Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie D’une Chute) – Film Review
by Hugh Maguire

Director – Justine Triet
Writers – Justine Triet, Arthur Harari
Stars – Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner

As a viewing species, we seem to have an insatiable thirst for courtroom drama – from the twenty-five-year run of Judge Judy or the nightmares of the Jerry Springer Show – a public courtroom of sorts.  Classic cinema has a garland of compelling examples of the genre from the courtroom of Sidney Lumet’s Twelve Angry Men (1957), Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), to the wonderful Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution (1957).   To this list, we can now add the award-winning Anatomy of a Fall, which is a cerebral triumph and equally a triumph of accomplished acting.

It is of course a film, winner of the Palme d’Or at Canes, and there are outside shots, and views of kitchens and the domestic environment, and so forth.  But the action and tension are in the courtroom and in that respect this could also work excellently as a stage play.  However, whether a team of actors could sustain the emotional intensity night after night is another matter.

The core narrative is remarkably simple – it could be any episode of Midsomer Murders or Murder She Wrote.  A sophisticated Franco-German couple live in a magnificent mountain setting in the Rhone-Alpes; she is a very successful novelist and he is a frustrated academic whose career and literary aspirations have stalled.  They speak English as their lingua franca, having lived in London, and have an 11-year-old son with compromised sight, the result of a tragic accident for which the wife still holds the husband responsible, and therein lies a key point of contention!

The husband is found bloodied and dead in the snow and of course, the wife is the prime suspect; the ‘blind’ son is the only witness.  We then embark on the trial and the ins and outs of defence and prosecution.  Of course, the ‘fall; on the snow is re-enacted and analysed meticulously, and engagingly,  but the real fall being scrupulously dissected is the collapse of the relationship which is peeled away in excruciating layer after layer.  When relationships stumble, every throwaway line and snappy put-down comment has the potential to be explosive when taken out of context.  This, it must be presumed, resonates with the viewer.  How many times in an argument do we throw up a past wrong no matter how minor?  To an outside ear (a courtroom jury) this could be absolutely damning evidence. Within the relationship, it is part of the daily cut and thrust and ultimately rubs along an amicable scenario. The manner in which the director juggles these relationship tensions and moral choices makes for gripping cinema.