Anatomy of a fall: A rare courtroom drama which remains ambiguous without losing intensity

Courtroom dramas are a staple in cinema. Time and time again, viewers have expressed great interest in watching law play out like a game on the screen. However, the most popular courtroom dramas present the set of truths to the audience before they are manipulated to appease the law. Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a fall” is a courtroom drama, which flips this cliché. 

The most interesting aspect of the film lies in how it manages to mask the truth throughout the film. The event is placed right at the start and everything that the audience learns about what happened leading up to it is along with the court itself. The evidence is presented for the audience to make judgements along with the court. The trial is a rather sensational one, only if the murder is proved. Thus, the media and the court focuses on the absurd evidence that it is able to find as proof of motive. The rather clever title foreshadows the hare-brained investigation by the judicial system. A man has fallen from the top floor of his residence to his death, he is married and has a partially blind son. Their failing marriage is suddenly held up as proof and his wife is incriminated for murder. The court then breaks down several different and unrelated aspects of his life in peculiar manners to somehow link it to his death. Thus, the name compares this trial to anatomy where each part of a person’s body is individually inspected. The physical organs of a person are replaced with his different personal problems and the fall is the event that led to the scrutiny.

The character of the son is brilliantly utilized as an anchor to represent and guide the audiences along with the trial. His information related to what happened is limited and the trial forms the basis of his conclusions. His opinions are altered every time there is new information that is presented to the court. It is only when the audience is allowed to sit and take a moment along with the kid, are they able to decide on what transpired between the couple.  

The filming of the trial is treated with the level of absurdity that it draws while also balancing it with the rather sound structure of court proceedings. Music plays a large part of the film as it announces the presence of characters and harkens back to gentle moments shared with the now lost. Actors in the film are styled with very accurate colors and are given dialogue that precisely represents each side of the trial. The lead actor shines as a woman who is taken aback by the audacity of representatives of the law to utilize very personal parts of her life as findings to the case. The film’s screenplay is written in a near perfect way to which it has an academy award to flaunt. It is a necessary watch to understand the plight of innocent people put on trial to be sensationalized.