Find out what the film Anatomy of a Fall is about and whether it can repeat the success of past winners in our article.
On October 19, the company Pro:vzglyad releases the film Anatomy of a Fall in Russian theaters, which won the main award at Cannes this year.
The Cannes Film Festival is a real event for movie buffs; its nominees and exclusive screenings of potential hits (this year, Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, the long-suffering series The Idol, etc.) are followed by critics, industry figures, and audiences alike. Despite the variety of films, there is a prejudice that the festival mostly shows slow and boring movies. However, examples like Parasite, Pulp Fiction, The Pianist, and now the new work by Justine Triet clearly prove that festival cinema can be exciting and even mainstream.
What is Anatomy of a Fall about?
Popular writer Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) has succeeded in almost every aspect of life: she has a house in the French mountains, a wonderful son (Milo Machado Graner), a husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) who helps her in all endeavors, and an impeccable reputation. The idealistic picture shatters in an instant when her child discovers his father's body and traces of blood on the snow. Now Sandra is under investigation, and all secrets will be revealed.
A Relationship Drama Wrapped in a Courtroom Procedural
The trend of legal battles between celebrities has opened a new chapter in the exploration of private life and the boundaries of information permissible for the public. Just a year ago, millions of people watched live the high-profile trial of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, during which unpleasant facts about their marriage became known to the public. Similar to the Heard-Depp marriage, Justine Triet in her film Anatomy of a Fall dissects the marriage of Sandra and Samuel, showing multiple perspectives on the same events, which become keys to understanding the nature of this relationship.
The red thread connecting the beads of the narrative into an even row is the court case, which begins with death and ends with the verdict and its consequences for the accused and her loved ones. The dynamics of Anatomy of a Fall are built through this investigation. Thus, together with the police and lawyers, we try to reconstruct the picture of what happened through investigative experiments and interrogations of the characters.
Without a complete picture of what is happening and knowing nothing about the characters, the viewer has no precise understanding of whether the writer is guilty or not. Sandra Hüller's character is played in halftones, somewhere between Amy from Gone Girl and Björk's character in Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, combining the images of both a tyrant and a victim simultaneously.
It is almost impossible to understand what kind of person she is, even by following her every step, attending hearings and some scenes of married life. Besides us, the viewers, and law enforcement, journalists and onlookers interfere in her life and marriage, for whom this trial is just a way to make money and be entertained, and the camera work meticulously captures and mimics stringer footage.
Sometimes we fight together, sometimes separately, and sometimes against each other
The main thing Sandra Voyter excels at is her career, while family relationships become something secondary for her, something she is involved in by fate. The problems of their marriage do not end with death but trigger spirals of reflection and guilt, not only for the suspect but also for her child, who will never forget any of this. A film directed by a woman could not help but employ a new perspective on the structure of the female soul and her role in this world.
Sandra is not an archetypal keeper of the hearth; quite the opposite: she provides for her family, has popularity among readers and the press (it is no coincidence that literature itself is one of the 'pieces of evidence'), thereby swapping roles with her husband and creating the image of a new type of woman. At this intersection of interests, where each pulls the blanket over themselves, the question arises: is this change to blame, or is it that the institution of marriage is outdated?
From a seemingly strong courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Fall turns into a poignant story of disintegration and loneliness, in the silence of which remains a now non-existent, unrepaired family, like their house. A far from new story about marriage turns into an investigation and a search for the reasons that destroyed this union and whether it was doomed from the very beginning.
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