// Introduction
[Spoilers for Anatomy of a Fall]
“You need to start seeing yourself the way others are going to see you.”
Anatomy of a Fall tells the story of a family whose life is picked apart and put on display for all to see after the death of the Father, by way of falling from the attic he was renovating.
The movie is directed by Justine Triet, whose movies I had not seen, and starred Sandra Hüller, whose movies I had not seen.
I didn’t really know what to expect here. I know a guy died by falling. Aside from that, I recall the one trailer I saw in the theatre felt a lot more sinister than the movie really was.
In the end, the movie was a much more human story than expected.
What I got was a very well-made courtroom drama that I was attached to from start to finish.
The script and performances were both excellent, but you probably could have guessed that already based on how much buzz the movie got last year.
What I want to focus on here are two things that stood out to me as being particularly unique and well done: How the movie was crafted from a filming perspective, and the central theme beneath the courtroom drama.
// Anatomy of the Truth
The majority of the movie focuses on the legal system trying to determine if Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) killed her husband Samuel (Samuel Theis). The characters have the same names as the actors, something that the director also did in her other movie, Age of Panic. During this process, we see the truths and speculations that come out during that process, and how that impacts her and her son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner).
This is the idea of the film: What is the truth?
We’re given lengthy courtroom scenes where various individuals speculate what actually happened. Everything from analyzing blood splatter, to speculating if the father was suicidal, to the meaning behind conversations that various family members had.
We hear some audio recordings from a fight the couple had the day before the death, but never any concrete evidence about what happened.
This is key, because while the surface level importance of this is, “Well of course, if there was hard evidence there wouldn’t be this back and forth drama for the trial,” which is true. But the main reason it’s key, is because it makes the viewer engage with the same struggle everyone in the movie is going through. Did she really do it?
The viewer is placed in the same position as the jury and everyone else – we have no idea how he died. And we never learn.
We’re simply left with these people put up on display, peeled apart one layer at a time, watching how they react. They do bad things, they argue, they fight – they do human things.
You sympathize with them. You feel angry when the opposition picks apart Sandra’s words and turns what she says back around on her.
The scene where we get to see the fight between Sandra and her husband is an important one. Not only is the writing and acting incredibly genuine, but it mirrors the larger courtroom battle, and by extension the central theme of the movie.
We’re seeing two people argue about events we have not witnessed; events that we cannot judge for ourselves. Just like the two legal teams taking what they can get and running with it, you see this same thing echoed in the fight.
They take things each other have said and twist them to have different meanings. They each have their own take on past events. Us – the audience – are left to try and find the truth out of supposition. Just like the lawyers are in the courtroom battle, just as Daniel is based on what he’s learning of his parents, just as we are as the final judge and jury once the credits roll to determine if Sandra killed her husband.
If you’re like me, I think it’s clear that both sides were struggling in different ways. No one party was the clearly defined, “bad guy.” They are just both real people with all the flaws that come with the title.
If flawed people were bad people, we’d all be guilty.
However, in the eyes of the law, a judgment must be made. Just as, however unfairly, a judgment will be made on our part inadvertently based on what we see and hear. Your judgment might be different based on your experience. Would someone feel differently about the movie if they had life experiences similar to Sandra, or perhaps to Samuel? I think likely.
It’s human nature to try and fill in the blanks. We can’t help but see a whole picture, no matter how much is fabricated by our minds – a process that happens automatically. Just as it’s human nature to have flaws, it’s human nature to infer what lies beyond those flaws.
In the end, we never learn what happens. The truth of the story will remain a mystery, living in as many different forms as there have been people who watched this movie.
// Anatomy of a Shot
Switching gears to something more tangible, let’s delve into the filming process.
This film really does a lot with a little, as far as the cinematography goes.
Many kinds of shots – both from a composition point of view and in their style – are used to impart feelings and emotions onto what are essentially a series of shots of people talking.
When a movie is this dialogue heavy, purposeful cinematography is important. Not flashy, purposeful. You don’t want shots that will distract you from the dialogue and the performances, rather shots that accent them and enhance the emotions they are trying to give the viewer.
There are many times when extremely close-up shallow shots are used during intense – but quiet – character moments. This, coupled with the fact that they are often held for quite a long time, puts the viewer right there in the scene.
Many shots in the movie were captured with a sort of blurred-edges effect. To my eye, this seemed to go beyond just depth of field, and was a more overall blur on the shot.
It’s certainly not a tilt shift effect, but perhaps it sat next to a tilt shift movie and picked up some of its flavour. You can see it quite clearly in the two frames here:
To me, this gives the shots just a little bit of chaos – a twinge of murkiness. What you’re seeing is slightly obfuscated. Your mind is left to fill in the cloudy parts based on what you can see clearly. This mimics the happenings of the film, where everyone is trying to create a full picture out of the few facts and murky suppositions from the two legal teams.
The last type of shot I’ll dig into – aside from saying that the movie as a whole looked wonderful – are the scenes of reporters and journalists. These struck me as very authentic, with the film-like personal cinematography removed entirely and replaced with what you would see if you were actually watching this trial on television.
They felt authentic because, well, they were!
The following quote is from Simon Beaufils, the DP, from an interview here:
“We did lots of tests with different cameras and even bought some on Ebay,” he notes. “We also went to non-professional video rental companies. We chose six or seven types of cameras/camcorders, which was difficult because you have to treat all sorts of different video formats, that were not so common for the digital lab, plus the sound is difficult and not good quality either.
“But, I think it was a good way to create these sequences because, although you can create the effect afterwards in post, it’s nice to do it yourself and you end-up with happy accidents.”
It’s clear a lot of thought went into how to capture this movie, and it shows!
It certainly doesn’t hurt when your shooting location is as beautiful as theirs was.
// Conclusion
Anatomy of a Fall gives us killer performances from Sandra Hüller and Milo Machado Graner, as well as some very purposeful cinematography.
It exposes the flaws in being a human.
And perhaps most importantly, it gives us the blessing of seeing the goodest boy on screen. Messi the border collie plays Snoop, the family dog. He gave a fantastic performance (yes, actually) in a crucial role.
Messi was rewarded for his performance with the Palm Dog, the award given out at the Cannes Film Festival for the best performance by a canine.
Regardless of your thoughts on the movie, or movies as a whole this year, I think we can all agree that we’re truly lucky to have such adorable talent on screen.
I hope Messi will have a long and fulfilling acting career from here on out.
