SummaryFor the past year, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), her husband Samuel, and their eleven-year-old son Daniel have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found dead in the snow below their chalet, the police question whether he was murdered or committed suicide. Samuel's suspicious death is presumed murder, and S...
SummaryFor the past year, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), her husband Samuel, and their eleven-year-old son Daniel have lived a secluded life in a remote town in the French Alps. When Samuel is found dead in the snow below their chalet, the police question whether he was murdered or committed suicide. Samuel's suspicious death is presumed murder, and S...
Anatomy of a Fall is as addicting as any true-crime story, and as riveting as some of the best murder mysteries thanks to a team effort in front of and behind the camera.
Surprisingly gripping for a film devoid of real action, this family drama masquerading as a murder-mystery touches on universal marital tensions; it is both enigmatic and very human.
Part thorny family story, part whodunit, part courtroom drama and part meditation on the nature of truth and fiction, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall takes two hours of conversations and makes them both provocative and propulsive.
As the cinematic equivalent of an airport read, Anatomy of a Fall is adequate—not brisk but twisty, not stylish but unobtrusively informational. But the artistic failings are obvious and distracting throughout.
The film is emotionally intense from start to finish. Without the need for any action scenes, it maintains a continuous and powerful suspense and desire to understand. It lives up to its title, legally, physically, psychologically and intellectually.
Watching the trailer, it is a movie that has a suspenseful plot and shows the simple things of life together with the difficult events. I think it is a movie for people who like to watch movies about difficult topics.
Long drama when empathy to the characters becomes colder to the end just because of running time. The genre is stated as a crime/drama/thriller but actually there's nothing from crime or thriller in it. Very hard to believe such case would be controversial in court with only side evidences.
What is the deal? Why is everyone fawning over this movie? It’s way too long and NOTHING HAPPENS. it needs editing to take out an hour. But even then it would not be good.
I wanted to rename the film “Much Ado About Nothing” but that name has been taken.
Don’t waste your time. 2.5 hours I will never get back.
Any number of terrific psychological outcomes could’ve bloomed from this fertile seed. But Triet is after something more opaque than a satisfying mystery or an examination of a lethal marriage, or even a cautionary tale about the damage done to a child as the result of bad parenting. In fact, Triet is so determined to leave us guessing about practically every step of the story that frustration sets in almost immediately. It’s one thing to obfuscate. Albert Serra’s moody thriller, “Pacifiction,” takes confusion to astronomic levels yet still manages to be among the best of the year.Even with myriad scenes of head-scratching uncertainty, Serra’s overall vision is so assured we’re able to assimilate its themes through inference alone. We may not understand the facts, but we still get the meaning.With Triet, on the other hand, it becomes apparent, once the various revelations begin to drop, that there’s not really a story here. Or if there is one, Triet doesn’t seem particularly interested in telling it. The main problem is with the character of Sandra. Hüller doesn’t play her like an innocent person falsely accused of murder, or a guilty person hoping to get away with it. She plays Sandra like an amnesiac who doesn’t seem to know if she’s killed her husband or not. And though she claims her innocence, she’s not particularly convincing. Nor does she seem to want to be. And it’s this puzzling ambiguity that makes the whole “did she or didn’t she” plot line ultimately lose steam. Mysteries without an answer are not new. Antonioni’s “L'Avventura” rendered the question **** disappearance moot by transforming it into a discourse on existential ennui. And Triet almost pulls off a similar bait and switch, inserting a flashback scene of spousal discontent into the middle of her fuddled courtroom drama that brings the story briefly to **** the scene, Sandra’s husband Samuel (Samuel Theis), a frustrated author, expresses his discontent about being overshadowed by his wife’s literary success, and she responds with a litany of understandable grievances, mostly centered on their son Daniel and the accident that caused his near **** back and forth between husband and wife is heartbreakingly honest and emotionally lacerating. And I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps this was the film Triet ought to have made. Not some hokey whodunnit where none of the specifics even matter, but a raw, modern story about a combative marriage coming apart at the seams and the effects it has on a developing child. It’s also here that Hüller comes out of her bizarre malaise, stops hemming and hawing in an unconvincing attempt at naturalism, and finally delivers the kind of blistering performance we’ve been crying out for. The omnipresent soup of incoherent subtext is blessedly dropped and we hear Sandra speak her mind with a blinding clarity that slaps the audience **** it doesn’t last. Soon enough we’re back to the flimsy trial scenes which meander on in a structureless mope before coming to an underwhelming end, with a verdict I couldn’t have cared less about.There is, however, a curious third act development involving Sandra’s son Daniel (played beautifully by Milo Machado-Graner), that, though creepy in the extreme, didn’t appear to cause a moment of concern to anyone in the film. Without elaborating too much, I’ll just say that under the guise of playing amateur detective, Daniel engages in some deeply sketchy behavior with the family dog that made me question whether “Anatomy of a Fall” might actually be a story about the making of a serial killer. Whether this is Triet’s intention, or whether Daniel’s actions are just typical pet owner conduct in France is anybody’s guess. That’s the trouble with undisciplined ambiguity. It’s hard to tell if the finished product is there by chance or by calculation. For all I know the baffling plot holes and unsatisfactory threads left hanging by Triet could be just what she intended. Whatever the case, her attempt to tell a story by not telling a story has resulted in a lack of answers that has not magically produced an answer, only two and a half hours of waiting in **** THEATERS
Production Company
Les Films Pelléas,
Les Films de Pierre,
France 2 Cinéma,
Auvergne Rhône-Alpes Cinéma,
Canal+,
Ciné+,
France Télévisions,
Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC),
Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes,
Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine,
Département de la Charente-Maritime,
Cofinova 18,
Cinémage 17,
Indéfilms 11,
Cinécap 5,
Cinéventure 7,
Cinéventure 8