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With: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner, Antoine Reinartz, Samuel Theis, Jehnny Beth, Saadia Bentaieb, Camille Rutherford, Anne Rotger, Sophie Fillières
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Written by: Justine Triet, Arthur Harari
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Directed by: Justine Triet
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MPAA Rating: R for some language, sexual references and violent images
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Language: English, French, German, with English subtitles
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Running Time: 151
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Date: 10/13/2023
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Great Heights
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Justine Triet's Palme d'Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall has a title that evokes, whether on purpose or not, Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder. Both depict lengthy, meticulous court cases filled with deduction and insinuation. But whereas Preminger's film pushed boundaries by talking about sexual violence, Triet's film seems more interested in a more emotional kind of violence, an indirect violence that comes through accusation, distrust, and a general lack of empathy. Author Sandra (Sandra Hüller, from Toni Erdmann) lives with her husband and their blind son, Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). They live in a beautiful snowbound villa in France.
One day, when Daniel returns from a walk with his faithful dog, he finds his father's lifeless, bloody body in the snow, apparently having fallen from the attic three floors up. The police investigate, and there's not enough evidence to indicate an accident, or an attempt at suicide, and so Sandra is considered a suspect. She endures a trial in which every, tiny, shameful secret that she and her husband ever had is aired in public, from a brief affair, to the accident that caused Daniel's blindness. A casual interview given to a student and secret recordings by the husband are also used as evidence. Things get even more brutal when Daniel takes the stand.
The movie is less a murder mystery — and, indeed, the answer to the puzzle is not even the point — than it is a depiction of the way the legal teams play with their subjects like chess pieces. They move, counter, block, and move again, seemingly always ready with a fresh angle, a new accusation. (A nasty prosecuting attorney, played by Antoine Reinartz, may be the movie villain of the year.) Very little of it has anything to do with the truth. It's mostly about suspicion and doubt. Part of me wishes that the movie had been either a little more austere, like last year's Saint Omer, or a little more entertaining; it seems to straddle the two. (I knew there would be no solution, but I was involved enough to be disappointed.) Even so, it's a fine effort, and a far more deserving Palme d'Or winner than Triangle of Sadness was.
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