So many films out there offering crumbs of quality, finally the craving for caviar is sated with the arrival of ANATOMY OF A FALL. This film is an elevation of the whodunit to peak perfection.
For the past year, Sandra, a German writer, her French writer husband Samuel, and their sight impaired eleven-year-old son Daniel have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps.
Sandra has received some celebrity for her work while her husband’s writing has hit the doldrums. At the beginning of the film she is being interviewed by a journalist in their downstairs living room when a blast of loud music from upstairs interrupts the session.
Sandra is piqued and apologetic. We know the little boy has gone out to walk the dog, so the contemptible behaviour has emanated from the frustrated and jealous Samuel.
The interview is terminated, the reporter departs. Daniel returns from walking the dog to discover Samuel’s body sprawled in the snow below their chalet. Investigating police question whether he committed suicide or was killed. Samuel’s death is treated as suspicious, presumed murder, and Sandra becomes the main suspect.
Little by little the trial becomes not just an investigation of the circumstances of Samuel’s death, but an unsettling psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel’s conflicted relationship.
An extra aspect to this already labyrinthine tale is the focus of a foreigner on trial in France, who must navigate her way through the languages of her husband and son. Sandra is a complex character with many layers. A successful woman, not a stereotypical wife and mother, preconceived ideas of propriety prejudicial to the status quo come into play.
ANATOMY OF A FALL brilliantly conveys that the courtroom is essentially where our history no longer belongs to us, where it’s judged by others who have to piece it together from scattered and ambiguous elements. It becomes fiction.
Sandra Hüller as Sandra is a standout, a superlative performance of exquisite range. Director Justine Triet and her co-screenwriter Arthur Harari have fashioned an exceptional drama, an anatomically perfect thriller, with solid story bone structure and fully fleshed characters.