Anatomy of a Fall is a courtroom drama which starts strong but gradually loses steam over its stretched-out runtime with the subversion of expectations in the finale being the nail in the coffin of what turns out to be an inconsequential story with no strong resolution. The film is directed by Justine Triet and tells the story of novelist Sandra Voyter and her son Daniel, as she is put on trail for the death of her husband, Samuel Maleski, who mysteriously falls from the top floor of their house.
Anatomy of a Fall is technically adequate with the cinematography, set design, and costuming all serving their purpose perfectly well but not rising above what is expected. The music in the film is largely diegetic with Daniel’s piano playing acting as a recurring motif (As a side note, I remember playing the Chopin piece that Daniel duets with his mother) . The acting is the strongest aspect of the film with the entire cast bringing great performances to their respective rolls. Sandra Hüller as the protagonist Sandra Voyter gives a convincing performance portraying someone who the viewer is never quite sure to paint as the villain or the victim of the situation. Indeed, the way the script works presents Sandra Voyter as an unreliable narrator who has her own biases is genius because it causes tension in the viewer over the doubt are made to feel. While everyone else on the cast fulfills their parts, no one stood out to me on the same level as Sandra Hüller.
The plot of Anatomy of a Fall is both its strength and its weakness. From the start of the film to around the one-hour mark, the film is perfectly engaging with the mystery of how the death of Samuel Maleski keeping the viewer interested in wanting to learn more. However, the film drags on for two long and its two-and-a-half-hour runtime begins to work to its detriment. Eventually, the audience gets bored, not because of the characters, but because it quickly becomes clear that the factual “truth” of Maleski’s death will never be known. Once this conclusion is reached, the court scenes become very tedious. This is compounded by the finale of the film which attempts to conclude the movie by stating the message, that “sometimes we have to decide what the truth is for ourselves”. However, if this truly was the point of the film, then it would benefit from cutting out much of the trial scenes and continuing a good deal past the trial to reveal how choosing our own truth affects how we live our lives. Instead, the theme feels underdeveloped and an unsuccessful subversion of expectations. As a general rule, in order to successfully subvert expectation, a work of art must not only deviate from the expected, but also replace the expected event with something new and equally interesting. Anatomy of a Fall fails to do this and the subversion is infinitely less interesting than discovering the truth of Maleski’s death. This causes the film to finish on a bad note in my mind and leave much less of an impression that it otherwise could have. The ambiguity still present at the end of the film does not make me think more, instead, it annoys me because the effect of the ambiguity post-trial is left unexplored.
All in all, Anatomy of a Fall is a courtroom drama which drags on for a bit too long and has a very unsatisfying conclusion which makes it a film that I would not recommend to friends.