Anatomy of a Fall (2023)

Justine Triet | 2hr 32min

The events leading up to Samuel Maleski’s fall from the third-floor balcony of his French chalet are clouded with uncertainty. Though he has been making his presence known through the Caribbean music rudely blasting throughout his wife Sandra’s interview with a graduate student, it isn’t until we see his body lying on the snow outside that we meet him face to face. Their blind son Daniel and his guide dog Snoop are the first to find him after returning from a walk, and given that the fall took place after the student’s departure, there is only one suspect left. “I didn’t kill him,” Sandra asserts to her lawyer Vincent when the forensic evidence starts to point towards murder. His reply is blunt.

“That’s not the point.”

Indeed, the matter of whether Sandra is responsible for physically sending Samuel toppling over the edge is merely a distraction from Anatomy of a Fall’s real investigation. Both are guilty of letting their marriage slip into mutual disdain, as are so many troubled spouses heading towards a breaking point. While the jury of her court trial endeavour to dissect the facts of the criminal case, Justine Triet positions us as the jury of Sandra’s conscience, unburdening the viewer with the legal necessity of arriving at an unequivocal verdict.

It is through this ambiguity that Anatomy of a Fall also develops such a psychologically compelling narrative, layered with doubts around specific details and theories. Was the blunt head trauma that Samuel suffered before dying from a weapon, or from hitting the shed roof on the way down? Were the secret recordings he was making of his and Sandra’s arguments part of his creative process, or a premeditated effort to frame her as his murderer? Was his guilt over Daniel’s crippling accident really enough to drive him to a second suicide attempt?

As pieces of evidence as they are brought to the court’s attention, Triet fluidly weaves flashbacks and cutaways, though whatever certainty they grant us in the moment are frequently dispelled by equally convincing cases against them. When the dirty details of Sandra’s dark writing and previous affairs are dredged up by the prosecution, the humiliation she suffers is akin to that of a divorce hearing, only without a living target for her to deal it back to. She is alone in her shame, unable to perfectly express herself in her second language of French, and even being separated from her son over the final weeks of the trial.

Though Triet’s documentary-style zooms, whip pans, and handheld camerawork are intended to compound the indignity by hinting at the media presence in the courtroom, they ultimately mark a weakness in Anatomy of a Fall’s visual form. The first act’s setting around Sandra’s home in the French alps is pristine, and recurring overhead shots of the frozen ground where Samuel fell are impactful, especially when capturing the chilling sight of his blood mixing with pure white snow. There are still some sharp visual flourishes later on, such as when Triet places us in Daniel’s overwhelmed perspective on the witness stand by swinging a close-up from left to right around his head, but the camera’s spontaneous naturalism does not always match the iciness of her narrative and characters. 

As much as we find great empathy for this widow whose insecurities have been relentlessly picked apart by strangers, both Triet and actress Sandra Hüller are careful to keep us at a cold distance from the truth. If we are to accept the student’s description of her semi-autobiographical novels as mixing reality and fiction, then perhaps there is a version of Sandra who harbours dark thoughts of murder, but whether she is capable of acting on them is another matter. Even if she was not the one to physically push him, there is still the question of whether their broken marriage is at least partly responsible, and by the time Anatomy of a Fall has thoroughly autopsied its lifeless remains, there is at least no doubt as to who is responsible for its slow, agonising death.

Anatomy of a Fall is currently playing in cinemas.