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Sandra Voyter is a German writer married to Samuel, a French writer, and they live with their visually impaired son Daniel and his guide dog Snoop in a mountain house in the Alps. One day, Samuel is found dead on the ground, and the police assume he fell from the third floor and hit his head on the ground. Due to suspicious circumstances, the prosecutor indicts Sandra for murder. She is defended by lawyer Vincent in court. Details emerge that Sandra and Samuel would often argue, and that she had affairs. However, Daniel testifies that Samuel implied of committing suicide months ago, and thus the court acquits Sandra, ruling Samuel's death as suicide.
Court drama "Anatomy of a Fall" gained a somewhat disproportionate critical acclaim during its time of release—everything here is done just right, proper and correct, and yet, it's all too conventional and standard to enthuse on a higher level. It's somewhat of a testament that modern movies need to have something unique and unusual to offer to stand out from the rest. The first hour of the story is the best: "Anatomy of a Fall" starts, appropriately, with a tennis ball falling down the stairs, creating an engaging 'whodunnit' investigation story in which the police and investigators try to figure out how Samuel died outside of his house, trying out several experiments (they throw a puppet tied to a rope from the third floor of the house to see if it will bounce the same way Samuel's corpse did; they have Samuel's wife Sandra talk a written dialogue inside the house, playing loud music, and having the son Daniel try to hear what she is saying...) to review, deduct and reconstruct what happened. The second hour plays out inside the courtroom, yet here the story becomes somewhat routine—while it is still interesting listening to the prosecutor and defense giving their arguments in front of the judge, it cannot have a permanent value and effect on the second viewing experience. Only once does the director Justine Triet offer some more creative directorial intervention to give it a higher dimension: in the scene where the court plays the audio tape of Sandra's and Samuel's argument in the house, and as the camera observes the faces of the people in court, it suddenly "cuts" to said scene of argument in a flashback. The bizarre moment in which Daniel gives 8-10 aspirin pills to his dog Snoop, almost killing him, makes no sense. The last half an hour needed some better plot twist or idea than we got. "Anatomy of a Fall" is a polished, aesthetic and fluent courtdrama, yet it would have been much more effective if it had been released thirty years ago.
Grade:++
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