Rent Anatomy of a Fall on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari
Directed by: Justine Triet
Starring: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner
Rated:R
Watch the trailer
Plot
A woman is suspected of murder after her husband's death; their half-blind son faces a moral dilemma as the main witness.
Verdict
This keeps you guessing throughout. Whenever you think you know who's guilty this provides a scene that makes you second guess yourself. At the center of it playing audience surrogate is the kid. He's not sure what happened. Is he protecting his mother or telling the truth? This is engrossing from the very beginning, and being set in a different country makes the court proceedings a unique experience.
Watch It.
Review
An awkward interview is cut short when loud music drowns out the conversation. Sandra (Sandra Hüller) tells the grad student it's her husband, but why would someone do that? Sandra's son takes the dog for a walk and when he comes back it appears the husband Samuel (Samuel Theis) fell from a second story window. Sandra is dealing with grief and trying to comfort her son, but she's also a suspect. Her lawyer friend tells her she's the top suspect and they need to figure out what happened.
From there it's back and forth as to what might have happened. The audience just doesn't know. The evidence is a surprise to us and the characters. The prosecutor pushes the narrative that Sandra did it, but the evidence is circumstantial. Being in another country, court works differently with a back and forth between the defendant and witnesses.
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| Sandra Hüller plays Sandra |
A therapist testifying for the prosecution tells Sandra she doesn't know Samuel's situation. While that's true in part, how can you tell half a couple they don't understand the couple. There are two sides to every story, and in this court the prosecutor presents one side and Sandra's lawyer the other. Our guess is that the truth might be somewhere in the middle. It's a difficult subject. With French not being Sandra's first language, she asks to speak in English to better express herself. It must be daunting to be on a trial of this caliber in a language you aren't fully comfortable speaking.
This even manages to work in an argument between the couple. Samuel argues everything is on her turf, yet they live in his country, in a house he chose. He blames her for his lack of time, but as she points out he chose to home school their son and renovate their house. We see this argument in person, but the movie cuts back to the courtroom so we don't see the fight that ensues. All we have is Sandra's word. I get the lead prosecutor's job, but it makes me feel sympathetic for Sandra. He picks out every inconsistency. His job is to get a conviction, not the truth. It's one thing to argue facts, but he tries to twist everything. It never seems like he argues honestly. He takes one word from an argument in an attempt to incriminate her, but as Sandra retorts it's an argument and people exaggerate. I really wanted someone to yell, "I object." I was surprised the judge told Sandra's lawyer to calm down, but he never once rebukes the prosecutor for twisting words, insults, or leading witnesses.
In this case, Sandra's life is brought into the open. Everything hidden and private is made public. As Sandra stated, you can't judge a life or a relationship on one narrow snippet.
The kid's testimony is riveting. All of the actors do a great job, but this takes it up a notch. The prosecutor was all to happy to accept expert conjecture as proof, but when the kid conjectures, that shouldn't be regarded. The prosecutor has been trying to have it both ways the entire time and gotten his way. When you account for the roller coaster this kid is on with everything the trial has revealed, that has to change how you see your parents. Still he wants to protect his mother. He doesn't want to imagine the possibility of what she might have done.
The question remains, what happened? This is impressive in concept, directing, and acting. It puts it on the viewer to decide the outcome. With this movie, every part is so well made. For every reason you could cite that Sandra's guilty, there's just as many reasons why she isn't. It's that question that leaves you thinking about this after it concludes.
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