Anatomy of a Fall: Understanding the Unknown

Written by Farrel Zaki (Kru’22) & Kevin (Kru’20)

Farrel:

Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall transcends the courtroom drama genre to a gripping autopsy of a marriage in the couple’s partially renovated cabin in the midst of snowy weather. The thesis is simple: a husband named Samuel is found dead by his son Danny, lying on the coldest of snow with some blood surrounding the area. Sandra, the wife, had no single idea why such tragedy had transpired in her family. As the story unfolds, Sandra is accused of pushing her husband to his death. The narrative continues to dissect the dysfunctional marriage riddled with unspoken resentments between the couple.

Triet excels in building the suspense from the first second of the film. The tension simmers beneath Sandra Hüller’s portrayal of the character. There is some past that lies behind her somewhat innocent face. Is she a cold-blooded killer or a victim of circumstance? The remnants of her memories with her family told a harsh secret that couldn’t be spoken in the manner that she wanted to. Sandra and Samuel’s story slowly unravels with flashbacks of the fractured nature of their marriage in between the court sequences that are brilliantly delivered by a powerful screenplay.

The film’s bilingual nature mirrors the disconnected and dysfunctional marriage between the two. The weight of their unspoken truth unravels each minute of the film’s 2 hours and 32 minutes runtime dynamically with emotions and curiosity about what really happened. Drama arises from the multifaceted human relationship that ties to the roots of human desires and dreams. Marriage brings that relationship to a level Sandra and Samuel cannot face and understand easily. The film cleverly brings up those issues along the runtime that make the audience wonder if this is a tragedy or a murder, with the perfect pacing for a courtroom drama.

The beauty of Anatomy of a Fall lies in not finding the definitive truth about what happened. One testimonial can decide the outcome of a courtroom, but is it the truth? Justine Triet invites us to contemplate the underpinnings of marriage and family. The complexities are there, and it won’t be easy, just like the film has said. Learn to understand each other but, most importantly, ourselves.

Kevin:

For me, the hook that this film imposes isn’t in its excellent pacing nor the genius of Justine Triet’s direction and vision, instead it lies throughout the runtime of the film, about how meticulous and methodical all this “dissection” of Samuel’s fall that Sandra and Daniel were given little-to-no room to grieve. Both of them were forced to directly confront the death of her husband and his father in a way that is ambiguous and inhuman, to an extent.

Triet seems to be in agreement to this, because in some of the last scenes of the film, Sandra mentioned

“When you win, you expect some sort of reward”

As if the whole entirety of the trial and investigation had turned from determining what happened and establishing a sense of closure into some sort of twisted competition.

This sentiment is echoed throughout the movie as well, with Triet purposefully hiding key information such as the fighting scene in the kitchen and showing us that both Sandra and Daniel are as imperfect as all of us. They get mixed up, confused, they lie and question themselves constantly in the film. All these qualities make both characters feel alive and very natural. As if these events actually happened and we as an audience are getting a small glimpse of the tragedy in hopes that we’ll be able to find the truth.

In the end, the truth isn’t given to us because Samuel is the only one that knows what happened to him. Was it really a final push before giving up? Or was it an energetic struggle for control that ended in a violent accident. To me, this is the only certain fact that we can hold on to whilst watching the film. The improbability of Sandra’s involvement in Samuel’s death isn’t the omnipresent force looming over the courtroom, but it is the unknown.

And when confronting the unknown between multiple conflicting causes, all we can do is decide.