There have been two films this Oscar season so far that have been incredibly acclaimed that in a rather frustrating way I whole-heartedly understand the greatness on display, but just personally did not connect with. One such film would be Justine Triet’s rather brilliant Anatomy of a Fall, a film that I simultaneously admired and on the other hand I can’t get on the bandwagon of immense praise. In many ways this can be the most annoying of all, when a film really is as great as everybody is saying it is, but just falls a little short in my overall appraisal. But is this just a case where I was faced with incredible expectations or is there something just a little underwhelming about this international drama?
I know this is one of my more unpopular opinions of the Oscar season and I know I will face the same thing when I discuss my pacing and length issues with another film that didn’t exactly wow me this season, especially when I have been so bold in what I believe to be incredibly well paced and effective epics such as Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon. Justine Triet here works with a screenplay she wrote with Arthur Harrari to bring a complex question to the screen with an ingenious set-up that comes down to two possible answers. To be frank; did the character of Sandra push her husband to his death or did he fall or for that matter commit suicide? Framed as a court drama and bolstered here and there by a series of flashbacks and alternate views on the same event, the film unfolds at an initially great pace with an interesting concept and a bounty of interesting questions to be answered. The film itself is at times very thrilling and very propulsive and when this subsides for moments of touching sadness and human drama the stellar performances of all involved and the incredible writing offers a portrayal of confused pain that is engrossing and easy to be enraptured by. The issue lies for me with pacing, length and an overall repetitiveness despite the many ways in which the film does shift narratively along its way. I often exclaim when limited series of court dramas or mysteries come out and feel stretched out that they would have probably made for a very solid film, however this was the case when it started and I was happy at last that this was told in the filmic medium only for it to too feel stretched in many ways. It’s not that Triet isn’t an effective writer or director, because she is very much so, it’s simply that for me the film was fuelled by questions with an overall ambiguity that didn’t satisfy me. When the film is in the courtroom it excels undoubtably and very rarely grows tired, so fortunately the film is for the most part in these halls, but even then I personally did not feel that the run-time was justified.
The film boasts
many incredible performances however, you will have most likely heard the
incredible acclaim for Sandra Huller who I will touch upon in a moment, but the
film goes far beyond its lead and although she is the star jewel, the ensemble
is great from the top down. Swann Arluad, Samuel Theis and Jehnny Beth all give
great turns in a very realistic and truthful performances that build out the
realism of the film, all doing great work with no real standouts I dare say.
Antoine Reinartz as the prosecution is almost pantomime at times in the manner
in which he prosecutes the case as a clear villain, losing some of the subtlety
the rest of the film did so well at maintaining, but still with a purpose. Milo
Machado Graner gives one of the best child performances I have seen in some
time, but near the end is given a task of taking the film in a new direction
that he does pull off, even if at times he is fighting against the contrivances
of the script. But Huller is the most acclaimed and is rightfully so, she is
incredible and offers a true journey of power, vulnerability, pathos and pain
along the films run-time, even if again for me I must admit through pain in
knowing I am greatly outnumbered that by the end her ambiguity did less to
enthral me and more so to just turn me off.
A very strong 7/10 with an incredibly tight script performed by astounding actors handled by in Triet a director of incredible skill. But for me Anatomy of a Fall simply falls a little short of the greatness that it has within it. I do feel it’s overly long and as I will explain with allusion to plotting in my spoiler postscript the film for me was missing something. There is something to provocation and there is something for complexity, but in this particular case I felt that it was a film in search of a summation and a conclusion that took an easier route narratively to finish the film rather than something truly satisfying.
SPOLIER P.S. For me, and I’m not actually spoiling the film here, but personally this was a film crying out for a twist, crying out for something of a more melodramatic release, crying out for a finale scene that gave us something or at least more clearly pointed towards an ambiguity. Personally and I know I’m in the minority, this film was less ambiguous and enthralling, but actually got to a point where I didn’t care or for that matter was begging for some sort of sudden shift that made all of this confusion and deliberation wroth something.
- - Thomas Carruthers
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