• Anatomy of a Fall is the anatomy of a broken marriage disguised as a courtroom drama•
Last year’s Palme d’Or award-winning Anatomy of a Fall, co-written by Justine Triet and Arthur Harari (her husband) and directed by Triet herself, is a 152-minute film that, on the surface, is a courtroom drama, but the film implicitly deals with grim issues like depression, broken family, guilt, and trauma.
The plot revolves around a French family who, from London, relocated to an isolated mountain chalet near Grenoble for personal and financial reasons. The bleak and cold setting is symbolic of the coldness and lack of warmth that plagues the bonds of this family. The movie opens with its main character, Sandra Voyter, a novelist, giving an interview about her life to her female student, accompanied by loud music played by her husband, Samuel Maleski, who is working in the attic.
The music( an instrumental version of 50 Cent’s Pimp) forces Sandra to reschedule the interview process, and the deafening music here is used as an early foreshadowing of the tension encompassed around this family, which gets unfurled in the latter half of the film. Everything moves seamlessly until their son Daniel, who, after returning from a long walk with his guide dog Snoop, finds the corpse of his dead father below his attic window.
This uncalled tragedy takes its toll not only on the family’s personal life but also on their public life. Even though initially it was believed to be death caused by accident, eventually trial began when an autopsy revealed that Samuel’s head wound occurred before his body hit the ground. Blood splatter and an audio recording of Samuel fighting with Sandra just the day before he died made Sandra Voyter the prime suspect in this murder mystery.
The greater part of the film throws light on the trial, courtroom proceedings, and investigation that indicted Sandra Voyter. The film depicts how their personal lives, their every choice, and their every decision are scrutinised not only by her opponent but also by society at large when there’s an inconclusive death looming around them. Triet showcases the brutality of the system of law, which doesn’t allow a person to grieve but rather makes a show out of their personal crisis with the help of mass media these days.
The death of Samuel Maleski feels like an unsolved puzzle, a maze, and while the prosecution attempts to unearth this maze, rather than the anatomy of a fall, an anatomy of a broken marriage comes to the picture. Samuel Maleski was both a professor and a writer, while Sandra Voyter was a novelist. Both of them instantly fell in love after meeting each other and decided to have a family of their own. Both of their lives fell apart when their son Daniel lost his eyesight, partially due to an accident, while returning from school with his babysitter.
Samuel and Sandra both miserably failed to cope with this trauma. While Samuel blamed himself for not picking up Daniel from school, Sandra absorbed herself in her work meanwhile exploring her sexuality and also committing infidelity. During one trial, when the recording of their ugly fight is played out aloud in the court, the audience is shifted to the actual sequence in the flashback, where for the first time we see Samuel. As Samuel and Sandra exchange conversations, we feel that Daniel was the only knot that tied both of them together.
Even though Sandra claimed they both loved each other, sometimes love isn’t enough in a marriage; it requires partnership and equal shouldering of responsibilities, which was clearly lacking in their marriage, making it therefore a bitter experience for both Sandra and Samuel. The movie also focuses on mental health issues through Samuel’s prolonged depression, which culminated partly due to Daniel’s impairment and partly from his frustration propelled by his wife’s success in using the idea of his work and his failure as a writer.
Triet shows how a lack of healthy balance and communication in a marriage can prove to be heinous, but most importantly, it showcases how it’s a futile effort to help someone who doesn’t want to help himself and rather chooses to languish in pain.
Although language acts as a major barrier in both Sandra’s marriage and later her trial, we empathise with her due to her honesty and sheer helplessness. She becomes a representative of those resolute women who are headstrong enough to endure every scorn still shamelessly inflicted upon them by society whenever a marriage falls apart. Triet depicts how, when it comes to a woman, everything becomes harder, even the triumph of justice.
Whenever Sandra gets questioned by the prosecutor, she doesn’t hold anything back, even after confessing about her husband’s suicidal attempt. Ironically, she is the one blamed for his attempt because society unfortunately still expects women to carry the burden of both their own and their spouse’s personal baggage. Amidst the strifes of their tumultuous marriage, it’s their son Daniel who has to pay the price with the death of his innocence.
It’s heartbreaking to witness his presence in the trials of his mother, convicted for the murder of his father. He is forced to grow up and mature before his age, where he has to now testify to prove his mother’s innocence. Triet portrays how children of broken families are stripped of a childhood. Daniel’s discovery of his father’s suicide attempts and his parents ugly quarrels prompts him to run an experiment on his dog Snoop, which makes his inference surrounding his father’s death grow more firm.
Sandra is soon acquitted after Daniel’s closing testimony, but in a certain conversation, she tells her old friend and her lawyer for the case, Vincent, that there’s no reward in this win since the loss both she and Daniel incurred is irreparable.
Though Anatomy of a Fall is primarily based in the courtroom, it doesn’t feel repetitive because the storytelling of the film is emotionally gripping. The film exposes how the collective judgment of society often clouds the truth and how extremely independent women are still preyed upon by society.
The film portrays how resentment and betrayal in any relationship are detrimental and poses the age-old question of how long we will all cling to our habit of judging a book by its cover when it’s high time we assess everything by delving deep into its roots, leaving us pondering on the fact that how little we know of the people and their circumstances whom we don’t hesitate to judge.
Srilekha Mitra