“I’m not a monster,” Sandra tells her son as he lays silently in his bed, shadowed by the dark night.
That, however, is exactly what the court is accusing Daniel’s mother of being: A heartless, cold-blooded murderer. The evidence? Well, there isn’t much. But there definitely was a fall. A fall that left Daniel’s dad, Samuel, quite dead.
It all took place on a typically ice-and-snow-covered day in the family’s isolated French mountainside chalet. Sandra, who happens to be a successful writer, was being interviewed by a young female writing student. Meanwhile her visually impaired son, Daniel, was upstairs giving his service dog a much-needed wash.
The two downstairs were talking jauntily. Smiling. Casual.
The boy and his dog, upstairs, were splashing and making a small mess.
Then the music started. Very loud music. Up in the attic of the house, Sandra’s husband, Samuel, had obviously begun his renovation work for the day. If you listened from below, you might hear an occasional thump of a hammer nailing in insulation. But only if you listened very, very carefully. For the obnoxiously blaring steel-drum music quite literally drowned out any and every sound in the whole house.
It drowned out every thought.
So, Sandra’s interview soon succumbed to the inevitable. And the two women smilingly put things off for another day. The interviewer drove away.
Soon after, Daniel and his newly cleaned dog set off for a walk in the snow; something that Daniel sometimes did when things got unbearably loud at home.
They walked. Daniel threw a rock or two. The air was crisp. The sun was bright. And when he finally got back near the house, he could hear the incredibly loud music still playing, just as it was when he left. But there was one difference. Now, the attic window stood open. And his father was on the ground in a pool of his own blood.
And the music roared.
And Daniel screamed.
Eventually Sandra ran to the bedroom window to see her son, and husband, below. When she called emergency services, while hugging Daniel in the snow, the music still bellowed from the attic above.
But was this murder or suicide? And was there really a monster in the mix?
Though it’s hard to know what’s truly going through Sandra’s mind—since she’s accused of being a murderer—this otherwise caring mother takes every chance to support and comfort her emotionally shattered son. And even when it appears that Daniel might doubt the veracity of his mom’s account in the court proceeding, she is gentle and loving toward the boy. She also insists that he tell the court the total truth as he sees it. “That can never hurt me,” she declares. Eventually, Daniel chooses to stand by his mom. (But there are dramatic questions raised that suggest even this 11-year-old may not be telling the truth.)
With Daniel so upset over his father’s death, the boy’s grandmother, Monica, suggests they take him to see a psychic she’s worked with in the past. Sandra rejects the idea, but Monica declares that the man “sees things” that others don’t.
During the course of the court case, it’s revealed that Sandra is bisexual. And after Daniel was badly hurt in an accident, she and Samuel were not intimate. So, she turned to having several sexual flings with women to “feel better.” At first, Samuel was OK with those casual affairs, but then became angry when she tried to hide a sexual interlude from him.
During a later argument, the couple fights about the strain in their physical closeness and his inability to be sexual.
Sandra’s old friend and lawyer, Vincent, mentions that in college he was quite in love with her. But she doesn’t have any memories of their times together. Later, though, he leans in to kiss her, and she rebuffs his advance.
We see Samuel’s corpse on a coroner’s table during the autopsy. The camera looks on as the body is turned, showing his bare chest, shoulders and backside.
Daniel is shown in the shower. We see his bare back and shoulders.
We see Samuel’s body lying face up on the ground with quite a large pool of blood around his head. And then, while on the autopsy table, the camera closely examines the flayed open wound on his head. We also see bruises on Sandra’s arm where she was forcefully grabbed.
During the court case, we listen to an audio recording that Samuel secretly made while he and Sandra were having dinner. They begin arguing. We see this interaction in flashback as the slowly building fight grows more verbally violent. However, when actual physical violence takes place, we’re taken back to the courtroom where we just hear glasses and plates being smashed and someone being slapped and punched.
We also see a group of people trying to recreate Samuel’s fall using a life-sized dummy. They talk about why the blood spatter landed the way it did.
We’re told that Daniel was hit by a motorcycle when he was only 4 years old. The accident not only resulted in broken bones but damaged his optic nerves, too.
The dialogue contains some 15 f-words and more than a half-dozen s-words, along with a single use of the word “b–ch.” (Some profanities are in English while others are in French and have subtitles.)
Sandra smokes throughout the film. Her lawyer, Vincent, and several others smoke on occasion as well. Sandra drinks wine during her interview; she and Samuel drink wine during a dinner that devolves into an argument. She and Vincent drink beer together and later both get very tipsy while drinking sake at a restaurant.
We’re told that Samuel went on antidepressants after Daniel was hurt in an accident as a young boy. Sandra recounts a story of Samuel getting falling-down drunk and then vomiting up what looked like a lot of small white pills. Daniel later tries to recreate that incident by feeding his dog a handful of aspirin. The animal falls asleep and almost dies before Daniel gets help to revive him.
In the interview with Sandra, the writing student states that running made her feel like she was on drugs. “What do you know about drugs,” Sandra chortles. “A lot,” the student replies.
Throughout this film, it’s purposely difficult to tell who’s telling the truth. It feels as if no one here has a moral code that they live by, above and beyond their own selfish needs. In fact, Sandra’s lawyer, Vincent, proclaims that the trial itself isn’t about the truth, but about how the facts are presented to the jury. Ultimately, it’s possible that several different people lied during testimony.
From a typical American perspective, director Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall is very, well, French.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not casting aspersions on France. Or even on the film’s working parts. The visuals, the vibrant interactions and acting are all very strong. But the story itself is bound to be frustrating for some viewers.
Why? Because of Anatomy’s approach, its mindset.
When most Americans watch a thought-provoking procedural, which this pic is certainly designed to be, we look for resolution. When we invest in certain characters in a possible cinematic crime, we want to see conclusively how right or wrong play out. In other words, we want to know what happened.
But this film, seemingly, has no defining moral anchor. It’s all about the elusive.
Through the French style of jurisprudence on display, which must deal with the inconclusive and contradictory forensic evidence involved in the case, the trial is more hearsay than evidential. Characters pound desks, pontificate, point fingers. But none of them ever deliver closure.
In fact, there’s one key moment in the film where young Daniel asks his court-appointed guardian what he should think about his mother after hearing the prosecutor’s accusations. And the guardian advises him that sometimes you have to overcome doubt, one way or another, by simply making a decision about what the truth is.
“So, you have to invent your belief?” he wonders.
And that’s essentially where this film lands. Concrete right and wrong, facts and proof, take a backseat to this pic’s goal of dramatically mulling over the unknowability of objective truth.
Discerning viewers will likely find that, along with foul language and some bloody forensic evidence, to be where this film falls short.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
