Palme d'or meant high expectations while I was in the theater to see "Anatomy of a Fall", and it didn't disappoint.
The first part of the movie has the tone of a typical crime-piece. We as an audience are shocked by the Samuel's sudden (although expected) death in the first few minutes. Now we have a mystery to solve: how did Samuel die? Was he killed? If yes by whom? And how?
So we start following the attorneys and the investigators in the construction of a murder case against Samuel's wife Sandra (Sandra Hüller), and like them we try to solve this puzzle as we get spoon-fed its pieces: drops of blood, vague fragments of memories, recordings, past tragedies.. Each new piece of information presented to us before and during the trial shifts our opinion about the nature of Samuel's death, each new evidence is inconsistent with the previous one and adds up to a pile of confusion. We have enough to suspect, that's all.
Then start the stories. Defense and general attorneys, experts, psychologists.. Everyone writes their own narrative about Samuel's death. And much like Kurosawa's "Rashômon" (1952), each storyteller bends the facts to fit their personal envies and objectives: Sandra wants to stay with his son, Vincent (Swann Arlaud) wants Sandra to love him back, the psychologist needs to keep his 100% record of patients that didn't kill themselves. Even the press has its goals in it: "a writer killing her husband if much more interesting than a professor killing himself". At that point, we understand that it doesn't even matter if Sandra killed Samuel or not, or as Vincent said "we don't care about reality". We all want the story that makes sense.
So does Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). He discovers that he isn't only blind physically, but also blind about his family's past and his parents' relationship. Like the audience, he is shocked by each revelation and asks himself questions, investigates, and gets lost. His law-enforcer/baby-sitter Marge finally gets the key to him: "if you don't know what is real, then decide it yourself". Daniel tells his story, that turns out to be the best one. No way to know if the story is true. Maybe he just preferred the "suicidal father, innocent mother" to "killed father, killer mom". But one thing is sure, with his testimony, Daniel has reached the goal that her writer mother wanted to achieve in her books: blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
Top notch acting by Milo Machado Graner, Sandra Hüller, Antoine Reinhartz, Swann Arlaud, and of course Snoop; I hope he isn't thirsty anymore.
9/10.
The first part of the movie has the tone of a typical crime-piece. We as an audience are shocked by the Samuel's sudden (although expected) death in the first few minutes. Now we have a mystery to solve: how did Samuel die? Was he killed? If yes by whom? And how?
So we start following the attorneys and the investigators in the construction of a murder case against Samuel's wife Sandra (Sandra Hüller), and like them we try to solve this puzzle as we get spoon-fed its pieces: drops of blood, vague fragments of memories, recordings, past tragedies.. Each new piece of information presented to us before and during the trial shifts our opinion about the nature of Samuel's death, each new evidence is inconsistent with the previous one and adds up to a pile of confusion. We have enough to suspect, that's all.
Then start the stories. Defense and general attorneys, experts, psychologists.. Everyone writes their own narrative about Samuel's death. And much like Kurosawa's "Rashômon" (1952), each storyteller bends the facts to fit their personal envies and objectives: Sandra wants to stay with his son, Vincent (Swann Arlaud) wants Sandra to love him back, the psychologist needs to keep his 100% record of patients that didn't kill themselves. Even the press has its goals in it: "a writer killing her husband if much more interesting than a professor killing himself". At that point, we understand that it doesn't even matter if Sandra killed Samuel or not, or as Vincent said "we don't care about reality". We all want the story that makes sense.
So does Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). He discovers that he isn't only blind physically, but also blind about his family's past and his parents' relationship. Like the audience, he is shocked by each revelation and asks himself questions, investigates, and gets lost. His law-enforcer/baby-sitter Marge finally gets the key to him: "if you don't know what is real, then decide it yourself". Daniel tells his story, that turns out to be the best one. No way to know if the story is true. Maybe he just preferred the "suicidal father, innocent mother" to "killed father, killer mom". But one thing is sure, with his testimony, Daniel has reached the goal that her writer mother wanted to achieve in her books: blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
Top notch acting by Milo Machado Graner, Sandra Hüller, Antoine Reinhartz, Swann Arlaud, and of course Snoop; I hope he isn't thirsty anymore.
9/10.