In the opening sequence of Anatomy of a Fall, our protagonist – a successful German author named Sandra Voyter – is the subject of an interview, but she seems much more interested in her interviewer than revealing anything about herself. Sandra is a married mother approaching middle age. Despite her literary reputation, she spends her days in an isolated chalet in the French Alps, doing translation work for extra money. Her coy, slightly flirtatious mood with this student interviewer seems like a welcome respite from the monotony of her everyday life. Or is it a performance? A calculated choice to upset her moody husband doing renovation work in the nearby attic? This question ends up being the key to Anatomy of a Fall, a masterful drama from Justine Triet. Perfectly summed up in the film’s first moments, we are frequently meant to question Sandra’s true feelings and her possible motives. This comes into play even more when her husband is found dead hours later.
Sandra is played by German actress Sandra Hüller, whose performance in 2016’s Toni Erdmann was my introduction to her. The charm of Erdmann was lost on me, but Hüller’s performance was undeniably fearless. In Anatomy of a Fall, Triet uses that fearlessness to her film’s advantage. Is Sandra Voyter a killer? The brilliance of this film’s screenplay is how it pulls back the layers of deniability while further entrenching you in her point-of-view. The more it makes sense that she would have killed her husband, the less you want it to be so. Hüller’s performance is a medley of contradiction, keeping you guessing if its sincerity or machiavellian strategy. Most murder mysteries utilize a tight if circular narrative structure to keep you guessing. In Anatomy, Triet instead transfixes the audience by frequently forcing them to comprehend what people are capable of, while also accepting that there are certain aspects of people we will never understand.
This film is a spellbinding whodunit that also plays out as an incisive dissertation on the petty cruelties of marriage and then furthermore becomes a fascinating document on the perplexing verbosity of the French legal system. These layered themes play into the screenplay’s frequent misdirections. Trying to pinpoint the more macro themes seems like a trail to possible clues, but the script (written by Triet and Arthur Harari) only gives us breadcrumbs – little morsels that confound as much as they engage. Here are the facts: after the interviewer left, Sandra’s young son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) went for a walk outside. Daniel lost his sight in an accident when he was a toddler, so he has a support dog to help him as he traverses the nearby woods. When he returns to the chalet, he comes across his father, Samuel (Samuel Theis), lying in the snow, unconscious, with blood pouring from his head. He has seemingly fallen from the attic to his death.
Sandra rushes down when she hears Daniel call for her. She was taking a nap, she tells the police. But wasn’t Samuel blasting loud music throughout the home while he worked? How was she napping? Sandra replies she was wearing earplugs. But how did you hear Daniel when he called out? The earplug must have fallen out, she tries to explain. An autopsy proves inconclusive, and suddenly this random tragedy sounds like it may be something more sinister. Sandra consults with Vincent (Swann Arlaud), an old friend and lawyer who does his own investigation of the crime scene. It doesn’t make sense that Samuel would have fallen out the attic window. The window sill is too high to make such an accident credible. Sandra suddenly becomes uncomfortable with Vincent’s measured reasoning and must declare: she did not kill her husband. But of course, by this point, even making this declaration is enough of a reason to believe it might be false.
As the case moves to trial, Sandra must contend with a fascinated media that seem perversely interested in how the incident ties into her fiction – her books have always been said to be lightly fabricated versions of her real life. In court, she also faces an overzealous prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz in pure sleazeball mode) who grasps at any opportunity to criminalize Sandra’s behavior. As presented here, the French criminal justice system is almost farcical, more interested in scintillating personal details than uncovering truth. In testimony, Sandra is frank but nervous, trying to be as honest as possible but careful in her choice of words. The French officials try to force her to speak French, even though she feels much more comfortable in English (her mother tongue of German is never even up for consideration), leading Sandra to often defend herself with words she may not fully understand.
As the details of Sandra and Samuel’s marriage are further revealed, the intensity of the case rises, as does the media attention. A court-appointed intermediary (Jehnny Beth) is sent to stay with Daniel in the chalet, to ensure that the mother is doing nothing to influence her son’s testimony, which ends up becoming crucial. As Daniel learns more about his parents’ financial problems, his father’s struggles with depression, and his mother’s infidelity, his own perception of his life is transformed, and he’s also forced to consider that Sandra may be capable of the horrible crime. In this way, Daniel is pretty close to an audience surrogate, a creative narrative choice that gives the audience emotional context without feeling contrived. Anatomy of a Fall is constantly asking the audience to diagnose the troubles between Sandra and Samuel before his death. Are they inevitable clashes between two people spending their lives together? Or are they paths toward violence and death?
I’d wager that Triet’s brilliant film will be disliked by anyone who prefers the safety of narrative closure; and, to be fair, most people are conditioned to expect closure in a murder mystery. Anatomy of a Fall lives instead in an oasis of uncertainty. Either reality – that Sandra is a murderer or that she’s a grieving widow being mercilessly accused – is a horror to behold, and by refusing us confirmation on either reality, Triet is leaving us in a very uncomfortable place. In the absence of said certainty, players on both sides are forced to fill in the gaps, and are often doing so in service of their own self-interest. And here’s where I return to the brilliance of Hüller’s performance, creating a full realized character while also allowing Sandra to be the center of everyone’s projection. This is Cate Blanchett Tár-level acting, surely to be one of the best performances of this decade. Hüller’s talent has never been questioned, but now she gets the proper masterpiece to put it in.
Directed by Justine Triet