masterfully composed film. For whatever reason, the film switches between these messier perspectives and moves (if I remember correctly, it’s almost as if they’re trying to mimic live reporting at times) and much more controlled and calm filmmaking, and I found that balancing act a little bit testing

I’ll end by stressing one of my absolute favorite aspects of the film, which is language. A dispute about language is embedded in the complexities of the marriage at the center of the trial. Language is our primary source of communication. Language dictates how we are perceived. It impacts how we interact. It can be used as a tool with which to exert dominance over someone. It can be weaponized. It can be restricting. Justine Triet’s expertly written Anatomy of a Fall works with language to great effect as it showcases what language means to relationships, systems of power, and legal processes. Here is a film that is uniquely interested in intercultural communication and the pitfalls of engaging in intercultural encounters. It is a story that stresses authorial intentionality and interpretation thereof, but also how best to present oneself in France as a German, and through it all language is the key aspect — language as a barrier, an affront, a middle ground, and as a means to plead your case no matter what the system prefers. 

9 out of 10

– Review Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.