The recent films of 2023 beam with critic acclaim. Justine Triet's most recent writer and directorial piece, Anatomy of a Fall, takes the cake as one of the most influential films of the year. The intricate plot and delicate characters of the storyline allow audiences to be societal bystanders to the whole event (the "fall" of a husband, who is killed) while simultaneously getting intimate with our subjects. A story like this one releases a stream of empathy as viewers can find common hardships in the events portrayed that are still relevant today. Within the film's two hours and thirty minutes running time, audiences can discover the realities of the Voyters, a broken family, as we slowly uncover secrets and unexplained events throughout the journey of the expositional death of husband and father, Samuel Voyter, the investigation, and the public court trial that follows right after.
As someone who adores simplicity in shots within a complex story plot, I believe Anatomy of a Fall is a perfect example of balance, with its cinematography and how it builds the tension between our main character, Sandra, and the world. In most of the film, we have our traditional stills and pans. However, throughout the film, these spontaneous, frazzled handheld movements, such as zooms and pans, almost seem to be coming out of nowhere. It is as if we were watching an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The rawness of the handheld shots convey not only the emotions felt by the characters but also how the family’s private family dynamic is being stripped and sent to the forefront as a public spectacle. For a family that lives in the discreet mountains of France to suddenly have police, detectives, and news reporters visiting to investigate the death is intrusive. The Voyter's lives are now exposed for society to watch as they tune in to the event.
The weight of the writing of this film is effective in character and story. Audiences can identify the type of person each character is, while simultaneously having the mystery of what happened? linger throughout the film. While the writing is so dense, the acting from each performer, especially from Sandra Hüller as the writer and mother Sandra, was beautifully done. I would like to highlight a performance from Milo Machado Graner, who plays Daniel Voyter, the son. Like audiences, he’s also trying to figure out what had happened to his father, and the actor plays this convincingly. With Daniel going through the investigation and the trial, there’s a connection between understanding and getting the complete picture of his family and their characters. As Daniel puts the pieces of the mystery together and starts to comprehend more of his parent’s relationship and how that affected the fall, we begin to understand on the same level as Daniel, reaching an equal level of comprehension and trust towards his testimonies. Especially for a character who has lost so much and has to quickly adjust to his new way of living without his father, Machado Graner's performance as Daniel is filled with raw emotion that emerges as naturalistic. Both Machado Graner and Hüller's performances deserve awards.
From beginning to end, the film sets up the mise-en-scène perfectly. Hüller and Machado Graner’s performance as mother and son invite audiences to invest in character dynamics, and gives them something to relate to. Aside from the initial fall, the death, and the subsequent trials, the film’s execution of the theme of families and tattered relationships was more forceful than Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story. Overall, Justine Triet hit it out of the park with this piece. It is a film with a simple plot, yet once audiences find a way to connect with this family, Pandora’s box opens for all of us.
Kimberly Lim, a writer and director, is a third-year Film major studying at the School of Visual Arts.